I am an environmental historian, which means that I examine the shared history of people and the environment.  I focus on two major research fields: forest history and environmental health.  My forest history research currently examines the history of the north woods, asking how and why northern forests have changed over time, how people have used and altered the forests, how our perceptions of forests have evolved, and how societies have struggled to establish policies governing forests. My environmental health research examines the history of endocrine disruptors, regulation, and the precautionary principle in the United States.

My initial training was as an ecologist rather than a historian. While on a National Science Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellowship at the University of Washington, I researched the evolutionary ecology of Carmine bee-eaters nesting along the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe. My experiences in African conservation persuaded me that to understand (and reverse) environmental degradation, we needed to pay much closer attention to human communities. Understanding the historic roots of environmental change became my primary research focus.

My first book, Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares (University of Washington Press, 1995) examined the causes of the forest health crisis on western national forests. You can read the first chapter at the Washington Post book review site. My second book, Where Land and Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed (University of Washington Press, 2003) focuses on dilemmas over riparian management in the West. This study examines the ways different cultures have transformed riparian systems and the ways scientific and cultural ideas of nature have affected those transformations.

My graduate students all integrate historical perspectives into management and conservation questions. For example, one PhD student, Michelle Steen-Adams, combined landscape ecology with environmental history in an examination of landscape change in northern Wisconsin. She is now an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at University of New England. Other graduate student projects can be viewed at the grad student page.

I am President of the American Society for Environmental History, and Professor  in the  Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a joint appointment in the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, where I teach various courses in environmental humanities. I am also an affiliate in the Department of History.

My campus mailing address is: Nancy Langston, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, 120 Russell Labs, Linden Ave, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI 53502.