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.
Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada;Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden;Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada;Hakai Institute, Heriot Bay, Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada;Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden;Department of Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic;Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden;School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa;Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America;Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, United Kingdom;Department of History, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada;Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden;Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America;Department of Anthropology, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America;Department of Anthropology, University California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America;Polish-German Research Institute, Adams Mickiewicz University in Poznań, European University, Viadrina, Poland/Germany;Polish-German Research Institute, Adams Mickiewicz University in Poznań, European University, Viadrina, Poland/Germany;Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada;Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America;Independent Scholar, Seattle, Washington, United States of America;Department of Geography, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada;Atlohsa Native Family Healing Services, Canada, London, Ontario, Canada;Department of Anthropology, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada;Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden;Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America;Integrated History of Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) Initiative, Uppsala, Sweden
Recommended Citation:
Chelsey Geralda Armstrong,Anna C. Shoemaker,Iain McKechnie,et al. Anthropological contributions to historical ecology: 50 questions, infinite prospects[J]. PLOS ONE,2017-01-01,12(2)