Author: Guillaume Odonne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042959447X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
This book presents some of the most recent tools, methods and concepts in historical ecology. It introduces students and researchers to state-of-the-art techniques and showcases a wide array of methods dedicated to understanding the history of tropical landscapes. The chapters cover the detection and characterisation of archaeological features, living organisms as witnesses of past human activities, ethnoecological knowledge of ancient anthropogenic landscapes and societal impacts of historical ecology. Whilst mainly based on Amazonian experiences, the contributions aim to strengthen synergies between disciplines and to propose solutions that can be applied elsewhere in the field.
Author: Carole L. Crumley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108420982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
This book presents a practical, holistic research framework to help us both understand our past and build an appealing human future.
Author: Torben C. Rick
Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
ISBN: 1938770315
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
California's northern Channel Islands have one of the longest and best-preserved archaeological records in the Americas, spanning some 13,000 calendar years. When European explorers first travelled to the area, these islands were inhabited by the Chumash, some of the most populous and culturally complex hunter-gatherers known. Chumash society was characterised by hereditary leaders, sophisticated exchange networks and interaction spheres, and diverse maritime economies. Focusing on the archaeology of five sites dated to the last 3,000 years, this book examines the archaeology and historical ecology of San Miguel Island, the westernmost and most isolated of the northern Channel Islands. Detailed faunal, artefact, and other data are woven together in a diachronic analysis that investigates the interplay of social and ecological developments on this unique island. The first to focus solely on San Miguel Island archaeology, this book examines issues ranging from coastal adaptations to emergent cultural complexity to historical ecology and human impacts on ancient environments.
Author: Guillaume Decocq
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 178945090X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
This book addresses present-day landscapes, ecosystem functioning and biodiversity as legacies of the past. It implements an interdisciplinary approach to understand how natural or human-impacted ecological systems have changed over time. Historical Ecology combines theory, methods, regional case studies and syntheses to provide a complete up-to-date overview of historical ecology. Beginning with the crucial role of time and inference from observed patterns, the book critically reviews the main methodological approaches, including monitoring of permanent plots, analysis of old maps, repeat photography, remote sensing, soil analysis, charcoal analysis, botanical indicators, and combinations of these methods applied to forest ecosystems. A series of case studies from various biomes shows how historical ecology can help in understanding today’s socio-ecosystems, such as mainland and island forests, orchards, tundra and coastal dunes. The book concludes by showing how historical ecology can answer timely fundamental research questions and provide science-based evidence for landscape and ecosystem management.
Author: Frank B. Golley
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300066425
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
The ecosystem concept--the idea that flora and fauna interact with the environment to form an ecological complex--has long been central to the public perception of ecology and to increasing awareness of environmental degradation. In this book an eminent ecologist explains the ecosystem concept, tracing its evolution, describing how numerous American and European researchers contributed to its evolution, and discussing the explosive growth of ecosystem studies. Golley surveys the development of the ecosystem concept in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and discusses the coining of the term ecosystem by the English ecologist Sir Arthur George Tansley in 1935. He then reviews how the American ecologist Raymond Lindeman applied the concept to a small lake in Minnesota and showed how the biota and the environment of the lake interacted through the exchange of energy. Golley describes how a seminal textbook on ecology written by Eugene P. Odum helped to popularize the ecosystem concept and how numerous other scientists investigated its principles and published their results. He relates how ecosystem studies dominated ecology in the 1960s and became a key element of the International Biological Program biome studies in the United States--a program aimed at "the betterment of mankind" specifically through conservation, human genetics, and improvements in the use of natural resources; how a study of watershed ecosystems in Hubbard Brook, New Hampshire, blazed new paths in ecosystem research by defining the limits of the system in a natural way; and how current research uses the ecosystem concept. Throughout Golley shows how the ecosystem concept has been shaped internationally by both developments in other disciplines and by personalities and politics.
Author: Christian Isendahl
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 9780199672691
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Historical ecology is based on the recognition that humans are not only capable of modifying their environments, but that all environments on earth have already been directly or indirectly modified. This Handbook provides examples of how people interact with their environments and presents outlines of the methods used to understand these changes.
