29. Historical ecology

Historical ecology utilizes many diverse, interdisciplinary methods and is deployed most often by researchers in ecology, anthropology, geography, and environmental history to analyse environmental change over time, frequently to determine baselines for guiding environmental conservation and restoration projects. At its best, such research triangulates among several data sets (e.g., archival, published, paleoecological, biophysical, etc.) to arrive at the most accurate representation of long-term environmental change with the least bias. Researchers attentive to the common problems of (neo)colonial environmental discourses that can be false or misleading are well placed to conduct research that will result in the most sustainable ecological outcomes as well as supporting social justice and growing efforts at decolonization.