The primacy of past human activity in triggering change in earth's ecosystems remains a contested idea. Treating human-environmental dynamics as a dichotomous phenomenon-turning "on" or "off" at some tipping point in the past-misses the broader, longer-term, and varied role humans play in creating lasting ecological legacies. To investigate these more subtle human-environmental dynamics, we propose an interdisciplinary framework, for evaluating past and predicting future landscape change focused on human-fire legacies. Linking theory and methods from behavioral and landscape ecology, we present a coupled framework capable of explaining how and why humans make subsistence decisions and interact with environmental variation through time. We review evidence using this framework that demonstrates how human behavior can influence vegetation cover and continuity, change local disturbance regimes, and create socio-ecological systems that can dampen or even override, the environmental effects of local and regional climate. Our examples emphasize how a long-term interdisciplinary perspective provides new insights for assessing the role of humans in generating persistent landscape legacies that go unrecognized using a simple natural-versus-human driver model of environmental change.

According to the IPCC, we must immediately prioritize climate change adaptation—change in response to or anticipation of risks from climate change. Some researchers and policymakers urge “transformative change”, a complete break from past practices, yet report having little data on whether new practices reduce the risks communities face, even over the short term. However, much data exists: human communities have long generated solutions to changing climate, and scientists who study culture have examples of effective and persistent solutions. This special issue overviews cultural adaptation to climate change, and in this paper, we review how processes of adaptation, including innovation, modification, selective retention, and transmission, shape the landscapes decision-makers care about—from which solutions emerge in communities, to the spread of effective adaptations, to regional or global collective action. We include a comprehensive portal of data and models on cultural adaptation to climate change, and we outline ways forward, including how to do collaborative research with communities.

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