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Paleocological Research on Easter Island: Insights on Settlement, Climate Changes, Deforestation and Cultural Shifts examines the area's climatic and ecological history, a topic not usually addressed in other literature. The book provides a thorough and synthetic account of all paleoecological works developed to date, including the latest discoveries. Finally, it attempts to match paleoecological evidence with the results of other disciplines creating a multidisciplinary framework. This approach to the field is ideal for researchers, university professors and graduate students in a varied range of disciplines and subdisciplines, including ecology, paleoecology, paleoclimatology, biogeography, sedimentology, and paleontology.
Users will find synthesized information on Easter Island from the last millennia that will help pave the way towards an integrated interdisciplinary vision of the island's environmental-ecological-cultural system as a complex functional unit. Human and environmental deterministic views are avoided and the Easter Island enigmas are analyzed under a holistic perspective of continuous feedbacks and synergies among the different components of the system.
List of contents
1. The island: Present conditions and paleoecological archives2. Before paleoecology: The enigmas of Easter Island3. The paleoecological pioneers and the rising of the ecocidal paradigm4. The transitional phase: Paleoecological quietness5. The revival: An opportunity for climate change6. Latest developments: Towards a holistic perspective7. Synopsis: From human determinism to socioecological complexity8. Future research: A plea for true interdisciplinarity
