Environmental Science as an Interdisciplinary Science

Environmental science is an interdisciplinary field that integrates several areas of science including but not limited to physics, biology, chemistry to study the environment and find solutions to environmental problems.

What is Environmental Science?

Environmental science is an area of science that looks at the interactions and the relationships of the biological, chemical, and physical parts of the environment. It strives to understand the relationships and effects of these parts with the organisms that are found in the environment.

By taking in information from these three major fields of study, environmental science can look at almost any problem facing our natural world. Not only will scientists be able to diagnosis a problem, but develop solutions that take into account different worldviews and ideas ensuring that the solutions do not cause more problems down the road.

Environmental scientists have three main goals:

1. To understand how the natural world around us works.
2. To understand how we interact with the environment and how those interactions affect the environment.
3. Develop ways to take care of the effects of human interactions with the environment.

Take a look below to see how these many fields of study work together to achieve the three goals of environmental scientists.

Environmental scientists bring a systems approach to the analysis of environmental problems.

Key elements of an effective environmental scientist include the ability to relate space, and time relationships as well as quantitative analysis.

Environmental Science & Interdisciplinary Science Challenge

Click and drag to match the field of environmental study that would best be used to tackle this environmental problem.

Before You Go, You Need to Know

The following key points are from this explore section of the lesson. You must know the following information before moving to the next lesson. This is just a summary of the key points.

Environmental science is an interdisciplinary field that uses knowledge from science, social sciences, and humanities.
Thee three goals of environmental science include:
- To understand how the natural world around us works
- To understand how we interact with the environment and how those interactions affect the environment
- Develop ways to take care the effects of human interactions with the environment
Understand how various science, social science, and humanity disciplines can be applied to study and solve environmental problems
Most environmental problems are the result of human activity

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