Anthropological contributions to historical ecology: 50 questions, infinite prospects.

This paper presents the results of a consensus-driven process identifying 50 priority research questions for historical ecology obtained through crowdsourcing, literature reviews, and in-person workshopping. A deliberative approach was designed to maximize discussion and debate with defined outcomes. Two in-person workshops (in Sweden and Canada) over the course of two years and online discussions were peer facilitated to define specific key questions for historical ecology from anthropological and archaeological perspectives. The aim of this research is to showcase the variety of questions that reflect the broad scope for historical-ecological research trajectories across scientific disciplines. Historical ecology encompasses research concerned with decadal, centennial, and millennial human-environmental interactions, and the consequences that those relationships have in the formation of contemporary landscapes. Six interrelated themes arose from our consensus-building workshop model: (1) climate and environmental change and variability; (2) multi-scalar, multi-disciplinary; (3) biodiversity and community ecology; (4) resource and environmental management and governance; (5) methods and applications; and (6) communication and policy. The 50 questions represented by these themes highlight meaningful trends in historical ecology that distill the field down to three explicit findings. First, historical ecology is fundamentally an applied research program. Second, this program seeks to understand long-term human-environment interactions with a focus on avoiding, mitigating, and reversing adverse ecological effects. Third, historical ecology is part of convergent trends toward transdisciplinary research science, which erodes scientific boundaries between the cultural and natural

Historical Ecology: A Robust Bridge between Archaeology and Ecology

How can the disintegration of ecosystems, the foundation of life on Earth, be halted and these critical systems be rehabilitated? For scholars, the action list is long: increase the pool of expertise by engaging all relevant knowledge communities, collect rapidly disappearing data, analyze with both familiar and new methods, and apply the results of actionable science to policy and practice. This enormously complex and urgent activity requires an integrated research framework with the flexibility to accommodate the global diversity of places, peoples, and processes and to examine future options. Based on evidence of environmental change and human activity, the framework termed historical ecology assembles tools to construct an evidence-validated, open-ended narrative of the evolution and transformation of specific ecosystems and landscapes. Welcoming knowledge from scholars and communities of both heritage and practice, this comprehensive and systemic understanding offers insights, models, and ideas for the durable future of contemporary landscapes. The article evaluates how practitioners could adjust aspects of practice and improve access to policy makers, and the discussion applies to regions and localities everywhere

Biocultural Refugia : Combating the Erosion of Diversity in Landscapes of Food Production

There is urgent need to both reduce the rate of biodiversity loss caused by industrialized agriculture and feed morepeople. The aim of this paper is to highlight the role of places that harbor traditional ecological knowledge, artifacts, and methodswhen preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services in landscapes of food production. We use three examples in Europe ofbiocultural refugia, defined as the physical places that not only shelter farm biodiversity, but also carry knowledge and experiencesabout practical management of how to produce food while stewarding biodiversity and ecosystem services. Memory carriersinclude genotypes, landscape features, oral, and artistic traditions and self-organized systems of rules, and as such reflect adiverse portfolio of practices on how to deal with unpredictable change. We find that the rich biodiversity of many regionallydistinct cultural landscapes has been maintained through different smallholder practices developed in relation to localenvironmental fluctuations and carried within biocultural refugia for as long as millennia. Places that transmit traditionalecological knowledge and practices hold important lessons for policy makers since they may provide genetic and culturalreservoirs — refugia — for the wide array of species that have co-evolved with humans in Europe for more than 6000 thousandyrs. Biodiversity restoration projects in domesticated landscapes can employ the biophysical elements and cultural practicesembedded in biocultural refugia to create locally adapted small-scale mosaics of habitats that allow species to flourish and adaptto change. We conclude that such insights must be included in discussions of land-sparing vs. land-sharing when producingmore food while combating loss of biodiversity. We found the latter strategy rational in domesticated landscapes with a longhistory of agricultureIHOP

Studying long-term changes in cultural landscapes : outlines of a research framework and protocol

Applied historical landscape research often takes place under the umbrella of sustainability issues and sustainability research, but now includes both environmental sustainability and community resilience. This confronts the study of cultural landscapes with new issues and challenges such as how to utilize long-term and more recent perspectives, and to integrate economic, cultural and ecological drivers of landscape change. A key question is how to make landscape studies relevant for both contemporary landscape services and future landscape changes. We propose a new framework for study that combines insights from landscape biography, historical ecology and systems theory. It presents a protocol' for exploratory research with premises and operational principles, and argues for geodesign in connecting environmental issues, heritage practices and question-driven historical analysis. The framework and protocol are based on recent research within the European Community's Seventh Framework project Sustainable Futures for Europe's Heritage in Cultural Landscapes (HERCULES)

Toward an integrated history to guide the future

Many contemporary societal challenges manifest themselves in the domain of human–environment interactions. There is a growing recognition that responses to these challenges formulated within current disciplinary boundaries, in isolation from their wider contexts, cannot adequately address them. Here, we outline the need for an integrated, transdisciplinary synthesis that allows for a holistic approach, and, above all, a much longer time perspective. We outline both the need for and the fundamental characteristics of what we call “integrated history.” This approach promises to yield new understandings of the relationship between the past, present, and possible futures of our integrated human–environment system. We recommend a unique new focus of our historical efforts on the future, rather than the past, concentrated on learning about future possibilities from history. A growing worldwide community of transdisciplinary scholars is forming around building this Integrated History and future of People on Earth (IHOPE). Building integrated models of past human societies and their interactions with their environments yields new insights into those interactions and can help to create a more sustainable and desirable future. The activity has become a major focus within the global change community

A conceptual template for integrative human-environment research

Knowledge integration, the blending of concepts from two or more disciplines to create innovative new worldviews, is a key process in attempts to increase the sustainability of human activities on Earth. In this paper, we describe a 'conceptual template'that can be used to catalyse this process. The template comprises (a) a list of high-level concepts that capture the essential aspects of any significant human-environment problem, plus (b) broad lists of low-level basic concepts drawn from a range of disciplines. Our high-level concepts, which we call 'conceptual clusters', are labelled Dynamics & System, Organisation & Scale, Controlling Models, Management & Policy, Adaptation & Learning, and History. Many of the clustered, lower-level concepts are synonyms and thus provide possible connections between disciplines - for this reason we call them 'nexus concepts'. We suggest that a conceptual template like that presented here can provide strong support to the initial phases of integrative research programs