Human Dimensions of Ecosystem Studies

Abstract

Over the course of this century, academic life has progressed in such a manner that scholars who formerly approached inquires from a broad perspective now often constrain themselves within the boundaries of a single discipline. This trend has been a response to the need to effectively engage one’s subject matter by developing specialized methodologies, vocabularies, and expectations. Whereas this specialization has proved to be a successful approach for many inquiries, it has also acted to divide scholars in both their training and their investigations. Nowhere has this trend been more pronounced than in environmental sciences whose subject matter naturally divides itself into four domains: biotic, human, geologic, and ‘‘built’’ (Figure 1). Despite well-entrenched disciplinary divisions, most practicing scientists recognize that when treating a comprehensive subject, like human ecosystems, inquiries can not be effectively pursued by specialists working in one of these domains in isolation from the others. For it is by working at the junction of these domains that processes can be best understood and the greatest scientific breakthroughs will be made. Yet, building intellectual bridges between the life, earth, engineering, and social sciences remains extremely difficult. To each of us with our own disciplinary training ‘‘human–environmental interactions’’ has come to mean something quite distinct. For sociologists the ‘‘environment’’ is the social conditions created by humans, for anthropologists the interaction focuses on subsistence pursuits, and for the biologists human participation in an ecosystem is often viewed as a ‘‘disturbance.’’ Yet, increasingly people trained in each of these perspectives are recognizing the value—no, the necessity—of bridging these disciplinary chasms to create a new means of synthesis. This article reports on the efforts being made by the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAPLTER) project to build these bridges. In a special section of a recent issue of the journal Science several distinguished ecologists reached the conclusion that ‘‘most aspects of the structure and functioning of Earth’s ecosystems cannot be understood without accounting for the strong, often dominant influence of humanity’’ (Vitousek and others 1997, p 494). Furthermore, in a letter to the editor of Science only a few months ago, 20 prominent ecologists called for their colleagues to devote increased energy to understanding and better managing human influences over ecosystem function (Bazzaz and others 1998). Ecologists have long recognized that humans have had significant impacts on their study areas, but these have most often been treated as a form of external disturbance. Although adequate in some respects, it underestimates the pervasiveness and complexity of human influence. To truly understand human actions and influences upon ecosystems, it is essential to thoroughly integrate the approaches developed in the social and economic sciences with those of life and earth scientists. Recognition that ecosystems are affected by biological, geological (including climate), and human (both social and engineering) forces is a first step in the process of integration. Although most ecologists acknowledge that there are fundamental ‘‘drivers’’ behind biological and geological processes, they have little familiarity with the ‘‘drivers’’ behind human action. Without taking into account these drivers and the interactions they engender, our understanding of ecosystem dynamics both at the Received 18 February 1999; accepted 3 March 1999. E-mail: charles.redman@asu.edu Ecosystems (1999) 2: 296–298 ECOSYSTEMS r 1999 Springer-Verlag