Human Responses to Climatically-driven Landscape Change and Resource Scarcity: Learning from the Past and Planning for the Future

The study of past climatic and environmental changes and human responses to such changes is increasingly relevant today, as societies across the world begin to confront anthropogenic climate change resulting principally from the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting emission of greenhouse gases (Raupach et al. 2007; Somerville et al. 2007). While there is widespread agreement among scientists and policy makers that efforts should be made to prevent global mean surface temperature rising by more than 2°C above late pre-industrial values, current policy regimes risk committing the world to a global warming of 4°C or more by 2100 (Anderson and Bows 2008). Although the precise consequences of a warming above 2°C are uncertain, such a warming is likely to be associated with systematic climatic reorganization and the transformation of landscapes and biogeochemical systems at scales ranging from the global to the local (IPCC 2007).