Author: Reinette Biggs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000401510
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 526
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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems provides a synthetic guide to the range of methods that can be employed in social-ecological systems (SES) research. The book is primarily targeted at graduate students, lecturers and researchers working on SES, and has been written in a style that is accessible to readers entering the field from a variety of different disciplinary backgrounds. Each chapter discusses the types of SES questions to which the particular methods are suited and the potential resources and skills required for their implementation, and provides practical examples of the application of the methods. In addition, the book contains a conceptual and practical introduction to SES research, a discussion of key gaps and frontiers in SES research methods, and a glossary of key terms in SES research. Contributions from 97 different authors, situated at SES research hubs in 16 countries around the world, including South Africa, Sweden, Germany and Australia, bring a wealth of expertise and experience to this book. The first book to provide a guide and introduction specifically focused on methods for studying SES, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainability science, environmental management, global environmental change studies and environmental governance. The book will also be of interest to upper-level undergraduates and professionals working at the science–policy interface in the environmental arena.
Author: Silvia Elena Piovan
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030424391
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
This book gives a comprehensive view of the strengths and limits of the interdisciplinary methods that work together to form the geohistorical approach to geographical and geological sciences. The geohistorical approach can be synthetically defined as a multi- and interdisciplinary approach that uses techniques and perspectives, mainly from geography, history, and natural sciences, to examine topics that inform the space-time knowledge of environment, territory, and landscape. The boundary between the application of physical and human science methods is large and hazy. This volume exists at this boundary and offers an approach that utilizes both historical data (from both physical and human records) and GIScience (e.g. GIS, cartography, GPS, remote sensing) to investigate the evolution of the environment, territory and landscape through both space and time. The first objective of this volume is to define the term geohistorical approach. An entire chapter focuses on a review of the main disciplines that connect geography and history, a review of the terms environment, territory, and landscape as objects of study of this approach, and the definition and importance of the geohistorical approach. The second goal is to describe the methods used in the geohistorical approach. Eight chapters present the key methods also using examples of applications from the international context, offering an awareness of the potentials, limitations and accuracy of each method, with particular focus on the integration of methods. The third goal is to provide case studies to demonstrate the use and integration of geohistorical methods from both original material and published research. A final chapter is dedicated to an interdisciplinary case study from the Venetian Plain (Italy), providing an example of the integration of almost all methods described in the book.
Author: William Balée
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231509618
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
This collection of studies by anthropologists, botanists, ecologists, and biologists is an important contribution to the emerging field of historical ecology. The book combines cutting-edge research with new perspectives to emphasize the close relationship between humans and their natural environment. Contributors examine how alterations in the natural world mirror human cultures, societies, and languages. Treating the landscape like a text, these researchers decipher patterns and meaning in the Ecuadorian Andes, Amazonia, the desert coast of Peru, and other regions in the neotropics. They show how local peoples have changed the landscape over time to fit their needs by managing and modifying species diversity, enhancing landscape heterogeneity, and controlling ecological disturbance. In turn, the environment itself becomes a form of architecture rich with historical and archaeological significance. Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology explores thousands of years of ecological history while also addressing important contemporary issues, such as biodiversity and genetic variation and change. Engagingly written and expertly researched, this book introduces and exemplifies a unique method for better understanding the link between humans and the biosphere.
Author: Denise P Schaan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131542052X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
The legendary El Dorado—the city of gold—remains a mere legend, but astonishing new discoveries are revealing a major civilization in ancient Amazonia that was more complex than anyone previously dreamed. Scholars have long insisted that the Amazonian ecosystem placed severe limits on the size and complexity of its ancient cultures, but leading researcher Denise Schaan reverses that view, synthesizing exciting new evidence of large-scale land and resource management to tell a new history of indigenous Amazonia. Schaan also engages fundamental debates about the development of social complexity and the importance of ancient Amazonia from a global perspective. This innovative, interdisciplinary book is a major contribution to the study of human-environment relations, social complexity, and past and present indigenous societies.
