In 1898, a pioneering Antarctic expedition was stuck in sea ice for over a year. In 2024, that area is open water.
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Articles on Environmental history
Displaying 1 - 20 of 27 articles
Indigenous fire management shaped Australian tropical savannas over millennia, until the arrival of Europeans pushed the landscape back into a dangerous, unmanaged state.
When people first came to Australia 65,000 years ago, the Earth was in an ice age. Then the seas rose, drought and floods came – and still people endured.
The iconic tree lived through the Little Ice Age, modern climate change, and an alarming drop in biodiversity.
Newcomers in Australia found and took rich pastures made by Aboriginal fire. Without fire, pastures would revert to forest or scrub.
We’re having a big impact on the planet. But what marks will we leave behind in deep time?
Even in a time with limited alternatives, polluted waterways were not simply accepted without complaint.
Humans have long struggled to understand the nocturnal world. As environmental change becomes increasingly acute, understanding their lives has never been more critical.
Human waste created the landscape for a medieval Indian Ocean trading port and may eventually have led to its demise.
Plague-wary Londoners tolerated mischievous red kites and ravens for their services to the city’s sanitation.
The UK’s marshes, bogs and fens provided the bare necessities of daily life for many centuries.
Food shortages, festivities and far-off fighting – Britain’s coldest winters were among its most memorable.
Historians and scientists discovered how colonisation in eastern Europe changed ecosystems – and the societies embedded in them.
Instead of Tudors and Churchill, history students need to learn how civilisation has arrived at the point of no return.
Saving seed is a way of protecting the world’s vegetable varieties, saving money, and increasingly, a political statement too.
Historical perspective can offer much in this time of ecological crisis,. Many historians are reinventing their traditional scales of space and time to tell different kinds of stories that recognise the unruly power of nature.
The process known as policy analysis requires careful consideration and deliberation. In most cases, the public also gets to weigh in.
His exquisite drawings suggest a particular depth of feeling for the natural world and he was attuned to the emotions of animals. Yet it seems that preservation of nature was not on Leonardo’s mind.
Progress, in historical terms, has so often meant clearing places of their native inhabitants – both human and non-human.
Scientists have discovered new evidence of a drought that finished off the Akkadian Empire 4,000 years ago.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor of Medieval History, University of Oxford
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Distinguished Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Penn State
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W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, Pomona College
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Cecil D. Andrus Endowed Chair for Environment and Public Lands and University Distinguished Professor, Boise State University
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Professor of Environmental History, University of Liverpool
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Director, Gender and Women's History Research Centre, Australian Catholic University
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Associate Professor in History of Modern Science and Technology, University of Cambridge
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Professor of History, The University of Western Australia
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Senior lecturer, University of Tasmania
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Senior Lecturer in Modern and Environmental History, University of Bristol
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Associate professor in Physical Geography, Northumbria University, Newcastle
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Adjunct Associate Professor James Cook University and University Fellow Charles Darwin University, James Cook University
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Emeritus Professor of History, Australian National University
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Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Node Leader in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures, Flinders University
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Lecturer in History, Coventry University
