Abstract: Humans both contribute to and are impacted by climate change. Understanding the interactions between human societies and climate has long been a major goal of fundamental and applied socio-ecological research in archaeology, geography, sociology, and cultural anthropology; this research employs a wide variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches and datasets. To address the dynamic interactions within and between disciplinary approaches, this paper synthesizes recently developed innovative tools, methods, and analyses. Advances in geospatial tools, including remote-sensing technologies, and approaches to modeling, including agent-based modeling, take advantage of and yield ever-larger databases. Innovations that take advantage of “Big Data” are changing the spatial and temporal scope of inquiry. Databases of cellphone-call data, for example, allow near-real time monitoring of human responses to disasters. Survey data can be combined with climate and weather records or environmental characteristics to understand how environmental factors interact with public perceptions, behaviors, and attitudes towards policies. Information from interviews and long-term participant observation helps researchers understand the impacts of climate change not only on people’s beliefs and desires but also on other domains of their lives, such as culture, health, and family. To find patterns of human/environment interactions in more distant times, archaeologists employ a large suite of temporally precise proxies for climate change in conjunction with an improving record of human impacts on the environment and responses to climate change.
We begin the paper by discussing the importance of a synthesis framework and the contributions of social science, especially archaeology, geography, sociology, and cultural anthropology, to understanding climate change, highlighting commonalities and differences of those four social sciences. We argue that a better understanding of social science tools, methods, and analyses will enhance climate-change research and provide accessible synthesis products that can inform decision making and resource management. We then discuss how each discipline rigorously collects and analyzes quantitative and qualitative data, including the pertinent statistical and computational tools. In the next section, we discuss methods for synthesizing information and creating narratives that support actionable science that federal agencies, especially the U.S. Global Change Research Program, can use. We conclude by identifying key insights and future directions that will enhance the translation of social science research into actionable applications.
