Human-environment interactions: towards synthesis and simulation

Leaders of the PAGES Focus 5 programme `Past Ecosystem Processes and Human-Environment Interactions' identify key issues for research on human-environment interactions for wider discussion. These include the need for long-term perspectives, the opportunities for maximising palaeoenvironmental research, the need for integration and regionalisation and the challenge of developing dynamic simulation models. A new organisational matrix for regional studies is outlined, based on a series of zonal/azonal regions and on the degree of human impact. Future priorities for palaeoenvironmental research include new studies in degraded human-dominated landscapes, highly-valued ecosystems and sites relevant to other IGBP Core Projects. Simulation of future human-environment interactions using modelling approaches that have been tested against long records lags behind global climate modelling, but cellular approaches for biogeophysical and multi-agent systems show promise.