“Pressure and time.” A momentous quote in a compelling movie from a few decades ago interestingly pointed at some of the ingredients that contributed to shaping the Earth. The movie set off from how to seep through masses that appeared just too vast to be shakable or vulnerable – if not by deciphering their inner core. The planetary size and time frame of the Earth may have elicited a perception of a durable, unbuckling living environment – just because “pressure and time” to really affect it would have been out of human reach – supposedly. However, the Earth and environmental sciences have long striven to alert contemporary societies that this is just not the case, as humans have been well exerting scattered yet ubiquitous, planetary-scale pressure over a relatively brief time – with consequential, durable effects. Rising global population, long-term migration shifts of continental extents – due to risks, climate, resources – and unpredicted factors – from vulnerabilities to instabilities – pressure on the environment (natural and built) in unprecedented scale throughout human history. The Earth sciences were born out of deciphering ancient life forms teeming in an aboriginal environment, unfolding on a planet that could be explained only by looking at the Solar system – and at the inception of the Universe.Cross-disciplinary by nature, the Earth and environmental sciences offer crucial tools to gauge location, economic turnout, and societal costs of those very resources and fragilities. They also are pivotal co-actors of intellectual stewardship bridging the gulf with sister disciplines well beyond the remits of the physical sciences. From economics to philosophy, and from history to literature, multiple, diverse and concurring threats call for resourceful, multi-faceted mind- and skill-sets where no single hazard may be really treated apart – not on societal terms.Adapting a famous statement from the 20th century, evolution in a time of poly-crises, multiple hazards, and accrued vulnerabilities is not going to be a dinner party for contemporary societies – especially as they dwell a world perceived as increasingly richer in risks and poorer in resources, with a growing population and across instabilities. Human Earth sciences offer a bridge towards our collective future – as societies, continents, planets.Earth-prints @ INGV  

Probably the founding father of Geology, Sir James Hutton was raised as a doctor but his passions for the nature surrounding his farm led him to rocks, then specimens, then fossils. The result was what we might call a comparative physician – the first paleontologist, in fact. His upbringing in medicine had given him the classical knowledge of his time, from Latin to mathematics, and from biology to drawing. Not only did the lack of a specific scientific discipline bring Sir Hutton to devise a novel field of study of his own – it also molded strands of his formal learning into a synthesis of intellectual tools. These days, hyper specialization has brought upon novel discoveries of paramount importance and marvel, from graphene to vaccines. It also is a means of necessity in applying for academic positions and to publish in ever nascent journals. This architecture, however, reflects a system of parallel disciplinarity, with scientific fields somehow on their own course. On the other hand, complexities at stake require solutions that may well evade any given single field, at times astray from usual avenues. Such approach not only entails multi-disciplinarity (diverse teams – yesterday), but it also requires cross-disciplinarity (across specific disciplines – today) and, especially, trans-disciplinarity (beyond firm disciplines – today and tomorrow). For their very nature, geosciences are bound to glean lessons learned from the past to provide insight into the future. Geoscientists were once thought to study ancient rocks, fiddle with very slow-moving tectonic plates, and bantering about invisible earth’s features, too large, or too deep, or too far away to even imagine for us earthlings. But the geosciences are more than ever side by side with some of the most pressing issues surrounding contemporary societies – after having been at the heart of a couple of global energy revolutions. From a series of examples, this work thus tries to put into perspective: Hazards stemming from multiple, at times unpredictable sources; The precious role of geosciences to decipher them – and to forecast them; The complexity of natural hazards, the (need of) flexibility in human planning; Modern issues challenging societies and economies – today, tomorrow, and thereafter.