Interdisciplinary research is critical to solving most of our current environmental crises and human problems. It is particularly relevant to ecology (e.g. landscape ecology, environmental humanities, and the ecosystem services (ES) concept). This volume of the journal Ecosystems from 1999 has some great articles on the issue.

One of the biggest challenges involved in interdisciplinary research is the influence of disciplinary silos on science research and communication.

…the public is interested in the big picture painted by science, and that picture is rarely painted by a single discipline. We find, therefore, that communicating interdisciplinary results to the public is generally easier than communicating disciplinary results.
– Daily & Ehrlich (1999)

To non-scientists, interdisciplinary research makes sense, because Life is interdisciplinary. But communicating interdisciplinary results within those disciplines can be a lot harder. Every scientific discipline has its own approach to concepts, methodology, analysis and research generally. That’s what maintains knowledge diversity within ‘science’. But it can cause misunderstanding between disciplines, when we forget that other kinds of scientists may do science slightly differently to what is the ‘norm’ in our own field. Continue reading →