Integrating the social and natural sciences in environmental research: a discussion paper.

This paper considers the practical and intellectual challenges that attend efforts to integrate the social and natural sciences in environmental research, and the broader political, social and economic context in which this takes place. Based on the experiences of researchers in Australia—but with obvious relevance for researchers in many countries—it is the outcome of an interdisciplinary workshop which brought together social and natural scientists involved in environmental management. This event and the wider discussions that followed were initiated to enable researchers to exchange ideas about the obstacles to interdisciplinary collaboration, and to discuss ways to overcome these. The paper provides a summary of the issues and proposes some guidelines for interdisciplinary collaboration. These may be summarised as follows: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]