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The article examines the development of epistemology, specifically its political dimensions, and how it has evolved to address the challenges presented by the Anthropocene. This marks a significant shift in the discipline's focus towards understanding the impact of human activity on Earth. This text explores the political influences on scientific inquiry and knowledge production throughout history, emphasising the importance of historical context in shaping epistemological frameworks. It recognises the interconnection between knowledge, power, and environmental responsibility, and calls for an epistemology that can address the complexities of the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex relationship between "man" and "environment" needs to be addressed in a historical and multidisciplinary perspective in order to provide tools to suggest answers and solutions to the important questions that the current ecological crisis raises. In particular, recognizing a historical problem in today's ecological crisis means recontextualizing some historiographical categories with which contemporary history is read, studied and interpreted, such as those of: industrialization, urbanization, progress, well-being, capitalism, consumerism, liberalism and globalization . It is necessary to evaluate – with reference to different geographical scales and temporal durations – the environmental consequences, the health effects and the conflicts of which they may be or have been the cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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"Environmental Sound and Urban Noise" looks at the impact of sound in the experience of Ben Rubin and Jer Thorp's Herald/Harbinger. This work by two New York-based artists is installed in the centre of the Calgary city downtown to invoke, in Thorp's words, "a long-distance conversation between a glacier and a city." Real-time data is collected from geophones embedded into the Bow Glacier, some 220 km west of Calgary. The data is then translated into aural form (by way of an algorithm devised by Rubin and Thorp) and relayed via satellite, with a mere 5-minute delay, to a sixteen-channel speaker installation located on the forecourt of the city's tallest building, Brookfield Place. The installation at once provides a place of repose and an injunction to listen. The glacier's soundtrack heralds the past and the present, the Pleistocene and the Anthropocene eras, Indigenous and settler populations, natural and built environments. At the same time, the installation is a harbinger, asking its audiences to listen to where our climate crisis seems destined to go. The "conversation" hailed by Herald/Harbinger is all the more poignant and most certainly urgent in a city whose economic prosperity remains overdetermined by the fossil fuel industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anthropocene is an era in which humans have become the primary driver of planetary systems, not least the global hydrological cycle. This is posing significant challenges for managing the globe's water resources, and is catalyzing a shift in the focus of water law, governance and policy research. One important feature of this shift is a burgeoning focus on groundwater resources and their exploitation, particularly in developing countries. As surface water succumbs to climate pressures, groundwater use has increased rapidly as a source of food production and economic development. A fundamental question for modern water law and governance research is: what are the key challenges and opportunities for effective design and implementation of groundwater law to achieve sustainable and inclusive development. This article provides insights into this question through an empirical examination of Costa Rica. Drawing on an empirical analysis of 40 semi-structured interviews with public and private stakeholders in Costa Rica, the findings identify the following challenges and opportunities for groundwater governance: (i) recognition of water as a public good and clear ownership; (ii) insufficient definition of groundwater and embedding within the concepts of sustainable and inclusive development and participation; (iii) inadequate organization and toolbox, including implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists say the bottom layer of sediment at Crawford Lake reveals human-made impacts on the planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]