The University of Arizona

Integrated History and future Of People on Earth (IHOPE)

History is full of stories of how environmental stress can hasten social and economic collapse. However, if you take a closer look, you find that the notion that environmental stress leads inevitably and directly to social collapse masks a more complicated, and often more hopeful, model. For example, extreme drought has triggered both social collapse and ingenious management of water through irrigation. Human responses to the environment lead to the development a complex web of multidirectional connections in time and space. How can we understand that web of connections in a way that enables us to learn lessons for adapting to climate and other environmental changes in the future?

Lisa Graumlich is part of a team of collaborators who are developing integrated records of the co-evolving human-environment system over multiple temporal and spatial scales from decades to millennia and from local to global. The goal of this group, termed the Integrated History and future of People On Earth (IHOPE) project, is to provide a deeper understanding of the present and a better basis for forecasting the future. IHOPE has three long-term goals:

  • Map the integrated record of biophysical and human system change on the Earth over the last several millennia, with higher temporal and spatial resolution in the last 2000 and the last 200 years.
  • Understand the social-ecological dynamics of human history by testing human-environment system models against this integrated history.
  • Based on these historical insights, develop credible options for the future of humanity.

Progress to date: The 2005 Dahlem Conference launched the project and provided the venue for developing the papers included in the IHOPE book (Costanza et al. 2007). Ongoing work by collaborators is centered on the US Southwest and the Mediterranean.

Key Collaborators:

Robert Costanza, University of Vermont

Will Steffan, Australian National University

Sander Van Der Leeuv, Arizona State University

John Dearing, University of Liverpool

Kathy Hibbard, National Center for Atmospheric Research

Rik Leemans, Wageningen University

Charles Redman, Arizona State University

Dave Schimel, NEON, Inc.

References:

Costanza, R., Graumlich, L. J., and Steffen W. (eds.). 2007. Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and future Of People on Earth. Dahlem Workshop Report 96. MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.

Costanza, R. L. Graumlich, W. Steffen, C. Crumley, J. Dearing, K. Hibbard, R. Leemans, C. Redman, and D. Schimel. 2007. Sustainability or Collapse: What Can We Learn from Integrating the History of Humans and the Rest of Nature? Ambio 36:522-527

The potential interconnections between society, natural forcings, and ecosystems, from Dearing et al. 2007, in the IHOPE volume.