Historical ecology for the past and the future: Organizing at local and regional scales

The Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) is an early example of how such initiatives by researchers have powered collaborations with diverse stakeholders, including residents and citizen scientists, local and regional administrative bodies, and commercial entities. The research framework for IHOPE provides a kind of intellectual "contact zone", in which diverse communities can exchange information about the past and the present of a physical region and discuss various courses of action for its future. Historical ecology perforce draws on a broad spectrum of concepts, methods, theories and evidence, taken from the biological and physical sciences, ecology, the social sciences and the humanities. Historical ecology may be applied to spatial and temporal frames at any resolution, finding particularly rich data sources at what is loosely termed the "landscape" scale, where human activity and biophysical systems interact and archaeological historical, and ethnographic records are plentiful.