Combining History and Ecology to Understand the Past and Present

Combining History and Ecology to Understand the Past and Present

Emily Southgate at the annual Christmas Bird Count in the Piedmont area.

Photo by Linda Millington

By Pat Reilly

The academic career of Dr. Emily Southgate of Middleburg has alternated between her two passions, history and ecology. Fortunately, she’s a leader in combining the two to help communities decide what to preserve and why.

In 1997, Yale University Press published her book, “People and the Land through Time,” which she revised just last year. After 22 years, it remains the only introduction to the field of historical ecology from the perspective of ecology, emphasizing the integration of historical information into scientific analyses.

When the Saratoga National Historical Park, for example, wanted to know how to reconstruct the scene of what many consider the turning point of the American Revolution, they turned to Dr. Southgate. Using personal diaries of residents of the New York area, published contemporary accounts and land surveys, she was able to describe the lay of the land during the battles that resulted in the pivotal British surrender. The National Park Service property reflects that research today.

Her work has addressed many questions about diversity of forests and vegetation historically throughout the northeast, starting in New Jersey, where she taught at Rutgers University for many years. She’s now a senior scholar at Hood College in Frederick, Md., where she’s been an adjunct professor since 2007.

“I felt I wanted to address current issues in historical ecology, such as the proposed geological epoch, the Anthropocene; historical species dispersal and extinction; the impacts of past climatic fluctuations; and trends in sustainability and conservation,” she said of her decision to revise her classic book.

“Earlier research focused more on finding out what conditions were in the past, while now, using multiple historical sources and modeling, scientists are able to get closer to understanding the processes that led to conditions in the past and are those that have shaped the present.”

Dr. Mark Vellend of the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec said, “After reading this book it will be impossible to take a walk in nature—pristine or otherwise—without wondering how past human activities may have shaped the ecosystem in ways profound or subtle.”

While Dr. Southgate has not published her work on Virginia, she’s well known for sharing her insights in talks for garden clubs, as president of the Piedmont Chapter of the Virginia Native Plant Society, and in work with other groups.

Using historical documents, such as the 18th Century “metes and bounds” surveys, to discover that forests dominated the regional land cover when European settlers first began purchasing property in the Commonwealth. Forests were composed mainly of oaks, especially white oak, and hickories, with some chestnut and other species.

When forests grew back after logging, in the mid- to late-19th Century, the chestnut became much more common, before it was wiped out by the chestnut blight in the early 20th Century, she found.

“You can still see chestnut rails in fences around Middleburg,” she said. “They were commonly logged before the 1925 blight.”

Loudoun County was forested, but by 1850, the forest had been depleted quickly by the need for farmland, fencing, firewood and timber to build homes, barns and other outbuildings. Later in the 19th Century, the Civil War armies on the march back and forth across the front lines further depleted the wood supply.

One thing Dr. Southgate believes we may misread about history is that not all forest has been lost to development. She points to a 1937 aerial map of Loudoun that showed it had less forest then than now. Old forests were lost long ago, she pointed out. After farming was no longer as profitable as it had been, abandoned farms returned to forest, but new forests. However, they had lost much of their diversity, especially where they grew on plowed land.

When she’s not teaching and researching, Dr. Southgate is a long-term stream monitor with the Goose Creek Association. She also partakes annually in the Christmas Bird Count and is the past master, whip and still an avid spectator in the esoteric sport of beagling.

Dr. Southgate is currently serving on the Loudoun County Environmental Commission, which has been charged by the Board of Supervisors with advising it on county responses to the environment, sustainability, and the management of energy.

She said ecological lessons from the past will help focus policies that can protect the natural resources of the county for the future. For example, she cites conserving and enhancing tree cover especially in older forests with high diversity, protecting floodplains, headwaters and stream corridors, and managing land to protect rare and endangered species and habitats.

The second edition of “People and the Land Through Time: Linking Ecology and History” is available at Second Chapter Books in Middleburg.