1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910818932103321

Titolo

Sustainability or collapse? : an integrated history and future of people on earth / / edited by Robert Costanza, Lisa J. Graumlich, and Will Steffen ; Program Advisory Committee, R. Costanza ... [et al.]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Mass., : MIT Press in cooperation with Dahlem University Press, c2007

ISBN

0-262-29376-5

1-282-09698-2

9786612096983

0-262-27086-2

1-4294-2104-5

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (518 p.)

Collana

Dahlem Workshop report

Altri autori (Persone)

CostanzaRobert

GraumlichLisa

SteffenW. L <1947-> (William L.)

Disciplina

304.2

Soggetti

Human ecology - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

"Report of the 96th Dahlem Workshop on Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) Berlin, June 12-17, 2005."

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Nota di contenuto

Intro -- DahlemWorkshops -- List of Participants -- Foreword -- 1 Sustainability or Collapse -- 2 Human-Environment Interactions -- 3 Assessing and Communicating Data Quality -- 4 The Rise and Fall of the Ancient Maya -- 5 Climate, Complexity, and Problem Solving in the Roman Empire -- 6 Integration of Climatic, Archaeological, and Historical Data -- 7 The Trajectory of Human Evolution in Australia -- 8 Toward a Comparative Study of Hegemonic Decline in Global Systems -- 9 Group Report: Millennial Perspectives on the Dynamic Interaction of Climate, People, and Resources -- 10 RevolutionaryWeather -- 11 The Lie of History -- 12 Little Ice Age-type Impacts and the Mitigation of Social Vulnerability to Climate in the Swiss Canton of Bern prior to 1800 -- 13 Information Processing and Its Role in the Rise of the EuropeanWorld System -- 14 Group Report: Integrating Socioenvironmental Interactions over Centennial Timescales -- 15



ADecadal Chronology of 20th-Century Changes in Earth's Natural Systems -- 16 Social, Economic, and Political Forces in Environmental Change -- 17 Integrated Human-Environment Approaches of Land Degradation in Drylands -- 18 Group Report: Decadal-scale Interactions of Humans and the Environment -- 19 Scenarios -- 20 Evaluating Past Forecasts -- 21 Integrated Global Models -- 22 Group Report: Future Scenarios of Human-Environment Systems -- List of Acronyms -- Author Index -- Name Index -- Subject Index.

Sommario/riassunto

Scholars from a range of disciplines develop an integrated human and environmental history over millennial, centennial, and decadal time scales and make projections for the future.Human history, as written traditionally, leaves out the important ecological and climate context of historical events. But the capability to integrate the history of human beings with the natural history of the Earth now exists, and we are finding that human-environmental systems are intimately linked in ways we are only beginning to appreciate. In Sustainability or Collapse?, researchers from a range of scholarly disciplines develop an integrated human and environmental history over millennial, centennial, and decadal time scales and make projections for the future. The contributors focus on the human-environment interactions that have shaped historical forces since ancient times and discuss such key methodological issues as data quality. Topics highlighted include the political ecology of the Mayans; the effect of climate on the Roman Empire; the "revolutionary weather" of El Nino from 1788 to 1795; twentieth-century social, economic, and political forces in environmental change; scenarios for the future; and the accuracy of such past forecasts as The Limits to Growth.