Humanity is willingly endangering its future survival by continuing a host of dangerous activities such as climate change, land-system change and the loss of biosphere integrity.

These willful actions have all passed beyond levels that have kept humanity in a "safe operating space," said a study to be discussed next week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

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This study, "Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet", reveals human activity has crossed four of nine so-called "planetary boundaries".

Researchers concentrated on the nine separate planetary boundaries first identified by scientists in 2009. These planetary boundaries set theoretical limits on changes to the environment.

These include freshwater use, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol pollution and the introduction of exotic chemicals and modified organisms. Scientists also identified a "zone of uncertainty" beyond each planetary boundary. The zone of uncertainty is a buffer zone that allows governments to take action before it's too late to make a difference

But beyond this zone of uncertainty are unknown planetary conditions unfamiliar to humanity. Four of these boundaries have been crossed.

Scientists say, however, it isn't certain catastrophe will follow the crossing of these boundaries.

"The boundary is not like the edge of the cliff," said Ray Pierrehumbert, an expert on Earth systems at the University of Chicago. "They're a little bit more like danger warnings, like high-temperature gauges on your car."

Steve Carpenter, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology, said

policymakers should learn that "we're running up to and beyond the biophysical boundaries that enable human civilization as we know it to exist".

Carpenter noted the Earth had been in a "remarkably stable state" for the 11,700 years. The stable state ended some 100 years ago.

This stable state called the Holocene epoch saw milestones in human civilization such as the development of agriculture and the Industrial Revolution. But over the last 100 years, some of the parameters that made the Holocene good for civilization changed.

The study looked at two elements essential to life as we know it: phosphorus and nitrogen. Both are widely as fertilizers but the advent of industrial agriculture led to a massive rise in the amount of the chemicals in our ecosystems.

Carpenter said humans have vastly changed nitrogen and phosphorus cycles more than any other element. The use of both elements has increased by some 200 percent to 300 percent, while the use of carbon rose from 10 percent to 20 percent. The huge reliance on phosphorus and nitrogen has been particularly harmful to water quality.

Tagshumans, human civilization, climate hange, Holocene, Holocene epoch