Microbes self-organize, as discussed earlier, happens within a short amount of time. While the process of making elbow room is a fast process, pedogenesis, however, happens over a long period of time—one inch of soil takes 500 to 1,000 years to form (Lindbo 42). Another example microbes working on a long time scale is the Great Oxygenation Event, which took around one to two billions years to unfold. When assessing the degree of anthropogenic action on Earth’s systems, we must also consider the temporal scale in terms of