Exercise #1: Local Environmental History
Instructions
For Exercise #1, you will bring environmental concepts home by looking at your neighbourhood’s environmental history.
- Using the submission form, post a photo of your area (Google Street View if you do not want to show your home) on this interactive map and explain the ecological history of this space, as per this example.
- Write a 700 to 1100 word of the ecological history of this physical environment, including where applicable: pre-contact use and settlement; wildlife past and present; early settlement and resource extraction; invasive species; urban development; stewardship actions (urban stormwater retention systems; community gardens; composting facilities).
- You must show where you found your information, either through footnote citations or with links embedded in the text, or a combination of both.
- The writing can be informal, as per the Exercise 1 Sample (you may even use first person, which definitely will not fly with your historiography and major essay projects!) but correct spelling and grammar are expected.
- In most cases, given the readily available information online, this exercise need not take more than 6–8 hours to complete. It is meant to help you think historically about your environment—to read it through an ecological lens. If you live in a rural area or small town, you may think that there is less to say than what you read in the sample based on a Vancouver neighbourhood, but this is not the case. The environmental history will be very different, and you might focus far more on, say, the settlement period of the late nineteenth century, or the implications of the introduction of cattle or irrigation and less on events of the 1960s and 70s.
- Please note, you should write and edit your submission in a separate file then copy and paste it into the submission box. Once submitted to the HIST 3991 trubox site, you will not be able to edit your post.
Are you a student of HIST 3991? Click here to add a submission to this assignment.
Submissions
Latest Posts
Sacramento, California
March 27, 2025 By: Agambir Bandesha
I moved to Sacramento after the 5th grade and my family has primarily lived there ever since. Like all city inhabitants, residents of Sacramento live each day with the realities of the natural setting. The city is embraced by two rivers where area residents swim, fish, and sail up and down the waters of the American River. Low flow in the hot summer months causes concerns about rapid water level rise during the rainy season and when the Sierra Nevada snow-melt cascades down the mountain into the flat valley (Mitchell, 1994). Sacramento is part of an agricultural processing…
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March 24, 2025 By: Alyx Mcintosh
I live in the countryside of Middlesex County (municipality of Middlesex Centre), close to a small rural community called Ilderton. Where I live, I am surrounded by farmland. Many farms have been passed down for generations, one in particular has been passed down for six generations, as far back as the 1850s (Williams, 2023). Ilderton is a small rural community, located halfway between Lake Erie and Lake Huron (Ilderton, 2007). In the late 1800s, Ilderton had a population of 200 (W.A. & C.L. Goodspeed, 1889). The community has growth considerably in the past few decades, in the 1980s their population…
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March 21, 2025 By: Alex Hankins
The Ecological History of Point Grey, Vancouver Prior to European contact, Point Grey (now a part of Vancouver, British Columbia) was home to the Musqueam First Nation, whose presence in the region extends from time immemorial. Indigenous Peoples relied on the diverse ecosystems of the area for sustenance, harvesting fish, shellfish, and marine mammals from the surrounding waters, as well as hunting deer and gathering plants for food and medicine. The estuaries, forests, and intertidal zones provided an abundance of resources, and Musqueam knowledge systems included sophisticated land and water management practices, such as controlled burns to enhance plant growth…
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Alámex Becoming Agassiz
January 26, 2025 By: Jessica Kampen
Jessica Kampen HIST 3991: Environmental History January 26, 2025 Alámex Becoming Agassiz: An Environmental History I live in Agassiz, on Morrow Rd. Agassiz is a small farming town within the District of Kent. As a resident for just under 30 years, I have witnessed the town’s growth as residences have replaced what was once farming land. The town is situated on the unceded and traditional ancestral lands of the Cheam, Sts’ailes, Sq’éwlets and Seabird Island people. The alternative name for Agassiz is Xwchíyò:m, which translates to Wild Strawberry Place. Miller writes that the area was originally known as Alámex, but…