history of ecology research paper

The practice of historical ecology: What, when, where, how and what for

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• Published: 05 March 2024
• Volume 53 , pages 664–677, ( 2024 )

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• Aarón Moisés Santana-Cordero   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2210-1980 1 , 2   na1 ,
• Péter Szabó 3 , 4   na1 ,
• Matthias Bürgi 5 , 6 &
• Chelsey Geralda Armstrong 7 , 8  

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In recent decades, there has been a growing number of studies exploring the historical dimensions of the interconnectedness of human societies and the environment. A core approach in this field is historical ecology. We analyzed 544 historical-ecological papers to assess patterns and trends in the field. We found a high degree of interdisciplinarity with a focus on local case studies, of periods of fewer than 500 years, analyzing archival sources through quantitative approaches. The proportion of papers containing management recommendations has increased over time. To make historical ecology globally relevant, more effort should be made to utilize studies across languages, borders and worldviews. We call for high standards regarding the use of social scientific methodologies. Lastly, we argue that fostering longer-term studies and assessing the real-life impact of policy recommendations emerging from historical ecology can help the discipline better contribute solutions to the challenges facing humanity in an uncertain future.

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Introduction

Even though the study of human societies and environmental phenomena have been traditionally separated in scholarly contexts, research that more fully considers people and ecosystems as complex and closely interlinked entities has been growing in recent decades. One such integrative approach is historical ecology, which includes sources and methods derived from history, biology, ecology, geography, and archaeology/anthropology with special focus on environmental conservation, restoration and management (Balée 2006 ; Higgs et al. 2014 ; Szabó 2015 ). Despite the increasing awareness and appreciation for the field, a commonly shared and widely accepted notion of what historical ecology encompasses is lacking. Szabó ( 2015 ) argued that historical ecology does not have a unified methodology, a phenomenon generally acknowledged among practitioners of the field. For example, Rick and Lockwood ( 2013 ) called for standardized methodologies in historical ecology, Armstrong et al. ( 2017 ) advocated for more consilience with anthropological/archaeological methods, Beller et al. ( 2017 ) invited researchers to work towards core principles of historical ecology, and Bürgi et al. ( 2017 ) suggested forming interdisciplinary teams to optimize research agendas. Whereas this diversity in approaches might cause occasional confusion and misunderstanding, it can also be seen as an advantage, reflecting how widely the call to address the historical dimension of ecosystems and landscapes has been taken up (Crumley 1994 ; Balée 2006 ; Tappeiner et al. 2021 ). These disparate approaches to historical ecology are further exemplified by the pluridisciplinary discourses on how to bridge the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities (Crumley 1994 , 2017 ; Szabó and Hédl 2011 ) or why history matters in ecology (Szabó 2010 ) and in landscape ecology (Rhemtulla and Mladenoff 2007 ).

The multiplicity of approaches used to study the historical dimensions of societies and their lived landscapes makes historical ecology a powerhouse for interdisciplinarity. Consequently, one of the core features of historical-ecological studies is that they are based on combining qualitative and quantitative sources as well as methods from the humanities and the social and natural sciences (Bürgi and Gimmi 2007 ; Beller et al. 2017 ). Historical-ecological research therefore fosters the application of mixed method approaches. This is a strength and a challenge at the same time. Undoubtedly, only inter- and multidisciplinary approaches will enable researchers to address the complexity of development pathways of cultural landscapes or social-ecological systems, but, at the same time, this blurs the boundaries of what kind of studies should be included in the field and maintains internal division. Thus, further investigations into the variability of theoretical and methodological approaches are necessary for the advancement of historical ecology, where a concise scrutiny of methodological approaches and data sources is lacking. Previous studies have focused on the use of historical sources (Rymer 1979 ; Forman and Russell 1983 , Santana-Cordero et al. 2014 ), the characteristics of such sources (Edmonds 2001 ; Vellend et al. 2013 ; Pooley 2018 ) and qualitative methods (Santana-Cordero and Szabó 2019 ). However, beyond generalities, there is no comprehensive synthesis on the practice of historical ecology—what kind of sources and methods are actually used and which sites, bioregions, and ecosystems have garnered more attention than others.

There is general consensus that historical ecology can have a strong applied aspect (Swetnam et al. 1999 ). With the deepening of the environmental crisis in the past decades, calls to utilize this potential have become more numerous (Higgs et al. 2014 ; Beller et al. 2020 ). However, it is not known how many historical-ecological works have in fact engaged with the potential application of their results in environmental conservation/restoration (but see Beller et al. 2020 ), and whether the proportion of such works in the overall production of historical-ecological research has increased with growing environmental concerns. A synthesis of the above issues would be useful in advancing historical ecology as an independent discipline but also in identifying research gaps and promising avenues for future research.

To assess the global variability and applicability of methodological approaches in historical ecology, to explore underlying features and structures that drive this variability, and to analyse how much historical-ecological work is geared towards applying the results in environmental conservation/restoration, we conducted a review of peer-reviewed papers in the field. Specifically, this research explores the many integrations of historical and ecological sources and methods published between 1981 (date of the first indexed publication on historical ecology in the SCOPUS database) and 2019. We provide a general review of historical-ecological research, including what, where, when, how and what for it has been practiced. We ask (i) where and what types of historical-ecological studies have been conducted and published, (ii) what sources and methods have been used, and (iii) whether papers have contained management recommendations. Based on these queries, we discuss the spatial, temporal, methodological and application strengths and weaknesses of the field and identify areas requiring further attention from the historical ecology community—namely, where more rigorous and incisive research is required in an increasingly uncertain environmental and climate future.

Scientific literature on historical ecology has grown rapidly in recent years. A simple Google Scholar search using “historical ecology” for the 5 years between 2015 and 2019 returns as many as 7200 entries. To this number one could add many more works that would qualify as historical ecology but were defined by their authors as, for example, forest history or palaeoecology. While reviews based on automated data extraction can cope with any number of papers (Marshall and Wallace 2019 ), we had to conduct a typical literature review (sensu Grant and Booth 2009 ), which involves manual extraction of information from each paper. We therefore had to reduce the number of papers analyzed to a manageable size while trying to keep the representativeness of the dataset. To achieve this, we gathered and analyzed papers where authors described their research using the term historical ecology. Initial searches were sourced from the SCOPUS database (Elsevier), using the term “historical ecology” as author keyword (AUTHKEY: keywords established by the authors in their publications). The query covered the period between 1981 and 2019 and initially resulted in 593 documents. Contributions with the status “in press” were excluded. Results showed that the term “historical ecology” is also used in the field of phylogeny/speciation, however, it has a fundamentally different meaning in this context (compared with more mainstream approaches, see Szabó 2015 ). Consequently, such papers were removed from the dataset resulting in a total of 544 papers (for a complete list of papers, see Supplementary material ). Almost all research papers were written in English, with a few exceptions in French, German, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. For all 544 documents included in this study, we evaluated document type, study area, study period, sources, methods/techniques, other observations, and management recommendations, which were then coded, classified and analysed. As practitioners of historical ecology typically use a multitude of methods and data sources, we further evaluated how authors systematically combined sources and methods, which we expected to differ along disciplinary approaches and regional expertise. Because we were interested in the application aspect of particular research results, we have excluded editorials and theoretical-methodological papers from the analysis of management recommendations. The variables and categories analyzed are summarized in Table  1 .

