HRC’s Contributions to the ESA Annual Meetings

In January 2015, ESA’s Bulletin published a History of the Historical Records Committee (HRC), by Dennis Knight and Douglas Sprugel. Since then, under the Program Committee directed by Juliana Mulroy, HRC has continued to produce sessions addressing history and historical records, most notably for the ESA Centennial in 2015. Another HRC-sponsored Special Session has been approved for the August 2017 Annual Meeting in Portland, OR.
Knight and Sprugel summarized HRC sessions to date through 2014:

In anticipation of the 100th anniversary, the number of historical sessions increased greatly. Since 2011, the HRC Program Subcommittee, chaired by Juliana Mulroy, has organized the following sessions:

• Doing history for the 2015 Centennial: How every ecologist can help locate primary records for research (2011)
• Preparing for ESA’s 2015 Centennial: Why does understanding history matter to our future? (OOS 2012)
• Ecologists doing history: Notes from the field (OPS 2012)
• A Guide to Ecology’s Past, Current, and Future History: Reflections on a Theme by Robert McIntosh (2013)
• Current Perspectives On The History Of Ecology (2013)
• Communities, Places, and American Ecology: Case Studies (2013)
• Ecological Concepts: Of what value and for whom? (2014)
• Ecological Century: Perspectives on the Evolution of the Discipline (2014)
• ESA’s Struggle for Identity Over the First 100 Years: Lessons for the Future? (2014)

In addition, HRC members and others have presented papers of a historical nature at these meetings, and proposals to the Program Committee for the centennial anniversary in Baltimore have been submitted.

To update the previous list, here are the additional programs from 2015 and from 2016.

• Ecology’s Concepts: How Are They Used and Valued? (SS 2015)
• Fostering Transdisciplinary Science to Meet 21st-Century Challenges: How Can Ecology Learn from the ‘Science of Team Science’? (SYMP 2015)
• External Influences on Ecological Theory: The Effect of Economic, Sociopolitical, Climatic and Other Conditions (OOS 2015)
• The Importance of History and Historical Records as Ecologists Confront the Anthropocene (OOS 2016)
• Uses of and Access to Historical Data as Ecologists Confront a Rapidly Changing World (OPS 2016)

The theme of the centennial meeting, Ecological Science at the Frontier, promoted broader historical perspectives. In addition to HRC sessions above, the 2015 Annual Meeting featured these sessions, selected among others of potential historical interest:

• The ESA at 100: Historical Perspectives on Ecology and Ecological Management (OOS 2015)
• Advances, Frontiers, Applications, and Challenges within and Across Ecological Disciplines: A Celebration of ESA’s Centennial, and a Roadmap for the Next 100 Years (IGN 2015)
• Sense of Place-Importance of Integrating American Indian Traditional Ecological Knowledge in to Federal Research, Land Management and Policies: 100 Years of Working with Tribes (SS 2015)
• The Importance of 100 Years of Natural History to the Ecological Sciences (SYMP 2015)
• ESA Vice Presidents’ Centennial Session: Frontiers in Science, Education, Management, and Policy to Address Pressing Environmental Issues (OOS 2015)
• Human Ecology — A Gathering of Perspectives: Portraits from the Past – Prospects for the Future (OOS 2015)
• History and Its Uses in the NSF Long-Term Ecological Research Network (OOS 2015)
• 100 Years of Agroecology: Pushing the Frontiers of Ecology (SYMP 2015)
• Women in Ecology: Unique Pathways, Common Experiences, and Next Steps to Addressing Remaining Challenges (WK 2015)
• Global Ecology in the Era of Big Data: Challenges and Promises for Plant Ecology in the 21st Century (SYMP 2015)