ABSTRACT
Historical ecology has long challenged the dominant structures of ‘discipline’ and ‘scale’ in scientific research inquiry. Methodological innovation is an unfailing showpiece of the historical ecology research programme, which interrogates how researchers develop frameworks for understanding the social, cultural and biophysical processes of a given landscape. In this concluding chapter we review challenges of scale, synthesis and action-oriented or applied research in an increasingly uncertain world. The historical-ecological framework is an ideal bulwark against the conformity of science, and we challenge researchers to innovate creative, collaborative and just solutions to the wicked problems that lay ahead.