Given the recent proliferation of historical-ecological research, we acknowledge that the 2019 cutoff for our data has excluded important research published since then (e.g. Stuessy 2020 ; Thurstan 2022 ; Armstrong et al. 2022 ; Decocq 2022 ; Rivera-Collazo 2022 ; Whitaker et al. 2023 ; Wood et al. 2023 ). Given the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, this research, conducted before its onset, omits newer works. However, a scan of SCOPUS literature published between 2020 and April 2023 indicates that the trends outlined below are consistent with recent published studies. Furthermore, we recognize that our queries do not include historical-ecological grey literature, published outside of academic contexts (e.g., Baumgarten et al. 2018 ), and many other significant works that were not defined as historical ecology by their author keywords. Our results are ultimately valid for self-identifying historical-ecological research between 1981 and 2019; we nonetheless believe that these 544 papers constitute a sample that sufficiently represents the whole discipline and that adding more works is unlikely to change the overall results. In addition, in the Discussion section we include important works beyond our database to expand the relevance of our conclusions.

The temporal distribution of the 544 documents showed a continuous increase from the year 1999 to 2019, with very few studies published prior to 1998, illustrating the scientific community’s steadily growing interest in historical ecology (Fig.  1 ). Results indicate that the journals in which historical-ecological research was published reflected, as expected, a diversity of disciplinary contexts. Studies included in our survey appeared in an impressively diverse list of outlets, totaling 152 different peer-reviewed journals. The most common were Landscape Ecology (19 papers), the Journal of Biogeography (18 papers), and Human Ecology (16 papers). Journals hosting the highest number of historical-ecological papers were decidedly ecologically oriented (Fig.  1 ). The majority of research papers evaluated (411, i.e., 76%) were case studies, whereas theoretical-methodological papers (12%), and review papers (10%) accounted for fewer contributions, but were still well-represented. The majority of case studies (63%) addressed single regions, but comparative studies including two or more regions (13%) were also relatively frequent (Fig.  1 ).

A Temporal distribution of the papers reviewed in this study. B Journals in which at least nine papers on historical ecology appeared in 1981–2019. C Documents in our review coded according to type

Study area and period

Regarding the geographical distribution of the research papers analyzed, there was a dominance of studies focusing in the United States and Europe (Fig.  2 ). When broken down by country, settler colonial nations like Canada (31 research papers) and Australia (25 research papers) were well-represented alongside the United States (113 research papers). Those studies conducted in Europe (126 research papers) were spread out over many smaller countries.

Location of study areas addressed in the case studies included in this review

Surprisingly, only 36% of the papers (148 of 544) included information regarding the exact size of the study area. Of these, 26 papers reported on relatively small-scale study areas (</= 500 ha), and 122 papers had study areas of > 500 ha (Fig.  3 ). Information on the temporal range of historical-ecological papers was similarly patchy. Of the 544 papers, only 204 papers (38%) specified the length of study period they focused on. Results revealed a focus on periods of 101 to 500 years before present (52.5%), followed by shorter study periods (less than 100 years). 16% of all studies included long-term investigations, spanning more than 1000 years (Fig.  3 ). We detected no clear trends in study area or period over the four decades covered by the papers we analyzed.

A Size of the study area covered in the studies reviewed. B Length of study period in the studies reviewed

Sources and methods

Results confirmed the expected depth and breadth of sources and methods applied in historical ecology. The overwhelming majority of studies (79.2%) used several types of historical, ecological and archaeological/anthropological sources—on average 2.31 source types per document. 190 studies reported the use of historical written documents as one of the source types, followed by secondary literature (167 studies) and historical maps (97 studies) (Fig.  4 ). The most prevalent source combinations included historical written documents with secondary literature and historical maps (Fig.  4 ).

A Top-10 sources used in the studies reviewed. B Top-10 combinations of sources

Regarding the methods applied in each study (1.41 methods per study), there was a widespread application of statistical methods. Just under half (199 of 480 research papers) of the papers utilized quantitative analyses (e.g., statistics or models) (Fig.  5 ). Laboratory analyses (19.79%) and qualitative analysis/description (15%) were also common, representing very different strands of scientific traditions and therefore illustrating the methodological diversity within the field. The widespread use of statistical analyses and modelling was also reflected in the list of the most prevalent combinations of methodologies (Fig.  5 ).

A Methods used in the studies reviewed. B Top-10 combinations of methods

Management recommendations

Leaving aside papers that did not mention the application of their results as well as those papers that included only a brief remark that the results could be useful, the number of papers that meaningfully engaged with the applied aspect of their data was 178 (37.8%). The number of such papers per year steadily increased, and, allowing for some fluctuations, so did their proportion in the overall production of historical-ecological works, hovering around 40% after 2012 with maximum values of over 60% (Fig.  6 ).

Number and percentage of papers with management recommendations per year with a linear trendline. Only years with more than two papers (after 1997) are shown

The widespread development of historical-ecological research in recent decades is an exciting but still poorly understood trend in contemporary scholarship. Our evaluation here confirmed that self-identifying historical ecologists use a wide variety of sources and methods and increasingly engage in the applied aspects of their research. This result is in line with our experience of an observable and palpable desire for researchers, students, and policy makers to make greater use of deep-time social and natural scientific datasets. In the following, we discuss the main research gaps and challenges for the future of historical ecology that emerge from our analysis of 544 scientific studies.

Expanding geographical and linguistic reach

The historical-ecological research we analyzed focuses mainly on Europe and the USA. However, if historical ecology is to achieve global relevance and open up beyond the dominant Anglo-European perspective (cf. Kienast et al. 2021 ), efforts should be made to include more study regions and also to produce more cohesive global overviews. Related disciplines have made significant advances in this respect, which can serve as inspiration for historical ecology. For example, environmental archaeologists have long published cross-referential data and methods spanning multiple spatial and temporal scales (Dincauze 2000 ). Environmental history has recently become a global field with significant research activities in Asia, Latin America, Africa and even the polar regions (McNeill 2010 ; Howkins 2015 ). Furthermore, global environmental history (i.e., the environmental history of the entire Earth system) is also flourishing (McNeill and Mauldin 2015 ). One way to achieve better regional connectivity is with a more concerted application and analyses of comparative datasets and studies. A good example of such a study is Whitlock et al ( 2018 ), where the authors compared the land-use history at eight sites across four continents, along a gradient of landscape conditions from nearly pristine to highly altered, informing forest conservation strategies. However, our results show that comparative studies comprise only a small fraction of historical-ecological investigations. Sources used in historical ecology are rarely easily compatible through different temporal and spatial scales, especially among anthropologists/archaeologists where the focus for some researchers is on the interpretation of culture and environment, rather than on highly scalable syntheses like human adaptations or systems approaches (Armstrong et al. 2017 ). Nonetheless, comparative studies in environmental history (Hall 2005 ; Henderson et al. 2005 ) demonstrate that highly localized historical sources do not constitute an insurmountable obstacle to comparative research. It may well be that historical ecology, like environmental history, will move towards more comparative approaches, including global syntheses and narratives, as it matures over time. Recent years have indicated such a trend with increasing numbers of comparative studies published since 2011, culminating with 13 such works in 2019.

We acknowledge that our monolingual SCOPUS search likely produced specific and interrelated biases in the results (cf. Nuñez and Amano 2021 ). Peer-reviewed papers in English-language journals currently dominate scientific communication. Because of language and socioeconomic barriers (Clavero 2010 ), most scientific research is produced in the global north. For example, analyzing papers submitted to and published in the Journal of Applied Ecology in 2015–2017, Nuñez et al. ( 2019 ) arrived at a geographical pattern highly similar to our results. However, when efforts are made to avoid monolingual products and searches go beyond peer-reviewed journals, different patterns can emerge. For example, using Google Scholar, Amano et al. ( 2016 ) found that 35.6% of over 70 000 scientific documents on biodiversity conservation published in 2014 were written in languages other than English. A specificity of historical-ecological research is that authors belonging to the anthropological branch of historical ecology (Balée 2006 ; Armstrong et al. 2017 ) often publish their results (whether in English or not) in books, which, with the exception of book chapters that matched our keywords, were not included in our database (e.g., Odonne and Molino 2020 ; Whitaker et al. 2023 ). Exacerbating the geographical bias in our study, many of these same anthropological or non-English works tend to have broader regional foci, for example, representing research in Central America, South America, and Africa (Fairhead and Leach 1996 ; Ross and Rangel 2011 ; Rostain 2012 ; see also the handbook Isendahl and Stump 2019) .

