ABSTRACT
The story of human ecology is part tradition, part response to crisis. Its origins can be traced back to developments over several decades of scientific interest in human-environment relationships which, for the most part, occurred separately in a number of disciplines. A brief overview of this background is given in the following first section of this introduction. An intensified pursuit of the topic set in with the advent of the planetary ecological crisis. This new kind of human ecology strives for integration in the form of interdisciplinary linkages and trans-scientific connections. A number of remarks regarding this development can be found in the second section of this introduction.
