Whatever happened to historical ecology and why isn’t there more of it in landscape ecology?

Historical ecology is an approach for reconstructing past landscapes and is particularly important in helping understand how past human-nature interactions affect the current ecology and distribution of organisms and in informing future management needs. Here, I show how little historical ecology is going on in the context of landscape ecology and suggest this is not only because of the challenging nature of the subject but also due to problems associated with the perceived originality of case studies. I highlight that contemporary approaches to  landscape ecology are rooted in equilibrium thinking and there is a need to recognise the importance of historical ecology: first, in terms of providing evidence to establish the temporal continuity of habitats and how such historical continuity can be important for maintaining the distribution of certain groups or species; second, in that such species may have time lags in their responses to contemporary landscape change and the need to recognise the implications of this for landscape planning; third, in terms of recording the history of past disturbance regimes (e.g., of fire, or grazing) and to recognise their implications, and fourth, in terms of broadening our appreciation of past biocultural interactions of humans and nature. In summary, it is suggested that landscape ecologists continue to seek innovative ways to incorporate historical landscape data into their analyses such that analyses relating to contemporary landscapes can take on board the points highlighted above and potentially address non-equilibrium dynamics.