While we cannot possibly do justice to non-English historical-ecological literature in this paper, it is worth pointing out the rich legacy and the geographical diversity of studies in at least some major languages. French language contributions to historical ecology have been longstanding, with some researchers highlighting the role of people in shaping the structure of ecosystems in Central Africa (Letouzey 1968 ) or dealing explicitly with the stochastic character of ecosystems and calling for more concerted interdisciplinary research that would combine history and ecology (Drouin 1994 ). Almost 50 years ago, Barrau ( 1977 ) called for broader epistemological tinkering that would see the development of multi-disciplinary research concerning human–environment interactions through time. French language contributions to the field of historical ecology have done just that—there is global coverage of such research in Amazonia (Odonne and Molino 2018 ), Central Africa (Bogaert et al. 2020 ), Canada (Danneyrolles et al. 2020 ) and beyond. Spanish-language contributions include theoretical works (Garrido-Pérez et al. 2021 ) and research on diverse topics, such as transhumance pastoralism in Spain (López Sáez et al. 2009 ). As expected, many studies cover areas outside Europe and North-America. For example, López and Ospina ( 2008 ) edited a collection of 21 essays devoted to the historical ecology of South-America, especially Columbia. Other works focused on the intersection of biology, ecology, and Indigenous land-use across the Amazon (Cangussu et al. 2021 ) or historical water management in Mexico (Jaramillo Monroy et al. 2021 ). Tiapa ( 2010 ) studied the impacts of European agriculture and cattle grazing in the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries in the Orinoco delta in Venezuela, and Gassón and Heinen ( 2012 ) described ecological degradation and its effect on the distribution of local populations in the past century in the same area. Non-English contributions to the field of historical ecology are rich and diverse—biologists, historians, ecologists, and anthropologists should continue to make more effort to cross-reference and better utilize studies across languages, borders and worldviews.

Maintaining methodological rigour

Our data confirm that historical ecology is fundamentally an interdisciplinary field with almost all studies using methodological approaches spanning the life sciences, social sciences, and humanities. This lateral integration of source data and methods, despite their possibly disparate audiences and backgrounds, greatly benefits our collective desire to better understand human–environment interactions through time (Rick and Lockwood 2013 ; Santana-Cordero et al. 2014 ). However, to ensure the rigorous use of data, source diversity should continue to develop in a framework where methodological diversity is also highly scrutinized (Coughlan and Nelson 2019 ; Monsarrat et al. 2019 ). Quantitative analyses (e.g., use of statistical and modelling approaches) dominated the combinations of methods in our review, which signals that historical ecology—at least as understood in the papers we analyzed—is firmly embedded in natural scientific frameworks with a critical scrutiny of how the data are gathered and inferences are made. At the same time, social scientific (including historical) methodologies, while a significant player in the papers reviewed, are not always scrutinized to the same extent. For historical ecology to reach its full potential as a truly integrative discipline, these disparities need to be addressed. Here we showcase a few examples of how researchers from the natural sciences can uphold the same high standards they adhere to in the application of social scientific data and inferences.

The basic principle historians apply to their sources is a formal critical approach to the information contained in them. This “source criticism” has many meanings (Dobson and Ziemann 2009 ), but in essence it orders that information from historical sources must not be simply accepted at face value and must examined with reference to how it was produced (e.g., social, political, gendered, and racial contexts). In historical ecology, the use of historical sources without the application of a critical approach may lead to biased or false conclusions. For example, using a geographical lexicon, Nores and López-Bao ( 2022 ) estimated that the current distribution of the Iberian wolf ( Canis lupus signatus ) still covers 70% of its 19th-century distribution. In contrast, Clavero et al. ( 2022 ) used the same dataset but applied predictive modelling to compensate for gaps and biases in the data and arrived at a radically different result (30% of 19th-century distribution still intact). Corti and Díaz ( 2022 ) criticized Flueck et al. ( 2022 ) for uncritically using historical sources thereby arriving at faulty conclusions regarding the former distribution, abundance, and habitat preferences of the huemul deer ( Hippocamelus bisulcus ) in Chile and Argentina. Such differences can have crucial implications for species protection and restoration. In extreme cases, a lack of understanding of history as an inveterate and iterative methodology has also led to some researchers dismissing it altogether. Clavero and Centeno-Cuadros ( 2016 ) criticized Matallanas et al. ( 2016 ) for asserting that historical documents are unreliable and therefore inferior to genetic information concerning the history of the crayfish Austropotamobius italicus in Spain.

Some authors have already addressed the issue of critically assessing historical sources in ecological and biological studies (e.g., Bürgi et al. 2010 ), but, in general, there seems to be little awareness of this issue. This may stem from the fact that many of the authors contributing to historical ecology are natural scientists with little formal training in historical methods. Pooley ( 2018 ) advised historical ecologists “not to be naive about the challenges of historical data” and provided practical guidelines as to how to proceed carefully and critically with their application. Similar works have been published by Rymer ( 1979 ) and Forman and Russell ( 1983 ). We encourage our colleagues from the life sciences to engage with the issues raised here. At the same time, we recognize that specialization is increasing in all disciplines, and “scientists should not be expected to become historians” (Pooley 2013 ). A stronger and more lateral integration of interdisciplinary teams, with emphasis on the inclusion of social scientists (historians, anthropologists) will undoubtedly lead to more rigorous, diverse, and interesting research processes and outcomes (Szabó and Hédl 2013 ; Armstrong et al. 2017 ).

Integrating knowledge at different spatial and temporal scales

There was a relative lack of explicit information regarding the spatial and temporal scales in the papers we analyzed—only 148 and 204 studies, respectively, included explicit information on the time and region of study. We see this as a deficiency of historical ecology and encourage authors to be more explicit in defining their study areas and periods. No significant trends for a typical spatial scale of investigation emerged, despite some practitioners advocating for a landscape-scale approach (Crumley 2017 ). Papers reviewed in this study indicated that the spatial scale of inquiry was evenly distributed, ranging from small scale (< 100 ha) case studies to larger (> 1 000 000 ha) syntheses. As to the temporal range of studies, we observed that study periods of up to a few centuries were the most common. Given that written documents dominated among the sources used in the papers, we conclude that the preference for relatively short time-frames (a few centuries) was probably determined by the fact that written documents are usually not available for longer periods.

Of the papers reviewed, anthropological and archaeological studies typically favoured longer temporal ranges (centennial and millennial scales). However, source materials are typically more scant and less reliable the further we go back in time, and the resolution of data risks being more skewed when analyses cover broad (millennial) time scales. We argue that despite these limitations, the appropriate temporal scale for any phenomenon is determined by that phenomenon itself. As Lane ( 2019 ) noted, “the rates at which different processes operate, and hence the temporal span required for their effective analysis, vary.” The purpose of the analysis also matters. For example, to analyze changes in forest vegetation following the cessation of traditional management in the twentieth century, a decadal scale is suitable (Müllerová et al. 2015 ; Armstrong et al. 2022 ). However, if the aim of the analysis is to understand the evolution and functioning of the same forest as a socio-ecological system (for example to mitigate the negative effects of management cessation), centennial or rather millennial scale inquiry may be better suited (Fitzpatrick and Keegan 2007 ). Furthermore, in many parts of the world, especially in settler colonial nations, historical written sources are relatively scant, or are produced through problematic colonial gazes (e.g. Geniusz 2022 ). In such cases, ecological studies which focus on cultural drivers as well as biophysical processes over longer time periods represent an important pathway for critically interpreting environmental change and long-term human management legacies, often applied to mitigating climate change impacts and managing natural resources (Hoffman et al. 2021 ). Finally, centennial and millennial scale research provides for more general patterns to be uncovered, patterns that can be flagged, replicated, or rejected across other geographic spheres and cultures (Brondízio et al. 2021 ). This would also foster more effective comparative research, which, as pointed out above, is one of the areas with the greatest potential for future historical-ecological studies.

