Historical Ecologists Map a Changing Landscape

This is how Robin Grossinger, a scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, does field work: He drives around town with a stack of 150-year-old sepia-toned photos from local history books, looking for any landmark - a creek, a 200-year-old oak tree - that might be a match. When he finds one, he swerves his car to the side of the road, races through mud when it's muddy and rain when it's rainy and parking lots when it's necessary to document the evidence with a digital camera, and then races back to the car to drive off before someone starts to wonder what he's doing photographing their strip mall.

"It seems like historical ecology is sort of a sentimental exercise, but it's really about understanding the contemporary landscape...The landscape you kind of inherit and don't really have the tools to decipher."
—Robin Grossinger, SFEI