Environmental History is the study of how settlements alter ecological conditions and how those changes influence each era's ideas about nature with respect to responsible resource use from one period to the next.

Ideas meaning those concepts associated with the perception, ideology and values that contribute to methods of discovery with respect to our surrounding land, air and water when contrasted with and Earth's eye view of the past.

Siry, Worster, Merchant

 

perception, ideology and values

For example: Agrarian values were an essential part of the Jeffersonian ideology of freedom and limited government that perceived the farmer and those who lived by working the land as the principal sources of virtue in a republic that valued self-sufficiency, neighborliness, and independence.

 

Powhatan native village reconstructed in Virginia, eastern woodland indian style.

Geography

Beavers

water levels

keystone species

Natives

Settlements

Stockbridge, Mass. in the Berkshire Mountains equidistant from Boston and New York City.

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Measuring the impacts of settlements

Changes in scale with respect to means of changing surroundings
  NUMERICALQUANTITY = EQUIVALENT OF IMPACT
stages

Subsistence

1
A

Commercial 

10
B

Manufacturing

100

C

Urban

1000

D

Industrial 
10000

E
 

            

Metropolitan (suburban) 

100000

F

Hyper-industrial

1000000

G

Examples of the change:

characteristics of the periods

Agrarian

River – based

Fur trade
Settlement
Timber

Planting - production oriented

Manufacturing -- factory and farm
Railroad
Cattle

Urban commerce and trade

Mining

small scale industry

Urban concentration

 

– production to consuming oriented

 

Roads

           

 

Birth of metro-areas SMSA

           

 

Commercial centers

Hyper industrial

Consumption oriented

  
 
 
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Population -- 

Year amount increases
1790
3 million 
 base
    + 27
1860
30 million
  
    + 70
1900
100 million
  
    +200
2000 
300 million
  

 

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Formula to apply                    

                       

Impact = Population * Affluence * technology

  I=PAT

Any impact is proportional to the number of people, their level of affluence, and the equipment they use to supply themselves and others with a means to make a living.

 

Perception refers how & what one sees or envisions when describing scenery in a terrain.

Ideology is a manifestation of a political and economic faith in how society should function.

Values are a way to speak about ethics or morals in relation to uses, beauty and transcendent qualities of places, persons, or objects.