Emphasizing the need for synergetic research across disciplines is of course not new. Indeed, there have been repeated calls to integrate paleobiology and archaeology into historical ecology (e.g., Rick and Lockwood 2013 ), and to “develop a unified framework for understanding temporal change in complex social-environmental systems” (Beller et al. 2017 ). There are a number of initiatives that tackle such issues. For example, the Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) network brings together researchers to study past human impacts on the Earth system. The Oceans Past Initiative is a global research network for historical research investigating humankind’s interaction with global marine life over millennia. Although clearly not all research can cover extensive spatial and temporal scales, we see such integrative frameworks as the most exciting opportunity to further develop historical-ecological research.

Applying results in environmental conservation/restoration

Management and policy recommendations have been perceived as an integral part of historical ecology since the beginnings of the discipline in 1960s Europe (Szabó 2015 ). Later examples followed, with more targeted efforts to understand the role of historical ecology in contemporary conservation and restoration. For example, Swetnam et al. ( 1999 ) described the advantages and constraints of applying historical-ecological knowledge in landscape management and restoration; and Egan and Howell ( 2001 ) subtitled their Historical Ecology Handbook : A Restorationist’s guide to reference ecosystems. To find out what policy recommendations have emerged from historical-ecological research, Beller et al. ( 2020 ) analysed 217 papers published between 1994 and 2017. According to their results, the most prevalent recommendations concerned the conservation/restoration of native species and ecosystems, active management practices, and increasing connectivity. Although they did not explicitly address the temporal distribution of the papers analysed, there was an increasing trend with many papers, especially after 2012, purported to contribute to these applied aims. Our dataset showed a similar overall picture, with a marked increase in the percentage of papers containing applied recommendations. This clearly signals the extent to which historical ecologists have become concerned with the potential impact of their research in real-life situations. Pertinent to this trend are growing requirements among funding agencies that researchers make explicit the applicability of their research programme. For example, large federal agencies in North America require explicit knowledge mobilization strategies for all research projects.

Perhaps as a reaction to the increase in the applied research scope of historical-ecological practitioners, Stockdale et al. ( 2019a ) emphasized that focusing on the core goals of historical ecology still has intrinsic value and that “ecological restoration does not need to be the end goal to make historical analyses worthwhile”. At the other end of the spectrum, Pape ( 2022 ) argued that restoration ecology should look towards the future instead of the past and focus on environmental justice instead of reference conditions. While we agree that environmental justice needs to be a part of all restoration and management projects, we are also convinced that historical ecology can do much more than establishing reference conditions, and, especially its anthropological branch, is very well placed to tackle exactly such issues (cf. Armstrong and Veteto 2015 ).

As our results show, management and policy recommendations are now a relatively integral part of standard historical-ecological practice and we see the application of these recommendations as the most important challenge for the future. First, to assess whether historical ecology has any real-life impact (whether recommendations are in fact implemented), more knowledge-mobilization is likely needed. A good example of this is the long-term monitoring of the reintroduction of traditional management into European forests, where the results for biodiversity conservation are positive and in line with expectations, but important differences between management types as well as the effects of recent global change need to be factored in (e.g. Vild et al. 2013 ). Second, innovative research directions should focus on testing the future effect-scenarios from management strategies based on historical knowledge. For example, Stockdale et al. ( 2019b ) modelled whether restoring historical vegetation conditions would change the fire dynamics in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada.

Conclusions

This paper provides an assessment of the sources and methods used, and types of studies practiced in historical ecology as well as of the integration of management recommendations into the discipline. We analyzed papers that identified their research as historical ecology. While this introduced a level of objectivity into our selection and kept the database at a feasible size, it excluded non-self-identifying historical ecology, and we note that the results should be interpreted against this background. Our results confirm previous assumptions about the methodological diversity of historical ecology and highlight areas where advances could be made. Although historical written documents dominated the sources used in our review, the methods were predominantly quantitative. This may illustrate why there continues to be apprehension (and misuse) of historical and ethnographic records among practitioners in biology, ecology, and other life science disciplines. Applying statistical analyses and modelling with historical sources that have not been critically sourced and analyzed is a challenge that must be overcome. We encourage ecologists and biologists to engage with these issues and we also encourage interdisciplinary cooperation through the “great divide” between the natural and social sciences.

Historical ecology is dominated by European and North American scholars, and our results underline the biases inherent in monolingual searches of commercial abstract and citation databases, such as SCOPUS—it is clear that including non-English language studies, grey literature, and books would reduce the geographical imbalances apparent in our results. However, these data also highlight the potential in (and need for) more diverse regional foci and more inclusive recognition of researchers outside English-speaking contexts. In doing so, more comparative and critical approaches will emerge, increasing the global reach of this growing field.

Our data showed a general lack of explicit and comprehensive information or critical scrutiny of the spatial and temporal scales within which research is conducted. More concerted and reflective efforts should be made to grapple with and explore how we apply and define scalar boundaries in our works. Historical-ecological studies span many spatial and temporal scales, and we found a tendency for existing research to cluster around periods of < 500 years. Although this pattern is likely determined by the availability of historical written documents, we argue that fostering longer-term studies covering millennial scales can help historical ecology realize its full potential.

Lastly, according to our results, management and policy recommendations are now a relatively standard part of historical ecology. We suggest that as the next step for increasing real-world impacts and knowledge mobilization, practitioners ought to examine whether and to what extent their research recommendations have been followed or implemented. At the same time, researchers should make concerted efforts to predict the effects of management changes based on recommendations by historical ecologists. This way, the discipline can better contribute solutions to the existential challenges facing humanity in an uncertain future.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported as a long-term research development Project no. RVO 67985939.

Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature.

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A. M. Santana-Cordero and P. Szabó have contributed equally to this paper.

Authors and Affiliations

Departamento de Geografía, Universidad de Salamanca, Calle Cervantes s/n, 37001, Salamanca, Spain

Aarón Moisés Santana-Cordero

Grupo Geografía, Medio Ambiente y Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica, Instituto de Oceanografía y Cambio Global, IOCAG, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, ULPGC, Parque Científico Tecnológico, Taliarte, 35214, Telde, Spain

Department of Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Lidická 25/27, 60200, Brno, Czech Republic

Péter Szabó

Department of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Joštova 10, 60200, Brno, Czech Republic

Research Unit Land Change Science, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

Matthias Bürgi

Institute of Geography, University of Bern, 3012, Bern, Switzerland

Indigenous Studies, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada

Chelsey Geralda Armstrong

Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada

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Aarón Moisés Santana Cordero (AMSC) conceived the original idea of the paper. AMSC, Péter Szabó (PS) and Matthias Bürgi (MB) designed the structure and constructed the database. AMSC wrote the initial text of the methodology and results sections. PS wrote the discussion and conclusion sections with significant contributions from Chelsey Geralda Armstrong (CGA). CGA created figures 1, 3, 4 and 5. AMSC and CGA prepared the overviews of historical ecological literature in Spanish and French, respectively. MB provided critical feedback on the text. PS re-worked the discussion of the last version. All four authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Aarón Moisés Santana-Cordero .

