Topic: Salient features of world’s physical geography.
1) What do you understand by new Meghalayan age and how does it fit with the Anthropocene? Discuss.(250 words)
Why this question:
Recently In Meghalaya, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) North Eastern Region (NER) installed two geological display boards at Mawmluh cave and Therriaghat to create awareness among visiting tourists and general public. Thus it is important for us to ponder upon the significance of Meghalayan age.
Key demands of the question:
The answer must elaborate upon the new Meghalayan age; how it came into existence, its significance, with respect to India and its relation with Anthropocene.
Directive word
Discuss – This is an all-encompassing directive – you have to debate on paper by going through the details of the issues concerned by examining each one of them. You have to give reasons for both for and against arguments.
Structure of the answer:
Introduction
In a few introductory lines explain Scientists still continue to refine the geologic timescale and recently have brought the official naming of a new age: the Meghalayan.
Body
Discuss the following aspects in the answer:
- As of July 2018, the Holocene — the most recent epoch of time spanning from 11,700 years ago to the present — is divided into three ages: the Greenlandian, the Northgrippian, and the Meghalayan.
- The global-scale climate change defines that the beginning of the Meghalayan coincides with a period of ongoing migration and collapse of many early human civilizations around the globe. Thus bringing us to the idea of Anthropocene – a proposed division of geologic time defined by signs of human activities in the geologic record.
- Discuss relevance with India, why the name ?
- Then move on to discuss – arguments both for and against an Anthropocene.
- Explain how Human beings have clearly altered landscapes through deforestation, agriculture, and industrialization, which among other things have accelerated erosion and sediment accumulation. Plastics are accumulating in our oceans and biosphere, leaving a global-scale marker of these synthetic materials in soils and sediments. People are causing high extinction rates and rapid changes in where species are found around the world. And, of course, burning fossil fuels and human-induced climate change leave signatures in sediment records worldwide.
- What are the challenges in agreeing to when the Anthropocene should begin?
Conclusion
Conclude with significance of the Meghalayan age.
