THE ROLE OF TRANS-DISCIPLINARY SKILLS IN ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

摘要

In the past four decades there have been tremendous changes in how environmental scientists address issues relating to societal needs. In the early 1980s, interdisciplinary work involved one or two related science disciplines in combination to evaluate national issues. 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 some long-established disciplinary lines. 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. 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 looms that requires a trans-disciplinary perspective. 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.