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Santana-Cordero, A.M., Szabó, P., Bürgi, M. et al. The practice of historical ecology: What, when, where, how and what for. Ambio 53 , 664–677 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-024-01981-1

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1.2.1: History of Ecology

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Ecology is a new science and considered as an important branch of biological science, having only become prominent during the second half of the 20th century. [1] Ecological thought is derivative of established currents in philosophy, particularly from ethics and politics. [2]

Its history stems all the way back to the 4th century. One of the first ecologists whose writings survive may have been Aristotle or perhaps his student, Theophrastus , both of whom had interest in many species of animals and plants. Theophrastus described interrelationships between animals and their environment as early as the 4th century BC. [3] Ecology developed substantially in the 18th and 19th century. It began with Carl Linnaeus and his work with the economy of nature. [4] Soon after came Alexander von Humboldt and his work with botanical geography. [5] Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Möbius then contributed with the notion of biocoenosis . Eugenius Warming ’s work with ecological plant geography led to the founding of ecology as a discipline. [6] Charles Darwin ’s work also contributed to the science of ecology, and Darwin is often attributed with progressing the discipline more than anyone else in its young history. Ecological thought expanded even more in the early 20th century. [7] Major contributions included: Eduard Suess ’ and Vladimir Vernadsky ’s work with the biosphere, Arthur Tansley ’s ecosystem, Charles Elton's Animal Ecology , and Henry Cowles ecological succession. [8]

Ecology influenced the social sciences and humanities. Human ecology began in the early 20th century and it recognized humans as an ecological factor. Later James Lovelock advanced views on earth as a macro-organism with the Gaia hypothesis . [9] [10] Conservation stemmed from the science of ecology. Important figures and movements include Shelford and the ESA, National Environmental Policy act, George Perkins Marsh , Theodore Roosevelt , Stephen A. Forbes , and post- Dust Bowl conservation. Later in the 20th century world governments collaborated on man’s effects on the biosphere and Earth’s environment.

The history of ecology is intertwined with the history of conservation efforts, in particular the founding of the Nature Conservancy . [11]

18th and 19th century Ecological murmurs

Arcadian and imperial ecology.

Main article: Arcadian Ecology

In the early Eighteenth century, preceding Carl Linnaeus, two rival schools of thought dominated the growing scientific discipline of ecology. First, Gilbert White a “parson-naturalist” is attributed with developing and endorsing the view of Arcadian ecology . Arcadian ecology advocates for a “simple, humble life for man” and a harmonious relationship with humans and nature. [12] Opposing the Arcadian view is Francis Bacon's ideology, “imperial ecology”. Imperialists work “to establish through the exercise of reason and by hard work, man’s dominance over nature”. [12] Imperial ecologists also believe that man should become a dominant figure over nature and all other organisms as “once enjoyed in the Garden of Eden”. [12] Both views continued their rivalry through the early eighteenth century until Carl Linnaeus's support of imperialism; and in short time due to Linnaeus's popularity, imperial ecology became the dominant view within the discipline.

Carl Linnaeus and Systema Naturae

Main articles: Carl Linnaeus and Systema Naturae

Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish naturalist, is well known for his work with taxonomy but his ideas helped to lay the groundwork for modern ecology. He developed a two part naming system for classifying plants and animals. Binomial Nomenclature was used to classify, describe, and name different genera and species. The compiled editions of Systema Naturae developed and popularized the naming system for plants and animals in modern biology. Reid suggests "Linnaeus can fairly be regarded as the originator of systematic and ecological studies in biodiversity," due to his naming and classifying of thousands of plant and animal species. Linnaeus also influenced the foundations of Darwinian evolution, he believed that there could be change in or between different species within fixed genera. Linnaeus was also one of the first naturalists to place men in the same category as primates . [4]

The botanical geography and Alexander von Humboldt

Throughout the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, the great maritime powers such as Britain, Spain, and Portugal launched many world exploratory expeditions to develop maritime commerce with other countries, and to discover new natural resources, as well as to catalog them. At the beginning of the 18th century, about twenty thousand plant species were known, versus forty thousand at the beginning of the 19th century, and about 300,000 today.

These expeditions were joined by many scientists , including botanists , such as the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt . Humboldt is often considered as father of ecology. He was the first to take on the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment . He exposed the existing relationships between observed plant species and climate , and described vegetation zones using latitude and altitude , a discipline now known as geobotany . Von Humboldt was accompanied on his expedition by the botanist Aimé Bonpland .

In 1856, the Park Grass Experiment was established at the Rothamsted Experimental Station to test the effect of fertilizers and manures on hay yields. This is the longest-running field experiment in the world. [5 ]

The notion of biocoenosis: Wallace and Möbius

Alfred Russel Wallace , contemporary and colleague of Darwin, was first to propose a "geography" of animal species. Several authors recognized at the time that species were not independent of each other, and grouped them into plant species, animal species, and later into communities of living beings or biocoenosis . The first use of this term is usually attributed to Karl Möbius in 1877, but already in 1825, the French naturalist Adolphe Dureau de la Malle used the term societé about an assemblage of plant individuals of different species.

Warming and the foundation of ecology as discipline

While Darwin focused exclusively on competition as a selective force, Eugen Warming devised a new discipline that took abiotic factors, that is drought, fire, salt, cold etc., as seriously as biotic factors in the assembly of biotic communities. Biogeography before Warming was largely of descriptive nature – faunistic or floristic. Warming's aim was, through the study of organism (plant) morphology and anatomy , i.e. adaptation, to explain why a species occurred under a certain set of environmental conditions. Moreover, the goal of the new discipline was to explain why species occupying similar habitats, experiencing similar hazards, would solve problems in similar ways, despite often being of widely different phylogenetic descent. Based on his personal observations in Brazilian cerrado , in Denmark , Norwegian Finnmark and Greenland , Warming gave the first university course in ecological plant geography. Based on his lectures, he wrote the book ‘Plantesamfund’ , which was immediate translated to German, Polish and Russian , later to English as ‘Oecology of Plants’ . Through its German edition, the book had an immense effect on British and North American scientists like Arthur Tansley , Henry Chandler Cowles and Frederic Clements . [6]

Malthusian influence

Main article: Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus was an influential writer on the subject of population and population limits in the early 19th century. His works were very important in shaping the ways in which Darwin saw the world worked. Malthus wrote:

That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence, That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and, That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice. [13]

In An Essay on the Principle of Population Malthus argues for the reining in of rising population through 2 checks: Positive and Preventive checks. The first raising death rates, the later lowers birthing rates. [14] Malthus also brings forth the idea that the world population will move past the sustainable number of people. [15] This form of thought still continues to influences debates on birth and marriage rates to this theory brought forth by Malthus. [16] The essay had a major influence on Charles Darwin and helped him to theories his theory of Natural Selection. [17] This struggle proposed by Malthusian thought not only influenced the ecological work of Charles Darwin, but helped bring about an economic theory of world of ecology. [18 ]

