Rêve Géologique

Dates

2009 - Ongoing
Author

Simona Ghizzoni
Recognition

Shortlisted - PhMuseum 2021 Photography Grant

The word Anthropocene was coined by the Dutch chemist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen. It literally means "the age of man", or a phase characterized by the imprint of human beings on the global ecosystem. Taking into account climate change, soil erosion, warming of the oceans or even the extinction of many species, the "weight" of human activities seems obvious. However, scientists continue to collect data and evidence of the changing geological era.

Fascinated by this data, I too have begun to collect academic and scientific journal articles that prove the existence and consequences of the new phase we have entered.

I translated each of these articles into an image, with the desire to make visible what is invisible in the present: the consequences.

As in many of my works, the human presence is interpreted through self-portraiture: a humanity groping in the dark.

As the traces of our passage on earth become more and more evident, I am increasingly obsessed with erasing mine.

Rêve Géologique is a collection - reconstruction of the scientific evidences from the beginning of this new era.

As the traces of our passage on earth become more and more evident, I am increasingly obsessed with erasing mine.

Rêve Géologique is a collection - reconstruction of the scientific evidence from the beginning of this new era.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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Algae. Nitrates are substances composed of nitrogen and oxygen: they represent a significant component of diffuse pollution, which affects inland and marine waters, giving rise to the phenomenon of eutrophication. "Eutrophication is an enrichment of water in nutritive salts that causes structural changes to the ecosystem such as: increased production of algae and aquatic plants, depletion of fish species, the general degradation of water quality and other effects that reduce and preclude its use. ( OCSE) The problem of nitrates arises mainly from the application of organic and chemical fertilizers on cultivated land. The high solubility of this form of nitrogen means that it can be easily found in both surface and groundwater. Rieti, Italy, 2019.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Self-portrait #1 Seashells. Rome, 2019

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Self-portrait #1 Seashells. Rome, 2019

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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Fake acrtic envornment. Sea ice extent for October 2020 was 5.28 million square kilometers (2.04 million square miles), placing it lowest in the satellite record for the month. This was 3.07 million square kilometers (1.19 million square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 October average and 450,000 square kilometers (173,700 square miles) below the record low mark for October set in 2019. October 2020 is the largest departure from average conditions seen in any month thus far in the satellite record, falling 3.69 standard deviations below the 1981 to 2010 mean. Ice extent is far below average in all of sectors of the Eurasian side of the Arctic Ocean and in Baffin Bay. The Arctic is more impacted by global warming than any other place in the world. Arctic ecosystem, which have reacted significantly to past climate changes ( AES 1985) are likely to be the most altered under future global warming. Lisbon, 2016.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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White Stork. By 2050, almost 80% of migratory bird species could be affected by environmental changes due to global warming. According to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, global climate change, pollution and land use pose a danger to most migratory birds. The international researchers who wrote the study focused their attention on the species that nest north of the Tropic of Cancer and that cover long distances to winter (from 1,100 to 13,500 kilometers): cranes, swallows, coots, nightingales, hawks, geese, a total of 825 species. "The longer the migration, the greater the risk of damage or loss", explains Wilfried Thuiller, co-author of the study. Birds get more tired, exposing themselves to hunters and poachers. And if, due to unpredictable climatic conditions, they arrive too early or too late at the nesting grounds, there is a risk of desynchronisation between reproduction and peak feeding. Unfortunately, the decline in migration is already visible, with a significant decrease in the population of some species. Other birds, however, seem to have found a way to adapt to the situation: this is the case of the white storks, who now willingly abandon the winter districts south of the Sahara in favor of the Iberian districts. And thanks to the food found in the landfills, their population is even increasing. ( Source: Nature Climate Change Journal ) London, 2014.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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"Dinosaur eggs" Last December ( 2016, ed. ) Nicholas Cage handed over to the US authorities the skull of a tarosaurus, purchased for $276,000 from a gallery in Beverly Hills, so that it could be returned to its homeland: Mongolia. The case has uncovered Pandora's box of illegal trade in fossils, sold by the thousands, for millions of dollars, on the international black market and in famous auction houses such as Christie's, before everyone's eyes. A flourishing black market that damages the study of dinosaurs, a fundamental discipline to know much of the evolution of our past, from the life of dinosaurs to climate change. "Every year - remembers National Geographic - scientists from all over the world manage to recover about 90 tons of fossils from Mongolia. But the phenomenon of smuggling is constantly growing and collects funding for at least 10 million dollars a year. A system that moves in full illegality and finally rose to the headlines only when it saw Hollywood stars compete for fossils at auction. ( Source: National Geographic ) Rome, 2019.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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Water scarcity Higher temperatures and more extreme, less predictable, weather conditions are projected to affect availability and distribution of rainfall, snowmelt, river flows and groundwater, and further deteriorate water quality. Low-income communities, who are already the most vulnerable to any threats to water supply are likely to be worst affected. More floods and severe droughts are predicted. Changes in water availability will also impact health and food security and have already proven to trigger refugee dynamics and political instability. (Source Climate Change - Un-Water) Roma, 2020.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Self-portrait #2 Blinded. Rome, 2019

