Canada | The small lake reflects a new era, which is determined by the human impact on the environment, says the research team

Small lake in Canada near the city of Toronto reflects a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which human impact on the environment is reflected in geology, a team of researchers said on Tuesday.

After years of consideration, Lake Crawford was chosen from among 12 candidate sites as the so-called golden spike of the Anthropocene. Other candidates included another lake, coral reefs, ice core samples and a sea bay in Japan.

“The sediment found at the bottom of Lake Crawford provides an excellent record of recent environmental changes over the past millennium,” said the chair of the research team Simon Turner.

According to scientists, the sediment at the bottom of Lake Crawford is the best single evidence that a new and challenging era in Earth’s history has begun. Microplastics, ash and debris from nuclear bomb explosions have been mixed into the sediment.

Scientists said at a news conference in the French city of Lille that they hope the decision to select the lake as the Golden Spike of the Anthropocene will encourage people to think more deeply about their responsibility to the planet.

New the era named after man follows the Holocene, which began about 11,700 years ago. The Anthropocene was first proposed by a Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen in 2002.

The Anthropocene refers to how human activities leave their mark on the Earth and shape its functioning.

Brock University professor and Crawford Lake research leader by Francine McCarthy According to According to McCarthy, the development of the middle of the century marked a tipping point.

“The Earth system stopped behaving the way it had for 11,700 years,” said McCarthy.

Research group the recommendations still need to be approved by a qualified majority of two separate committees before final validation by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).