Carl Sauer’s Contributions to Historical Geography and Human Ecology

Abstract

Carl Sauer defied disciplinary boundaries and combined geography, ecology, history, and cultural anthropology to examine humans’ impact upon the biophysical environment. As a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, Sauer published several seminal books on geography, collaborated with scholars in the social and biological sciences, and advanced dialogue about anthropogenic environmental change. He conducted research in the United States and throughout Latin American, and he was interested both in early human history and contemporary environmental issues. Sauer trained dozens of doctoral students at Berkeley, and scholars have argued that his work helped to provide the intellectual foundation for environmental history, cultural ecology, and novel approaches to geography.