Looking back in order to move ahead, the historical perspective of action ecology

Background/Question/Methods

The formation of the Ecological Society of America in 1915 helped formalize ecology as a science and unite scientists with similar interest.  Although ecology was accepted as a science in academia in the early 1900s, it wasn’t until the 1960’s that ecology became widely known to society as a whole with the advent of the early environmental movement.  At that time, ecology went from being an idea of certain biologists, foresters and managers to gaining recognition from society that ecology could help understand the environmental crisis the earth was facing (McIntosh 1976).  There are a number of authors who have looked at different aspect of the history of ecology (McIntosh 1976, Ricklefs 1985, Egerton 1983; 1985, Scoones 1999).  Some authors have tried to understand where the ideas behind ecology came from (Egerton 1993;1985) while others have looked at the past to try and understand its relationship to other disciplines (Scoones 1999). In this study we are interested at looking at, how the questions being asked in ecology have been changing through time, and if these new questions promote actions that have a positive social change for local communities.

Results/Conclusions

To achieve this study we used keywords (e.i social science, impact, human, local communities, policy, outreach, stewardship) to search from 2005-2010 two journals of the Ecological Society of America that’s mission includes the application of ecological research to real world environmental problems (Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment & Ecological Applications).  Preliminary results show that there has been a shift to questions that relate to social issues but they have mainly focused on the policy big picture aspect of environmental problems not to local community welfare issues.  This study is a first step in trying to understand the shift in perception of scientist on to what are important questions to ask. It also wants to start looking at how the diversity of the scientist conducting the research affects the questions they ask.  The up and coming ESA centennial is a great time to look at our deep roots as a science and reflect on how we have changed over the years, especially if we want to plan for the future.