Darwinism and the science of ecology

Julia Margaret Cameron ’s portrait of Darwin

It is often held that the roots of scientific ecology may be traced back to Darwin. [19] This contention may look convincing at first glance inasmuch as On the Origin of Species is full of observations and proposed mechanisms that clearly fit within the boundaries of modern ecology (e.g. the cat-to-clover chain – an ecological cascade) and because the term ecology was coined in 1866 by a strong proponent of Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel . However, Darwin never used the word in his writings after this year, not even in his most "ecological" writings such as the foreword to the English edition of Hermann Müller ’s The Fertilization of Flowers (1883) or in his own treatise of earthworms and mull formation in forest soils ( The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms , 1881). Moreover, the pioneers founding ecology as a scientific discipline, such as Eugen Warming , A. F. W. Schimper , Gaston Bonnier , F.A. Forel , S.A. Forbes and Karl Möbius , made almost no reference to Darwin’s ideas in their works. [7] This was clearly not out of ignorance or because the works of Darwin were not widespread. Some such as S.A.Forbes studying intricate food webs asked questions as yet unanswered about the instability of food chains that might persist if dominant competitors were not adapted to have self-constraint. [20] Others focused on the dominant themes at the beginning, concern with the relationship between organism morphology and physiology on one side and environment on the other, mainly abiotic environment, hence environmental selection. Darwin’s concept of natural selection on the other hand focused primarily on competition. [21] The mechanisms other than competition that he described, primarily the divergence of character which can reduce competition and his statement that "struggle" as he used it was metaphorical and thus included environmental selection, were given less emphasis in the Origin than competition. [12] Despite most portrayals of Darwin conveying him as a non-aggressive recluse who let others fight his battles, Darwin remained all his life a man nearly obsessed with the ideas of competition, struggle and conquest – with all forms of human contact as confrontation. [12] [22]

Although there is nothing incorrect in the details presented in the paragraph above, the fact that Darwinism used a particularly ecological view of adaptation and Haeckel's use and definitions of the term were steeped in Darwinism should not be ignored. According to ecologist and historian Robert P. McIntosh, "the relationship of ecology to Darwinian evolution is explicit in the title of the work in which ecology first appeared." [23] [24] A more elaborate definition by Haeckel in 1870 is translated on the frontispiece of the influential ecology text known as 'Great Apes' as "… ecology is the study of all those complex interrelations referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existence." [25] [26] The issues brought up in the above paragraph are covered in more detail in the Early Beginnings section underneath that of History in the Wikipedia page on Ecology.

Early 20th century ~ Expansion of ecological thought

The biosphere – eduard suess and vladimir vernadsky.

By the 19th century, ecology blossomed due to new discoveries in chemistry by Lavoisier and de Saussure , notably the nitrogen cycle . After observing the fact that life developed only within strict limits of each compartment that makes up the atmosphere , hydrosphere , and lithosphere , the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess proposed the term biosphere in 1875. Suess proposed the name biosphere for the conditions promoting life, such as those found on Earth , which includes flora , fauna , minerals , matter cycles , et cetera.

In the 1920s Vladimir I. Vernadsky , a Russian geologist who had defected to France, detailed the idea of the biosphere in his work "The biosphere" (1926), and described the fundamental principles of the biogeochemical cycles . He thus redefined the biosphere as the sum of all ecosystems .

First ecological damages were reported in the 18th century, as the multiplication of colonies caused deforestation . Since the 19th century, with the industrial revolution , more and more pressing concerns have grown about the impact of human activity on the environment . The term ecologist has been in use since the end of the 19th century.

The ecosystem: Arthur Tansley

Over the 19th century, botanical geography and zoogeography combined to form the basis of biogeography . This science, which deals with habitats of species, seeks to explain the reasons for the presence of certain species in a given location.

It was in 1935 that Arthur Tansley , the British ecologist , coined the term ecosystem , the interactive system established between the biocoenosis (the group of living creatures), and their biotope , the environment in which they live. Ecology thus became the science of ecosystems.

Tansley's concept of the ecosystem was adopted by the energetic and influential biology educator Eugene Odum . Along with his brother, Howard T. Odum , Eugene P. Odum wrote a textbook which (starting in 1953) educated more than one generation of biologists and ecologists in North America.

Ecological succession – Henry Chandler Cowles

The Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan, which Cowles referred to in his development of his theories of ecological succession.

At the turn of the 20th century, Henry Chandler Cowles was one of the founders of the emerging study of "dynamic ecology", through his study of ecological succession at the Indiana Dunes , sand dunes at the southern end of Lake Michigan . Here Cowles found evidence of ecological succession in the vegetation and the soil with relation to age. Cowles was very much aware of the roots of the concept and of his (primordial) predecessors. [8] Thus, he attributes the first use of the word to the French naturalist Adolphe Dureau de la Malle , who had described the vegetation development after forest clear-felling, and the first comprehensive study of successional processes to the Finnish botanist Ragnar Hult (1881).

Animal Ecology - Charles Elton

20th century English zoologist and ecologist, Charles Elton , is commonly credited as “the father of animal ecology”. [27] Elton influenced by Victor Shelford's Animal Communities in Temperate America began his research on animal ecology as an assistant to his colleague, Julian Huxley, on an ecological survey of the fauna in Spitsbergen in 1921. Elton's most famous studies were conducted during his time as a biological consultant to the Hudson Bay Company to help understand the fluctuations in the company's fur harvests. Elton studied the population fluctuations and dynamics of snowshoe hare, Canadian lynx, and other mammals of the region. Elton is also considered the first to coin the terms, food chain and food cycle in his famous book Animal Ecology . [28] Elton is also attributed with contributing to disciplines of: invasion ecology, community ecology, and wildlife disease ecology . [29]

G. Evelyn Hutchinson - father of modern ecology

Main article: G. Evelyn Hutchinson

George “G” Evelyn Hutchinson was a 20th-century ecologist who is commonly recognized as the “Father of Modern Ecology”. Hutchinson is of English descent but spent most of professional career studying in New Haven, Connecticut at Yale University. Throughout his career, over six decades, Hutchinson contributed to the sciences of limnology, entomology, genetics, biogeochemistry, mathematical theory of population dynamics and many more. [30] Hutchinson is also attributed as being the first to infuse science with theory within the discipline of ecology. [31] Hutchinson was also one of the first credited with combining ecology with mathematics. Another major contribution of Hutchinson was his development of the current definition of an organism's “niche” – as he recognized the role of an organism within its community. Finally, along with his great impact within the discipline of ecology throughout his professional years, Hutchinson also left a lasting impact in ecology through his many students he inspired. Foremost among them were Robert H. MacArthur, who received his PhD under Hutchinson, and Raymond L. Lindemann, who finished his PhD dissertation during a fellowship under him. MacArthur became the leader of theoretical ecology and, with E. O. Wilson, developed island biography theory. Raymond Lindemann was instrumental in the development of modern ecosystem science. [32]

20th century transition to modern ecology

“What is ecology?” was a questioned that was asked in almost every decade of the 20th century. [33] Unfortunately, the answer most often was that it was mainly a point of view to be used in other areas of biology and also “soft,” like sociology, for example, rather than “hard,” like physics. Although autecology (essentially physiological ecology) could progress through the typical scientific method of observation and hypothesis testing, synecology (the study of animal and plant communities) and genecology (evolutionary ecology), for which experimentation was as limited as it was for, say, geology, continued with much the same inductive gathering of data as did natural history studies. [34] Most often, patterns, present and historical, were used to develop theories having explanatory power, but which had little actual data in support. Darwin's theory, as much as it is a foundation of modern biology, is a prime example.

G. E. Hutchinson, identified above as the “father of modern ecology,” through his influence raised the status of much of ecology to that of a rigorous science. By shepherding of Raymond Lindemann's work on the trophic-dynamic concept of ecosystems through the publication process after Lindemann's untimely death, [35] Hutchinson set the groundwork for what became modern ecosystem science. With his two famous papers in the late1950s, “Closing remarks,” [36] and “Homage to Santa Rosalia,” [37] as they are now known, Hutchinson launched the theoretical ecology which Robert MacArthur championed.

