Preindustrial human environmental impacts: are there lessons for global change science and policy? Introduction.

Predicting global change requires contributions from many of the physical and social sciences, including physics and chemistry applied to the atmosphere; biology applied to agricultural and natural systems that are sources and sinks of greenhouse gases; and political, economic, and social-psychological investigations applied to potential growth of emissions and their mitigation. Such diverse elements are equally important in attempts to know the past, i.e., to understand how human actions have shaped the environment even before the industrial revolution, and vice versa. In the literature, notable efforts have been made in this regard (Thomas, 1956; Goudie, 1990; Turner et al.. 1990; Jacobsen and Firor, 1992).