Connecting the past with restoration futures: integrating legacy thinking into environmental decision making
Date
2025-02-18
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Environmental Research Letters
Abstract
"If you want to understand today you have to search yesterday."
Pearl S. Buck, American novelist (1892‒1973)
The interplay of human activities with landscapes over years, decades, and centuries creates lasting legacies that shape the intricate narrative of our environmental and ecological present. In this Environmental Research Letters focus issue on landscape legacies, we invited contributors to explore the many legacies of human activity that have developed over decades of agricultural intensification, resource extraction, and urbanization, and to address how these legacies are affecting water quality and ecosystem function. This invitation led to the creation of a unique volume of articles exploring a wide variety of legacies, from the accumulation of phosphorus in lake sediments to the long-term effects of mountaintop mining, from the legacy of effects of beaver loss across the continental United States to the effects of legacy pollution on landowner investments in water quality. These articles, both individually and together, challenge us to face the long-term legacy effects of agricultural intensification, resource extraction, and urban development, and to assess current decision-making about resource use as we connect present behavior with future environmental and ecosystem outcomes. In addition, from these articles, four important actions emerge as keys to environmental systems analysis and restoration: (1) characterization and quantification of legacies; (2) take the long view; (3) celebrate success; and (4) evaluate conservation goals with a legacy lens.
Description
This article was originally published in Environmental Research Letters. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ada16a.
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Keywords
legacy, anthropocene, water quality, acid rain, eutrophication, ecosystem restoration
Citation
Basu, Nandita B, K J Van Meter, Elena Bennett, Emily Bernhardt, Shreeram Inamdar, and Michelle McCrackin. “Connecting the Past with Restoration Futures: Integrating Legacy Thinking into Environmental Decision Making.” Environmental Research Letters 20, no. 3 (March 1, 2025): 030201. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ada16a.