Chemical fertilizers trigger the Holocene/Anthropocene boundary event: Nutrient-emitting farms and the remnants of West Denmark’s heaths

Abstract

In Western Denmark, commercial agriculture is displacing nutrient-poor heaths—a long-established anthropogenic shrubland. Chemical fertilizers are essential to this transformation. This paper explores the historical erasure of the heaths as a process of Holocene-to-Anthropocene state change propelled by the industrialization of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Working against the universality of Anthropocene discourses that presume a clean break between epochs, we argue we are living through the Holocene/Anthropocene boundary event. Conceptualizing our current moment as a boundary event, rather than a new epoch, requires scholars to adopt a messier ontology of planetary transition—one in which Holocene and Anthropocene ecologies coexist and interact in mosaic landscapes. To illustrate this, we unfold the history of West Denmark’s heaths, showing how this late-Holocene ecology has been unevenly erased by a chemically fertilized farmscape and plumes of atmospheric nitrogen. We conclude with a general framework for studying fertilizer-induced Holocene-to-Anthropocene state changes around the world.