Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy

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Holocene divisions

The Holocene Series or Flandrian Stage

Holocene is the name for the most recent interval of Earth history and includes the present day. It is generally regarded as having begun 10 000 radiocarbon years or the last 11,500 calibrated (i.e. calendar) years before present (i.e. 1950). The term 'Recent' as an alternative to Holocene is invalid and should not be used. Sediments accumulating or processes operating at present should be referred to as 'modern' or by similar synonyms.

The term Flandrian, derived from marine transgression sediments on the Flanders coast of Belgium (Heinzelin & Tavernier, 1957), has often been used as a synonym for Holocene. It has been adopted by authors who consider that the last 10 000 years should have the same stage-status as previous interglacial events and thus be included in the Pleistocene. In this case, the latter would thus extend to the present-day (cf. West 1968; 1977, 1979; Hyvärinen 1978). This usage, although advocated particularly in Europe, has been loosing ground in the last two decades (cf. Lowe & Walker 1997, p.16).

Various zonation schemes have been proposed for the Holocene (Flandrian) period. The most established is that of Blytt and Sernander (cf. Lowe & Walker 1997) that was developed for peat bogs in Scandinavia in the late nineteenth to earliest twentieth centuries. Their terminology, based on interpreted climatic changes, comprised in chronological order, the Pre-Boreal, Boreal, Atlantic, Sub-Boreal and Sub-Atlantic. This scheme was refined by the Swede von Post and others, using pollen analysis throughout Europe. Today this terminology remains in use in northern Europe, although it has been largely displaced by absolute chronology, particularly 14C. Dating has shown that the biostratigraphically-defined zone boundaries are diachronous (cf. Godwin 1975). An attempt to fix these boundaries to precise dates was proposed for northern Europe by Mangerud et al. (1974).

In prehistoric times as well as later, climatic events have largely served to identify the divisions, elaborated by modern 14C, other dating techniques, tephrachronology and dendrochronology as well as successively by Archaeology and human history. Using these techniques Holocene time can be divided into extremely or ultra high-resolution divisions. Recent developments indicate that cyclic patterns of climate change of durations as short as 200 y can be differentiated and potentially used for demonstrating equivalence in peat sequences, for example.

Anthropocene

There has recently been a proposal to add an Anthropocene Epoch within or following the Holocene, reflecting the human influence on the Earth. Crutzen (2000) discussed that today's Earth is no longer uneffected by human civilization's interference with natural systems. Global warming is the most obvious consequence of this. As Andrew Alden emphasises, humans have become a geologic agent comparable to erosion and eruptions, and accordingly "it seems to us more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology by proposing to use the term 'anthropocene' for the current geological epoch." Crutzen has repeated his position in Nature in (2002). See Alden's page for further discussion of this topic.