18-Jul-2019: DRDO Research Ship INS Sagardhwani Embarks on Sagar Maitri Mission-2

Oceanographic research vessel of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), INS Sagardhwani, embarked on a two-month long SAGAR MAITRI (SM) Mission-2 from South Jetty, Southern Naval Command (SNC) in Kochi.

SAGAR MAITRI is a unique initiative of DRDO which aligns with the broad objective of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s policy declaration “Safety And Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR)” to promote closer co-operation in socio-economic aspects as well as greater scientific interaction especially in ocean research among Indian Ocean Rim (IOR) countries. Under the aegis of PM’s policy, specific scientific component of DRDO is “MAITRI (Marine & Allied Interdisciplinary Training and Research Initiative)”.

INS Sagardhwani has been designed and developed by Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL), Kochi, a premier systems laboratory of DRDO. It conducts ocean research experiments in the Indian waters and spearheads NPOL’s at-sea data collection activities

SAGAR MAITRI Mission-2 commemorates the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of India’s lone research ship INS Kistna’s missions as part of the historic International Indian Ocean Expeditions(IIOE), which took place during 1962-65. As part of the mission, INS Sagardhwani will revisit the selected tracks of INS Kistna and provide NPOL scientists ample opportunities to collaborate and garner a close working relationship with the oceanographic counterparts of the IOR countries.

The prime objectives of the SAGAR MAITRI Mission are data collection from the entire North Indian Ocean, focusing on the Andaman Sea and adjoining seas and establishing long-term collaboration with eight IOR countries in the field of ocean research and development. The other IOR countries, include Oman, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Myanmar. The programme also aims at establishing long term scientific collaboration with these countries in the field of ‘Ocean Research & Development’ and data collection with a focus in the Andaman Sea.

23-May-2019: Scientists vote to recognise Anthropocene as Earth’s new epoch

Rising global temperatures, sea levels, depleting ozone layer and acidifying oceans are the result of human activity that has “distinctively” altered our planet. Now, a team of scientists have voted to declare “Anthropocene” as a new chapter in the Earth’s geological history.

Coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to denote the present geological time interval, Anthropocene has been used to describe humanity’s large impact on the environment, but the scientific community has in the past years intensely debated the idea to formally define it as a geological unit within the Geological Time Scale.

On May 21, 2019, 29 of the 34-member Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), voted in favour of starting the new epoch. The result builds on an informal vote taken at the 2016 International Geological Congress in Cape Town, and lays the groundwork for a formal proposal by 2021 to the International Commission on Stratigraphy.

The Anthropocene works as a geological unit of time, process and strata.  The move signals the end of the Holocene epoch, which began 12,000 to 11,600 years ago. But, to show a clear transition from the Holocene, the scientists plan to identify a definitive geologic marker or ‘golden spike’, and would be technically called a Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP). For this, the group will search for the marker from around the globe, including a cave in northern Italy, corals in the Great Barrier Reef and a lake in China.

To demonstrate a sedimentary record representing the start of the epoch, the team is likely to choose the radionuclides that came from atomic-bomb detonations from 1945 until the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

The International Union of Geological Sciences needs to ratify the AWG formal proposal, before the new epoch can formally be recognised.

Objecting against a single clear signal in the geological record, four members of the AWG voted against the idea of designating the Anthropocene as a new epoch.

“The stratigraphic evidence overwhelmingly indicates a time-transgressive Anthropocene with multiple beginnings rather than a single moment of origin,” says Matt Edgeworth, an archaeologist at the University of Leicester, UK, and a member of the AWG. Declaring a new epoch on the basis of the radionuclide signal alone, “impedes rather than facilitates scientific understanding of human involvement in Earth system change”.