Global research priorities for historical ecology to inform conservation

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.3354/esr01338. This is version 3 of this Preprint.

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Authors

Loren McClenachan, Torben Rick, Ruth H. Thurstan , Andrew Trant, Peter S. Alagona, Heidi K. Alleway, Chelsey Armstrong, Rebecca Bliege Bird, Nadia T. Rubio-Cisneros, Miguel Clavero, André C. Colonese, Katie Cramer, Ancilleno O. Davis, Joshua Drew, Michelle M. Early-Capistrán, Graciela Gil-Romera, Molly Grace, Marco B.A. Hatch, Eric Higgs, Kira Hoffman, Jeremy B.C. Jackson, Antonieta Jerardino, Michelle J. LeFebvre, Heike K. Lotze, Ryan S. Mohammed, Naia Morueta-Holme, Catalina Munteanu , Alexis M. Mychajliw, Bonnie Newsom, Aaron O'Dea, Daniel Pauly, Péter Szabó, Jimena Torres, John Waldman, Catherine West, Liqiang Xu, Hirokazu Yasuoka, Philine S.E. zu Ermgassen, Kyle Schuyler Van Houtan

Abstract

Historical ecology draws on a broad range of information sources and methods to provide insight into ecological and social change, especially over the past ~12,000 years. While its results are often relevant to conservation and restoration, insights from its diverse disciplines, environments, and geographies have frequently remained siloed or underrepresented, restricting their full potential. Here, we synthesize knowledge from the fields of history, anthropology, paleontology, and ecology from scholars and practitioners working in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments on six continents and various archipelagoes to identify global research priorities for historical ecology to influence conservation. Specifically, we identify and address questions within four key priority areas: (i) methods and concepts, (ii) knowledge co-production and community engagement, (iii) policy and management, and (iv) climate change impacts. This work highlights the ways that historical ecology has developed and matured in its use of novel information sources, its efforts to move beyond extractive research practices and toward knowledge co-production, and its potential use in addressing management challenges, including climate change. Together, we demonstrate the ways that this field has brought together researchers across disciplines, connected academics to practitioners, and engaged communities to create and apply knowledge of the past to addressing the challenges of our shared future.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/X2TK5T

Subjects

Arts and Humanities, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

community engagement, knowledge co-production, ecological restoration, environmental history, conservation policy, environmental management

Dates

Published: 2023-10-27 02:47

Last Updated: 2024-05-25 02:26

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License

CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Language:
English

Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare that they have no competing interests

Data and Code Availability Statement:
All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper, the Supplementary Materials, and the linked repositories. Data and source code used in this study are available in the open-access third-party repository at GitHub (bit.ly/477TePD).