Marcia Bjornerud

Engineering for the Geologic Future

Engineering education has traditionally emphasized the “timeless” fields of physics and chemistry. In the Anthropocene, however, engineers need to adopt the “timeful” perspective of the geosciences—an understanding that we too live in geologic time. This includes a sense of the timescales of geologic processes, the evolutionary pathways that gave rise to the world of the present, and the potential for long-stable systems to undergo abrupt change. Engineering for the geologic future will require a new relationship with time and in particular the habit of seeing climate and landscapes as dynamic, responsive, and provisional.