Mission-oriented research combines a wide array of natural and social science disciplines to offer solutions for complex and multi-dimensional challenges such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, and scarcity of natural resources. The utilization of the outputs of mission-oriented research aims for changes in behavior, policy and practice…

Interdisciplinarity is often framed as crucial for addressing the complex problems of contemporary society and for achieving new levels of innovation. But while science policy and institutions have provided a variety of incentives for stimulating interdisciplinary work throughout Europe, there is also growing evidence that some aspects of the…

Conceptual models are useful for facing the challenges of environmental sciences curriculum and course developers and students. These challenges are inherent to the interdisciplinary and problem-oriented character of environmental sciences curricula. In this article, we review the merits of conceptual models in facing these challenges. These…

An environmental research project was carried out by a consortium established among scientists and university lecturers in collaboration with two high schools. High school students participated in a long-term study of the local temporal profiles of tropospheric ozone and the relationship to pollution and meteorological parameters. Low-cost…

Systemic understanding of potential research activities and available technology seeds at university level is an essential condition to promote interdisciplinary and vision-driven collaboration in an attempt to cope with complex sustainability and environmental problems. Nonetheless, any such practices have been hardly conducted at universities…

Presented are perspectives on the emergence of environmental problems. Six major trends in scientific thinking are identified including: holistic approaches to examining environments, life support systems, resource management, risk assessment, streamlined methods for monitoring environmental change, and emphasis on the global framework. (Author/SA)

Reviews the environmental research of the California Institute of Technology. Caltech's environmental quality laboratory brings together scientists, engineers, and economists to tackle interdisciplinary problems that have implications for public policy. (Author/CO)

This study used citation analysis and ordinary least squares regression to investigate the relationship between an article's citation rate and its degree of interdisciplinarity in one area of environmental science, namely forestry. Findings provide empirical evidence that interdisciplinary methods have made a measurable and positive impact on the…

The marriage between the method, theory, and content of traditional architectural education and the social sciences is discussed. It is suggested that the architecture student, the profession, and the social scientists need to work cooperatively in the teaching of architecture in the context of the design studio. (MLW)

This first article in a three-part series on environmental databases focuses on sources for general multidisciplinary environmental information. Databases that provide access to periodical literature, news information, press releases, magazines, books, and environmental education literature are examined; and a suggested list of environmental terms…

Describes the Dominican Study of Environmental Adaptation of Marine Organisms ("D.SEA"). Includes information organization and funding, purpose and goals, preliminary experiences with the program, and comments by the 14 students who have been working in the program. (JN)

Focuses on two aspects of the information requirements related to global change: (1) the changing information needs in the global change-research community, and (2) the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center as a model for institutions supporting interdisciplinary analysis of global change research. (MDH)

Ways that environment and behavior research is taught to design students and how it is being introduced into architectural curricula/design studio are examined. Examples of explicit environment and behavior research use in building designs are provided. (MLW)

Maintains that the concept of scale is fundamental to geography, yet the definitions for scale and other spatial terms are confusing to researchers in other spatial science disciplines. Provides a terminology of scale that can be used for a multidisciplinary lexicon of accepted scaling terms. (CFR)

Considers a new aspect to today's environmental education in which students are challenging campus administrators to make the setting of their education more environmentally sustainable. This movement is tearing down walls between academia and campus operations. Students are gaining practical experiences that buttress their academic studies.…