Paleoecological Research on Easter Island: Insights on Settlement, Climate Changes, Deforestation and Cultural Shifts

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.

Provides the first synthesis of the available paleoecological knowledge on Easter IslandFurnishes clues on how to integrate paleoecological information with evidence from other disciplinesAddresses the complexity of the environmental-ecological-cultural system by analyzing the interactions (feedbacks and synergies) among its components

1. The island: Present conditions and paleoecological archives 2. Before paleoecology: The enigmas of Easter Island 3. The paleoecological pioneers and the rising of the ecocidal paradigm 4. The transitional phase: Paleoecological quietness 5. The revival: An opportunity for climate change 6. Latest developments: Towards a holistic perspective 7. Synopsis: From human determinism to socioecological complexity 8. Future research: A plea for true interdisciplinarity