Table 1.

Descriptions and definitions of historical ecology. ‘Synonym’ refers to terms that were used at least once as free variation of historical ecology in the given text. ‘Category’ is the two main trends in historical ecology: E, ecology and A, anthropology. ‘References’ include the number of references to other authors in the list. Where an author defined historical ecology in more than one publication, a representative definition is provided, with the date of the first work sourced that used the same methodological foundations provided in square brackets.

Author and date		Definition	Synonym	References to E	References to A	Category
1.	Conway (1948)	“The post-glacial history of climate and vegetation [forms] an important part of what we may call ‘historical ecology’… Ecologists in this century have been fully alive to the value of the historical approach in the study of vegetation. Not only do we think always in terms of the dynamic ideas that derive from the successional doctrines of Clements, but we have come increasingly to recognize the profound effects that man has exerted on vegetation at any time during the post-glacial period.”	-	-	-	E
2.	Rackham (1980) [Rackham, 1967]	“Historical ecology seeks to interpret the natural and artificial factors that have influenced the development of an area of vegetation to its present state.”	-	2	-	E
3.	Tubbs (1968)	“[T]he history of human land use, management and exploitation, and the economic factors governing them, forms a coherent framework within which to describe the development of the range of habitats which comprise the landscape; for arriving at conclusions about the parts currently played by biotic and anthropogenic factors in the dynamics of habitats; for focusing the closest attention on the economic structure of agricultural and other practices from which such factors arise; and for arriving at conclusions about the history, present status and future of individual species of our fauna and flora… The previous history of change is … important in discerning what processes are at work at the present time, and in deciding precisely how to manage or control them… [M]ost of the archaeological, historical and biological information … can be most usefully organised under the heading of ecological history.”	-	-	-	E
4.	Peterken (1975) [Peterken, 1969]	Historical ecology is “a process of understanding which considers events in the past and the passage of time to be significant ecological factors. Its methodology consists essentially of discovering how a site came to be as it is.”	-	1	-	E
5.	Hooper (1974)	“Historical ecology is … the art, science, craft or mystery of elucidating the present patterns of organisms in the light of man’s past activities.”	-	1	-	E
6.	Bertrand (1975)	“[For] an ecological study of historical purpose … above all we must persuade historians, ecologists and geographers to open a new field of thinking and interdisciplinary investigation. This process requires the development of a specific method, or at least the establishment of a number of principles… Historical ecological problems can be broken down into four levels of resolution: the study of natural environments as they currently are, that is to say substantially modified by human societies, … the study of natural fluctuations of certain elements of the natural environment interpreted in isolation, …. the study of the fluctuations of the natural environment due to human interventions, …. the study of the dialectical relationship between the development of rural societies and changing environments … in all its complexity.” [translation mine]	-	-	-	A
7.	Russell (1997) [Russell, 1979]	“Historical ecology seeks to explain many enigmatic features of present ecosystems and landscapes by deciphering the legacies of past human activities… By integrating [various] sources, a historical ecologist can piece together a picture of past activities and communities in order to formulate and test hypotheses about causes of past changes and the contributions of past processes to present ecosystems and landscapes.”	-	2	1	E
8.	Rymer (1979b)	Historical ecology is the “reconstruction [and interpretation] of past environments … based on discovering surviving relics of those environments.”	environmental history	-	-	E
9.	Moreno & Montanari (2008) [Moreno et al., 1982]	“Historical ecology proceeds with a regressive approach, from the observation of present environmental features to those that have preceded - and thus also determined - them. Therefore, it has to handle a wide range of evidence ranging from … oral history to field work …, archival sources and … sedimentary sources.” [translation mine]	-	2	-	E
10.	Crumley (2007) [Crumley, 1987]	“Historical ecology traces the complex relationships between our species and the planet we live on, charted over the long term… Historical ecologists take a holistic, practical, and dialectical perspective on environmental change and on the practice of interdisciplinary research. They draw on a broad spectrum of evidence from the biological and physical sciences, ecology, and the social sciences and humanities. As a whole, this information forms a picture of human-environment relations over time in a particular geographic location. The goal of historical ecologists is to use scientific knowledge in conjunction with local knowledge to make effective and equitable management decisions.”	-	2	1	A
11.	Christensen (1989)	Historical ecology is “a new area of ecological research …, [which studies] the consequences of past historical events for the current structure and function of ecosystems… Historical ecology [is also] a predictive endeavor.”	landscape history	2	-	E
12.	Deléage & Hémery (1989)	“Any historical ecological approach therefore must interpret the relationships between human populations and their environment from an evolutionary perspective, and consider the different temporal scales of the functioning of social ecosystems, the mechanisms that provide stability and the processes that, by contrast, lead to the degradation of ecological foundations.” [translation mine]	-	-	-	A
13.	Foster (2000) [Foster et al., 1990]	“Retrospective studies enable us to study ecological processes that are missed or under-appreciated by standard field and experimental approaches… [T]hey enhance our ability to understand the many factors that have shaped and continue to condition ecosystem structure, function and composition… [Historical ecology is the] integration of history and modern ecology … [in order to] develop a deeper appreciation for the importance of cultural and natural history in our current and future landscapes.”	landscape history	-	-	E