Ecosystem science became rapidly and sensibly associated with the “Big Science”—and obviously “hard” science—of atomic testing and nuclear energy. It was brought in by Stanley Auerbach, who established the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, [38] to trace the routes of radionulcides through the environment, and by the Odum brothers, Howard and Eugene, much of whose early work was supported by the Atomic Energy Commission. [39] Eugene Odum's textbook, Fundamentals of Ecology , has become something of a bible today. When, in the 1960s, the International Biological Program (IBP) took on an ecosystem character, [40] ecology, with its foundation in systems science, forever entered the realm of Big Science, with projects having large scopes and big budgets. Just two years after the publication of Silent Spring in 1962, ecosystem ecology was trumpeted as THE science of the environment in a series of articles in a special edition of BioScience . [41]

Theoretical ecology took a different path to established its legitimacy, especially at eastern universities and certain West Coast campuses. [42] It was the path of Robert MacArthur, who used simple mathematics in his “Three Influential Papers, [43] [44] [45] also published in the late 1950s, on population and community ecology. Although the simple equations of theoretical ecology at the time, were unsupported by data, they still were still deemed to be “heuristic.” They were resisted by a number of traditional ecologists, however, whose complaints of “intellectual censorship” of studies that did not fit into the hypothetico-deductive structure of the new ecology might be seen as evidence of the stature to which the Hutchinson-MacArthur approach had risen by the 1970s. [46]

MacArthur's untimely death in 1972 was also about the time that postmodernism and the “Science Wars” came to ecology. The names of Kuhn, Wittgenstein, Popper, Lakatos, and Feyerbrend began to enter into arguments in the ecological literature. Darwin's theory of adaptation through natural selection was accused of being tautological. [47] Questions were raised over whether ecosystems were cybernetic [48] and whether ecosystem theory was of any use in application to environmental management. [49] Most vituperative of all was the debate that arose over MacArthur-style ecology.

Matters came to a head after a symposium organized by acolytes of MacArthur in homage to him and a second symposium organized by what was disparagingly called the “Tallahassee Mafia” at Wakulla Springs in Florida. [50] The homage volume, [51] published in 1975, had an extensive chapter written by Jared Diamond, who at the time taught kidney physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, that presented a series of “assembly rules” to explain the patterns of bird species found on island archipelagos, [52] such as Darwin's famous finches on the Galapagos Islands. The Wakulla conference was organized by a group of dissenters led by Daniel Simberloff and Donald Strong, Jr., who were described by David Quammen in his book as arguing that those patterns “might be nothing more than the faces we see in the moon, in clouds, in Rorschach inkblots.” [53] Their point was that Diamond's work (and that of others) did not fall within the criterion of falsifiability, laid down for science by the philosopher, Karl Popper. A reviewer of the exchanges between the two camps in an issue of Synthese found “images of hand-to-hand combat or a bar-room brawl” coming to mind. [54] The Florida State group suggested a method that they developed, that of “null” models, [55] to be used much in the way that all scientists use null hypotheses to verify that their results might not have been obtained merely by chance. [56] It was most sharply rebuked by Diamond and Michel Gilpin in the symposium volume [57] and Jonathan Roughgarden in the American Naturalist. [58]

There was a parallel controversy adding heat to above that became known in conservation circles as SLOSS (Single Large or Several Small reserves). Diamond had also proposed that, according to the theory of island geography developed by MacArthur and E. O. Wilson, [59] nature preserves should be designed to be as large as possible and maintained as a unified entity. Even cutting a road through a natural area, in Diamond's interpretation of MacArthur and Wilson's theory, would lead to the loss of species, due to the smaller areas of the remaining pieces. [60] Simberloff, meanwhile, who had defaunated mangrove islands off the Florida coast in his award-winning experimental study under E. O. Wilson and tested the fit of the species-area curve of island biogeography theory to the fauna that returned, [61] had gathered data that showed quite the opposite: that many smaller fragments together sometimes held more species that the original whole. [62] It led to considerable vituperation on the pages of Science . [33]

In the end, in a somewhat Kuhnian fashion, the arguments probably will finally be settled (or not) by the passing of the participants. However, ecology continues apace as a rigorous, even experimental science. Null models, admittedly difficult to perfect, are in use, and, although a leading conservation scientist recently lauded island biogeography theory as “one of the most elegant and important theories in contemporary ecology, towering above thousands of lesser ideas and concept,” he nevertheless finds that “the species-area curve is a blunt tool in many contexts” and “now seems simplistic to the point of being cartoonish.” [63]

Timeline of ecologists

Ecological influence on the social sciences and humanities, human ecology.

Main article: Human ecology

Human ecology began in the 1920s, through the study of changes in vegetation succession in the city of Chicago . It became a distinct field of study in the 1970s. This marked the first recognition that humans, who had colonized all of the Earth's continents , were a major ecological factor . Humans greatly modify the environment through the development of the habitat (in particular urban planning ), by intensive exploitation activities such as logging and fishing , and as side effects of agriculture , mining , and industry . Besides ecology and biology, this discipline involved many other natural and social sciences, such as anthropology and ethnology , economics , demography , architecture and urban planning , medicine and psychology , and many more. The development of human ecology led to the increasing role of ecological science in the design and management of cities.

In recent years human ecology has been a topic that has interested organizational researchers. Hannan and Freeman ( Population Ecology of Organizations (1977) , American Journal of Sociology) argue that organizations do not only adapt to an environment. Instead it is also the environment that selects or rejects populations of organizations . In any given environment (in equilibrium ) there will only be one form of organization ( isomorphism ). Organizational ecology has been a prominent theory in accounting for diversities of organizations and their changing composition over time.

James Lovelock and the Gaia hypothesis

Main article: Gaia hypothesis

The Gaia theory , proposed by James Lovelock , in his work Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth , advanced the view that the Earth should be regarded as a single living macro-organism. In particular, it argued that the ensemble of living organisms has jointly evolved an ability to control the global environment — by influencing major physical parameters as the composition of the atmosphere, the evaporation rate, the chemistry of soils and oceans — so as to maintain conditions favorable to life. The idea has been supported by Lynn Margulis who extended her endosymbiotic theory which suggests that cell organelles originated from free living organisms to the idea that individual organisms of many species could be considered as symbionts within a larger metaphorical "super-organism". [98]

This vision was largely a sign of the times, in particular the growing perception after the Second World War that human activities such as nuclear energy , industrialization , pollution , and overexploitation of natural resources , fueled by exponential population growth , were threatening to create catastrophes on a planetary scale, and has influenced many in the environmental movement since then.

History and relationship between ecology and conservation and environmental movements

Environmentalists and other conservationists have used ecology and other sciences (e.g., climatology ) to support their advocacy positions . Environmentalist views are often controversial for political or economic reasons. As a result, some scientific work in ecology directly influences policy and political debate; these in turn often direct ecological research.

The history of ecology, however, should not be conflated with that of environmental thought. Ecology as a modern science traces only from Darwin's publication of Origin of Species and Haeckel's subsequent naming of the science needed to study Darwin's theory. Awareness of humankind's effect on its environment has been traced to Gilbert White in 18th-century Selborne, England. [12] Awareness of nature and its interactions can be traced back even farther in time. [9] [10] Ecology before Darwin, however, is analogous to medicine prior to Pasteur's discovery of the infectious nature of disease. The history is there, but it is only partly relevant.

