The quiencentary of the Columbian encounter was met with an outpouring of concern about how this event and its repercussions were to be interpreted. Environmental impacts have ranked high among the concerns raised.

Current modelling of some environmental changes requires an understanding of changes associated with the encounter.

List of content:

Part 1: Summary and overview:

The Columbian encounter and environmental change (B.L. Turner, II and Karl W. Butzer)
Land-use changes brought about by the Columbian encounter, 15th-17th centuries (Fernando Tudela)
Western Europe and the western hemisphere, 18th-20th centuries: magnitudes and impacts of land-cover changes (Ian Douglas and R.I. Hodgson)
Globalization, spatial scales, and decision making: implications for land use (Pablo Bifani)
1492-1992: searching for signals and consequences of globalization (Francesco di Castri)
Western Mediterranean land-use systems as antecedents for semiarid America (Fernanado Gonzalez Beraldez)

Part 2: Cases from the encounter

Transfer of the Mediterranean livestock economy to New Spain: adaptation and ecological consequences (Karl W. Butzer and Elisabeth K. Butzer)
Land-use succession in the Gulf Lowlands of Mexico (Alfred H. Siemens)
Human-induced landscape changes in Amazonia and implications for development (Nigel J.H. Smith)
Land-use history and four hundered years of vegetation change in New England (David Foster)
Exchanges of weeds between the Americas and Mediterranean Europe (R.H. Groves)
Land-use changes in the semiarid and arid tropics of Africa (Christian Pieri)

Part 3: Onward from the encounter

Landscape changes in the last 500 years in the Guadalquivir River Valley, Spain: with special reference to Doñana National Park (R. Fernandez Ales, J. Merino and A. Martin)
Demographic and resource changes in the basin of Mexico (Exequiel Ezcurra)
Contemporary patterns of landscape change in areas with a Mediterranean-type climate in Central Chile (Eduardo Fuentes-Quezada, Sandra Miethke, and Reinaldo Aviles)
Impact of agriculture and livestock production on tropical soils in Latin America (D. Lopez-Hernandez)
Agricultural technology exchange and development (Vernon W. Ruttan)