Historical ecology

Historical ecology studies the interactions between people and their environment over the long term.

Historical ecology is a research program that focuses on the interactions between humans and their environment over long-term periods of time, typically over the course of centuries.[1] In order to carry out this work, historical ecologists synthesize long-series data collected by practitioners in diverse fields.[2] Rather than concentrating on one specific event, historical ecology aims to study and understand this interaction across both time and space in order to gain a full understanding of its cumulative effects. Through this interplay, humans both adapt to and shape the environment, continuously contributing to landscape transformation. Historical ecologists recognize that humans have had world-wide influences, impact landscape in dissimilar ways which increase or decrease species diversity, and that a holistic perspective is critical to be able to understand that system.[3]

Piecing together landscapes requires a sometimes difficult union between natural and social sciences, close attention to geographic and temporal scales, a knowledge of the range of human ecological complexity, and the presentation of findings in a way that is useful to researchers in many fields.[4] Those tasks require theory and methods drawn from geography, biology, ecology, history, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Common methods include historical research, climatological reconstructions, plant and animal surveys, archaeological excavations, ethnographic interviews, and landscape reconstructions.[2]

  1. ^ Crumley, C. L. (1987). Historical ecology. In Regional dynamics: Burgundian landscapes in historical perspective, eds. C. L. Crumley, W. H. Marquardt, pp. 237-264. New York:Academic Press.
  2. ^ a b Scholl, Michael D., D. Seth Murray and Carole L. Crumley 2010 Comparing trajectories of climate, class and production: an historical ecology of American yeoman. In Environmental Social Sciences: Methods and Research Design. pp. 322-348. Ismael Vaccaro, Eric Alden Smith, and Shankar Aswani, editors, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
  3. ^ Balée, W. (1998). "Historical ecology: Premises and postulates". In W. Balée (Ed.), Advances in Historical Ecology, (pp 13-29). Columbia University Press, New York. ISBN 0-231-10633-5
  4. ^ Crumley, Carole L. 1994. Historical Ecology:a Multidimensional Ecological Orientation. In Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes, ed. C.L. Crumley, pp. 1-16. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.