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Self-portrait #2 Blinded. Rome, 2019

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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“We are the meteor” JAN ZALASIEWICZ: The classic example of the really rapid change, of course, is the meteorite impact that likely killed off the dinosaurs and that ushered in the Cenozoic era after the Mesozoic Era, probably the only example I know of a real, you know, a very bad Friday afternoon and the world changed. BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jan Zalasiewicz is a stratigrapher. He studies the strata or layers of rock, which reveal the Earth's roughly 5-billion-year history. He’s also chair of the Anthropocene Working Group. JAN ZALASIEWICZ: Usually, things happen in a slower and more complicated fashion. The strata, therefore, reflects that change. And somewhere over that interval of change we have to find a marker. We say, we fix the boundary here, and we fix it not because it's the most important of the changes but because it's the best marker to give us what we call a synchronous level, the level that can be most easily traced across the world to form a time plane. BROOKE GLADSTONE: So when, in your view, does the Anthropocene start? JAN ZALASIEWICZ: It’s really the surface atomic bomb tests of the early 1950s, and they sprinkled the world with plutonium, cesium, americium, and so on. That level that we can follow in, in ice and we can follow it in lakebeds and we can follow it on the bottom of the sea more or less coincides with these very big earth system changes of the big changes to the carbon cycle, to the nitrogen cycle. The biosphere really started changing then, a lot of the physical changes, as well, the production of huge amounts of concrete, also plastics, aluminum, you know, all of which are getting into strata. (Source: Radio podcast by WNYC Studio, April 2017) Meteorite Horace. Frankfurt, 2020

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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Anti landslide steel wire net. A study, published in the magazine "American Mineralogist", has recorded for the first time the minerals that have formed directly or indirectly as a result of human activities: they are 208, a real "explosion", according to experts. Analyzing 5208 minerals present on our planet, the team of researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science concluded that 208 of these would not exist if it had not been for the presence of the human being. After the so-called "Great Oxidation", i.e. the increase in atmospheric oxygen that occurred 2.2 billion years ago and that gave rise to about two thirds of known minerals, man represents the main factor of diversification and distribution of minerals on Earth. Most of the minerals "dependent" on man have been formed as a result of fires or the leaching of waste produced by mining activities: they are found in foundries, in deposits, in the walls of underground tunnels or in piping systems. Some have also been created directly by man, such as YAG crystals, made from yttrium and aluminium, or silicon chips used as semiconductors. (Source: Huffington Post) Reggio Emilia, 2019.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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Elephant. At the beginning of 1800 the population of African elephants was estimated at 20 million specimens. Today only 350,000 elephants survive, destined for extinction if their massacre continues at the rate of 30,000 heads per year. For some time we have known almost everything about their ecological role, but only this year, for the first time, a research group from the University of Saint Louis has tried to calculate what the impact on the world climate would be if the Loxodonta africana disappeared from the face of the earth. The elephant grazes bushes and plants, with a strong preference for fast-growing ones, which are eaten and even trampled underfoot during meals; this frees the soil for other, slower-growing plants. Less elephants means less trees. Thanks to their selection work, elephants have, over millennia, contributed to populating African forests with centuries-old trees, with an extraordinary capacity to accumulate carbon: simply by feeding, African elephants help to keep the atmosphere clean - a job, according to the team led by Fabio Berzaghi, which equates to something like 43 billion dollars in works and investments, for man. ( Source: St. Louis University ) Rome, 2019.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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Aquarium. According to a FAO study, the impact of temperature, wind and sea acidification on marine and aquatic systems can already be predicted with a large margin of safety. Within a few years, rising temperatures will have an impact on fish physiology due to reduced oxygen transport to tissues at higher temperatures. This in turn will lead to changes in the distribution of both marine and freshwater species. As temperatures rise, fish populations will increase towards the poles and decline in the southernmost distribution areas. About 520 million people depend on fishing and aquaculture as their primary livelihood. For 400 million of them, among the poorest in the world, fish accounts for more than half of animal protein and mineral inputs. Many coastal communities already live in precarious conditions due to poverty and rural underdevelopment, with livelihoods at risk due to overexploitation of marine resources and degradation of ecosystems. A crucial question will be, according to the report, how well these communities can adapt to change. ( Source: FAO Climate change implications for fisheries and aquaculture ) Istanbul, 2014.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Self-portrait #7 In plastic. Roma, 2019.

