The Time Lab

Abstract

Long-term perspectives (from millennia to centuries) have a strong bearing on current approaches to the sustainable management of heritage and natural resources; both in terms of ecological knowledge and in mobilising local communities to maintain and innovate rural incomes through continued management of these valuable landscapes. In addition, current rapid changes in climate makes long term knowledge of climate dynamics, interactions between landuse, societal transformation and vegetation change is essential in predicting future outcomes and appropriate landuse adjustments and policy changes. This requires detailed understanding of spatial and temporal representation of used proxies and of the dynamics of different interacting variables. Importantly we also need to find ways to communicate historical knowledge to stimulate debates on present and future landscape management. In this paper, I present example of approaches for historically informed landscape analyses, with new forms and conceptualisations of research from collaborative to action research and narrative approaches.