14.	Hermy (1992)	“Historical ecology seeks to understand the present composition, structure and distribution of forests using historical data sources.”	-	2	-	E
15.	Winterhalder (1994)	“Historical ecology undertakes the temporal (diachronic) analysis of living ecological systems that in principle is necessary to analyze their structural and functional properties fully… [It represents] an epistemological commitment to the temporal dimension in ecological analysis.”	-	-	-	E
16.	Pickett et al. (1994)	“Historical ecology can be used to forecast future responses of ecological systems, and to explain or to forecast spatial differences in system structure or function. Historical ecology is becoming increasingly important, especially as the role of people and civilizations in the past is becoming better understood.”	-	1	-	E
17.	Balée (2006) [Balée, 1998b]	“Historical ecology is a research program concerned with the interactions through time between societies and environments and the consequences of these interactions for understanding the formation of contemporary and past cultures and landscapes.”	-	5	1	A
18.	Whitehead (1998)	“ [A] fully ‘historical’ ecology [implies] that such a style of reasoning about ecology should put persons, not organic systems, at the center of explanations of changing ecological relationships through time.”	-	1	2	A
19.	Bürgi & Gimmi (2007) [Bürgi, 1998]	Historical ecology is “the study of human impacts on ecosystems and landscapes over time.”	-	7	2	E
20.	Swetnam et al. (1999)	“Historical ecology encompasses all of the data, techniques, and perspectives from paleoecology, land use history, … long-term ecological research, … time series from instrument-based observations of the environment, … and data from satellites … [through which] meaningful information can be gained about changes in populations, ecosystem structures, disturbance frequencies, process rates, trends, periodicities, and other dynamical behaviors.”	environmental history	4	-	E
21.	Egan & Howell (2001)	Historical ecology is “a restorationist’s guide to reference ecosystems.”	-	2	2	E
22.	Marage et al. (2001)	“Historical ecology [is] an interdisciplinary approach [integrating] palynology, … archaeology … and archival studies”, … [which] places the conservation of cultural heritage at the same level as that of natural heritage, insomuch as the joint study of these two heritages allows us to define the complex interactions that take place in the formation and maintaining of biodiversity.” [translation mine]	-	-	-	E
23.	Gragson (2005)	“Historical ecology is one of the ascendant views in ecological and environmental anthropology… [It aims] to place human decision-making, and the consciousness that drives it, at the center of our analyses of the human-environmental relationship.”	-	5	3	A
24.	Lunt & Spooner (2005)	Historical ecology is “a new paradigm in which ecologists view ecosystems as historically and spatially influenced non-equilibrium systems that are complex and open to human inputs.” [emphasis in original]	-	3	2	E
25.	Szabó & Hédl (2011) [Szabó, 2005]	“[H]istorical ecology focuses on past ecosystems and usually regards humans as one of the many factors that influence such systems… Historical ecology is closely linked to conservation biology and restoration ecology.”	-	7	2	E
26.	Grossinger et al. (2007)	Historical ecology is “a historical understanding of local and regional ecological patterns.”	-	2	-	E
27.	Fitzpatrick & Keegan (2007)	Historical ecology “combines palaeoecology, archaeological investigation, land use history, and more recent long-term (decadal) ecological research, to help examine the ‘life history’ of a region.”	-	1	2	E
28.	Rhemtulla & Mladenoff (2007)	Historical ecology includes “any research that examines the changes in and interactions among ecosystem patterns and processes through time: the history of an ecosystem. Such changes more often than not include anthropogenic effects, but these do not always need to be explicitly considered.”	-	3	1	E
29.	Stahl (2008)	“Historical ecology has emerged along with other contemporary ecologies as a framework for reinvigorating a neofunctional ecological anthropology that failed to adopt a diachronic perspective. The language of the latter dichotomized culture and nature and emphasized that humans adapted to the fixed environmental circumstances in which they found themselves. In contrast, historical ecology focuses on the cultural and historical production of landscapes which shape cultural experience by retaining the material manifestations of human action.”	-	2	2	A
30.	Jackson & Hobbs (2009)	Historical ecology is “knowledge of the state of the original ecosystem and what happened to it.”	palaeoecology	2	-	E
31.	Meyer & Crumley (2011)	“Historical ecology is a cluster of concepts that offers a holistic, practical perspective to the study of environmental change. It may be applied to spatial and temporal frames at any resolution, but finds 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. The term assumes a definition of ecology that includes humans as a component of all ecosystems, and a definition of history that encompasses both the history of the Earth system as well as the social and physical past of our species.”	-	1	2	A
32.	Vellend et al. (2013)	“The term ‘historical ecology’ has been adopted by two main groups of researchers: biologists drawing on historical methods and explanations for ecological phenomena, which may or may not involve anthropogenic factors, and social scientists drawing on ecological principles to better understand human history… [W]e note that the two groups frequently share overlapping goals.”	-	4	-	E
33.	Rick & Lockwood (2013)	Historical ecology is “the use of historic and prehistoric data (e.g., paleobiological, archeological, historical) to understand ancient and modern ecosystems, often with the goal of providing context for contemporary conservation. A fundamental goal of historical ecology is to understand past and present human-environment interactions, but it is also concerned with understanding natural variation before and after human arrival.”	-	6	3	E
34.	Gimmi & Bugmann (2013)	Historical ecology can be defined as “the scientific attempts to elucidate the past of ecosystems … [Historical ecology] aims at uncovering past ecosystem dynamics and their drivers, using and combining a large variety of historical data sources.”	-	2	-	E