Gosz, 51, says that one way to ensure that this objective is met is by "making significant attempts to bring in other disciplines" to ecological studies, particularly the social and economic sciences. "Ecological knowledge is not going to solve problems unless it's brought into the policy-making arena," an area in which social scientists and economists can provide valuable assistance, he says.
"It's only recently been recognized how humans need to be built into ecological studies," Gosz says. "A lot has been focused on plants and animals, but we need to have broader and more applied interests brought in."
For example, he says, SBI is trying to arrange a workshop in conjunction with the U.S. Forest Service that "puts forest modelers with economic modelers. People who do forest modeling think about the biology, and develop a model that explains how a forest proceeds naturally. There isn't a human in it. Economists ...
