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The role of trans-disciplinary skills in environmental education and science
Citation:
LANDERS, D. H. The role of trans-disciplinary skills in environmental education and science. Presented at NATO Workshop, Kharkiv, UKRAINE, May 21 - 25, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
In the past three decades there have been tremendous changes in how environmental scientists address issues relating to societal needs.
Description:
In the past three decades there have been tremendous changes in how environmental scientists address issues relating to societal needs. In the early 1980s interdisciplinary work may have involved one or two related disciplines such as limnology, statistics and biogeochemistry in combination to evaluate national issues. An example is the evaluation of streams and lakes with respect to their susceptibility or response to acidic precipitation. At this time, collaboration among disciplines was often discouraged by academic administrators and this was underscored by departments that were narrowly defined by discipline. As the success of interdisciplinary environmental science efforts was demonstrated and institutional boundaries were successfully crossed, great institutional progress was made. Many universities created “Biological Science” or Environmental Science Departments or even Schools and began to smear or fully obliterate disciplinary lines. These efforts resulted in many master level graduates with broad environmental training suitable to work effectively on the more complex nature of environmental problems society needed to address in the late 1990s. Examples of environmental science projects that combined these resources are NSF’s Long Term Ecological Research program, the USEPA’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program and the USGS’s National Water Quality Assessment effort. However, Interdisciplinary Ph.D. graduates were scarce or not necessarily encouraged and leaders in these new efforts were generally those from disciplines that relied, inherently, on interdisciplinary perspectives. Limnology and oceanography are two such areas of study that train students at all levels to combine and integrate botany, chemistry, geography, geology, meteorology, physics, statistics and zoology, in order to understand complex phenomena. Now, in 2008, with the general movement to recognize the importance of ecosystem services to society and to value these services from the perspective of human well-being, another threshold is being approached that requires a trans-disciplinary perspective. This new trajectory adds economics and sociology to the mix in order to recognize the importance of generally undervalued ecosystem services to human well-being. In order to negotiate this next important juncture, environmental scientists must stretch even further to become comfortable with disciplines far removed form their general comfort zone. The rewards to individuals as well as society in developing functionality with respect to trans-disciplinary approaches are many and essential to continue to make progress in understanding and solving environmental problems that continue to become more complex.