Handbook

Current global and local ecological processes do not operate in a vacuum but have been shaped by changes to the environment that occurred over time. During the late Holocene and Anthropocene some of these are due to natural climatic fluctuations but most are due to environmental modification caused by human communities. There is an abundance of evidence drawn from sub-fossil deposits, Indigenous oral traditions and knowledge, archaeological sites and historic records to reconstruct past environmental conditions and events. Approaching the topic from the perspectives of historical ecology and environmental history, the  subject takes the student on a trajectory from the deep past to the present examining the evidence of past environments to understand their relevance for modern ecology and to develop an understanding of the long history of humans as agents of environmental change.