Neither Darwin nor Haeckel , it is true, did self-avowed ecological studies. The same can be said for researchers in a number of fields who contributed to ecological thought well into the 1940s without avowedly being ecologists. [1] [99] Raymond Pearl's population studies are a case in point. [100] Ecology in subject matter and techniques grew out of studies by botanists and plant geographers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that paradoxically lacked Darwinian evolutionary perspectives. Until Mendel's studies with peas were rediscovered and melded into the Modern Synthesis, [101] Darwinism suffered in credibility. Many early plant ecologists had a Lamarckian view of inheritance, as did Darwin, at times. Ecological studies of animals and plants, preferably live and in the field, continued apace however. [102]

Conservation and environmental movements - 20th Century

When the Ecological Society of America (ESA) was chartered in 1915, it already had a conservation perspective. [103] Victor E. Shelford , a leader in the society's formation, had as one of its goals the preservation of the natural areas that were then the objects of study by ecologists, but were in danger of being degraded by human incursion. [104] Human ecology had also been a visible part of the ESA at its inception, as evident by publications such as: "The Control of Pneumonia and Influenza by the Weather," "An Overlook of the Relations of Dust to Humanity," "The Ecological Relations of the Polar Eskimo," and "City Street Dust and Infectious Diseases," in early pages of Ecology and Ecological Monographs. The ESA's second president, Ellsworth Huntington, was a human ecologist. Stephen Forbes, another early president, called for "humanizing" ecology in 1921, since man was clearly the dominant species on the Earth. [105]

This auspicious start actually was the first of a series of fitful progressions and reversions by the new science with regard to conservation. Human ecology necessarily focused on man-influenced environments and their practical problems. Ecologists in general, however, were trying to establish ecology as a basic science, one with enough prestige to make inroads into Ivy League faculties. Disturbed environments, it was thought, would not reveal nature's secrets.

Interest in the environment created by the American Dust Bowl produced a flurry of calls in 1935 for ecology to take a look at practical issues. Pioneering ecologist C. C. Adams wanted to return human ecology to the science. [106] Frederic E. Clements, the dominant plant ecologist of the day, reviewed land use issues leading to the Dust Bowl in terms of his ideas on plant succession and climax. [107] Paul Sears reached a wide audience with his book, Deserts on the March . [108] World War II, perhaps, caused the issue to be put aside.

The tension between pure ecology, seeking to understand and explain, and applied ecology, seeking to describe and repair, came to a head after World War II. Adams again tried to push the ESA into applied areas by having it raise an endowment to promote ecology. He predicted that "a great expansion of ecology" was imminent "because of its integrating tendency." [109] Ecologists, however, were sensitive to the perception that ecology was still not considered a rigorous, quantitative science. Those who pushed for applied studies and active involvement in conservation were once more discreetly rebuffed. Human ecology became subsumed by sociology. It was sociologist Lewis Mumford who brought the ideas of George Perkins Marsh to modern attention in the 1955 conference, "Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth." That prestigious conclave was dominated by social scientists. At it, ecology was accused of "lacking experimental methods" and neglecting "man as an ecological agent." One participant dismissed ecology as "archaic and sterile." [110] Within the ESA, a frustrated Shelford started the Ecologists’ Union when his Committee on Preservation of Natural Conditions ceased to function due to the political infighting over the ESA stance on conservation. [103] In 1950, the fledgling organization was renamed and incorporated as the Nature Conservancy, a name borrowed from the British government agency for the same purpose.

Two events, however, brought ecology's course back to applied problems. One was the Manhattan Project . It had become the Nuclear Energy Commission after the war. It is now the Department of Energy (DOE). Its ample budget included studies of the impacts of nuclear weapon use and production. That brought ecology to the issue, and it made a "Big Science" of it. [12] [111] Ecosystem science, both basic and applied, began to compete with theoretical ecology (then called evolutionary ecology and also mathematical ecology). Eugene Odum , who published a very popular ecology textbook in 1953, became the champion of the ecosystem. In his publications, Odum called for ecology to have an ecosystem and applied focus. [112]

The second event was the publication of Silent Spring . Rachel Carson's book brought ecology as a word and concept to the public. Her influence was instant. A study committee, prodded by the publication of the book, reported to the ESA that their science was not ready to take on the responsibility being given to it. [113]

Carson's concept of ecology was very much that of Gene Odum. [114] As a result, ecosystem science dominated the International Biological Program of the 1960s and 1970s, bringing both money and prestige to ecology. [115] [116] Silent Spring was also the impetus for the environmental protection programs that were started in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and passed into law just before the first Earth Day. Ecologists’ input was welcomed. Former ESA President Stanley Cain, for example, was appointed an Assistant Secretary in the Department of the Interior.

The environmental assessment requirement of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), "legitimized ecology," in the words of one environmental lawyer. [117] An ESA President called it "an ecological ‘Magna Carta.’" [118] A prominent Canadian ecologist declared it a "boondoggle." [119] NEPA and similar state statutes, if nothing else, provided much employment for ecologists. Therein was the issue. Neither ecology nor ecologists were ready for the task. Not enough ecologists were available to work on impact assessment, outside of the DOE laboratories, leading to the rise of "instant ecologists," [120] having dubious credentials and capabilities. Calls began to arise for the professionalization of ecology. Maverick scientist Frank Egler , in particular, devoted his sharp prose to the task. [121] Again, a schism arose between basic and applied scientists in the ESA, this time exacerbated by the question of environmental advocacy. The controversy, whose history has yet to receive adequate treatment, lasted through the 1970s and 1980s, ending with a voluntary certification process by the ESA, along with lobbying arm in Washington. [122]

Post-Earth Day, besides questions of advocacy and professionalism, ecology also had to deal with questions having to do with its basic principles. Many of the theoretical principles and methods of both ecosystem science and evolutionary ecology began to show little value in environmental analysis and assessment. [123] Ecologist, in general, started to question the methods and logic of their science under the pressure of its new notoriety. [84] [124] [125] Meanwhile, personnel with government agencies and environmental advocacy groups were accused of religiously applying dubious principles in their conservation work. [126] Management of endangered Spotted Owl populations brought the controversy to a head. [127]

Conservation for ecologists created travails paralleling those nuclear power gave former Manhattan Project scientists. In each case, science had to be reconciled with individual politics, religious beliefs, and worldviews, a difficult process. Some ecologists managed to keep their science separate from their advocacy; others unrepentantly became avowed environmentalists. [128]

Roosevelt & American conservation

Theodore Roosevelt was interested in nature from a young age. He carried his passion for nature into his political policies. Roosevelt felt it was necessary to preserve the resources of the nation and its environment. In 1902 he created the federal reclamation service, which reclaimed land for agriculture. He also created the Bureau of Forestry. This organization, headed by Gifford Pinchot, was formed to manage and maintain the nations timberlands. [129] Roosevelt signed the Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities in 1906. This act allowed for him to "declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic and scientific interest that are situated upon lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments ." Under this act he created up to 18 national monuments. During his presidency, Roosevelt established 51 Federal Bird Reservations , 4 National Game Preserves , 150 National Forests , and 5 National Parks . Overall he protected over 200 million acres of land. [130]

Ecology and global policy

Ecology became a central part of the World's politics as early as 1971, UNESCO launched a research program called Man and Biosphere , with the objective of increasing knowledge about the mutual relationship between humans and nature. A few years later it defined the concept of Biosphere Reserve .

In 1972, the United Nations held the first international Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm , prepared by Rene Dubos and other experts. This conference was the origin of the phrase " Think Globally, Act Locally ". The next major events in ecology were the development of the concept of biosphere and the appearance of terms "biological diversity"—or now more commonly biodiversity —in the 1980s. These terms were developed during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where the concept of the biosphere was recognized by the major international organizations, and risks associated with reductions in biodiversity were publicly acknowledged.

Then, in 1997, the dangers the biosphere was facing were recognized all over the world at the conference leading to the Kyoto Protocol . In particular, this conference highlighted the increasing dangers of the greenhouse effect – related to the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to global changes in climate . In Kyoto , most of the world's nations recognized the importance of looking at ecology from a global point of view, on a worldwide scale, and to take into account the impact of humans on the Earth's environment.

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