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Self-portrait #7 In plastic. Roma, 2019.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Self-portrait #5 Bones. Rome, 2017

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Self-portrait #5 Bones. Rome, 2017

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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Chicken bones. An article published this week in the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science suggests that farmed chicken can be considered as one of the main identifying traits of anthropocene. The study, led by Leicester University biologist Carys E. Bennett, suggests that one of the most important and concrete legacies we will pass on to the geologists of the future will be the bones of the billions of chickens we slaughter each year, different from all the chickens that have ever lived on earth before about sixty years ago. According to Bennett and his colleagues, we should focus on breeding chickens. At any given time, there are about 23 billion chickens on Earth, ten times more than any other bird, and with a greater total mass than any other bird on the planet. About 60 billion birds are slaughtered every year. Even more than their quantity, it is their quality that makes them potentially an unmistakable sign of our geological era, according to Bennett. If man has been raising chickens for about 8,000 years, when they spread from Southeast Asia all over the world, in the last sixty years they have become something else. Until the beginning of the 20th century, chickens were reared mainly for eggs, and were only slaughtered on special occasions. Things changed in the 1920s, when chickens were reared indoors all year round. But the real revolution came with the technological growth of the second post-war period, which introduced new and efficient methods to artificially incubate eggs, to increase the chances of survival of chickens with drugs and antibiotics, and to raise and slaughter them in huge quantities in limited covered spaces. According to an estimate of UK chicken consumption, one million chickens were eaten in 1950: 150 million in 1965. ( Source: University of Leicester ) Rome, 2019

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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Crocodile Rising global temperatures could shift the balance between males and females in crocodile and alligator populations, potentially leading to a sharp decline in the reptiles’ reproduction rates. In many reptiles, the temperature of the nest determines the sex of hatchlings: in alligators, temperatures between 32.5ºC and 33.5ºC produce mostly males, whereas temperatures slightly above or below these produce mostly females. Between 2010 and 2018, Samantha Bock at the University of Georgia in Athens and her colleagues measured the temperature of 86 nests made by American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) in Florida and South Carolina. The researchers also collected data on daily air temperatures at these sites and found that average nest temperatures were higher during warmer years. Using estimates of future climate change, the researchers predicted that, if global temperature continues to rise unabated, sex ratios at both sites will become highly male-skewed by the middle of this century. But, by 2100, higher nest temperatures could produce up to 98% females. (Source: nature.com ) Rome, 2020

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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Asphalt. In Europe, there is cement or asphalt less than 1.5 kilometres from anywhere. Every year, 1,600 million tons of asphalt, 3,400 billion tons of cement are produced and sediments equal to 3 times those transported naturally by rivers and streams are moved. Roads and buildings, intact or reduced to rubble, will therefore constitute one of the most lasting geological evidence of Anthropocene. ( Source: Museo di Paleontologia di Torino ) Roma, 2019.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Self-portrait #3 Lichens. Rome, 2019

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Self-portrait #3 Lichens. Rome, 2019

© Simona Ghizzoni - Image from the Rêve Géologique photography project

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"SEDAN CRATER" According to the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), a team of 34 scientists chaired by Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester, anthropocene began in the 1950s when humans began to irrevocably damage the planet. The "markers" of the beginning of a new geological era around the second half of the twentieth century are many but several scientists propose as a tangible and devastating sign of human activity on the environment the tests with hydrogen bombs of the '50s that have produced huge amounts of radioactive material. Sedan Crater is the result of the Sedan nuclear test and is located within the Nevada Test Site, 12 miles (19 km) southwest of Groom Lake, Nevada (Area 51). The nuclear device buried 635 ft under the ground displaced 11,000,000 tons of soil, leaving a crater 320 ft. deep and with a diameter of 1280 ft. It is the largest depression caused by a nuclear detonation. Over 10,000 people visit the crater every year. The test took place on July 6, 1962 and resulted in large amounts of radioactive fallout. The negative effects and health concerns apart, it remains a sight to behold. ( Source: Forbes, Online Nevada ) Rome, 2019.

© Simona Ghizzoni - Self-portrait #6 Reggio Emilia, 2009

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Self-portrait #6 Reggio Emilia, 2009