Human society is intimately linked to the environment that sustains it. Civilizations have evolved during a period of unique climatic stability since the onset of the Holocene, around 10 ka. However, even within this overall framework of stability, changes in regional and global climate have significantly impacted the development of societies. To understand the effects of climate change, population increase, and resource exploitation on modern societies, a better understanding of how climate, landscapes and civilizations have interacted in the past is needed. Although these processes impact most strongly poorer, less prepared countries, nevertheless, as Hurricane Katrina has shown, even the wealthiest countries are not immune to the effects of environmental catastrophe.
This Chapman meeting will assess the present state of science on how mankind and the environment have interacted over a variety of time and spatial scales. We encourage participation of scientists from across the fields of the ocean and Earth sciences, as well as anthropology, archaeology and historical sciences to present their recent research. Although the meeting will feature keynote speakers and established researchers we encourage participation from early career workers and Ph.D. students.