Anthropological contributions to historical ecology: 50 questions, infinite prospects

TLDR

Historical ecology studies human–environment interactions over decadal to millennial scales and their impact on contemporary landscapes. This study aims to present 50 priority research questions for historical ecology, illustrating the field’s broad interdisciplinary scope. The authors used a consensus-driven, deliberative process involving crowdsourcing, literature reviews, and two in-person workshops with online facilitation to generate the 50 questions. The workshop produced six interrelated themes—climate change, multi-scalar/multi-disciplinary research, biodiversity, governance, methods, and communication—and distilled three key findings: historical ecology is an applied program, focuses on mitigating adverse ecological effects, and is increasingly transdisciplinary.

Abstract

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.