Solving environmental problems in the Anthropocene: the need to bring novel theoretical advances into the applied ecology fold

Abstract

The romanticized view of untouched, pristine nature is fast disappearing. From pollution and deforestation, to the introduction of non-native species, we now live in a world where almost every major ecosystem has been impacted by human activities. Geologists have now recognized this wholesale alteration of the Earth’s environment as sufficient to demark our current era as a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene (Zalasiewicz et al. 2008).