Interdisciplinary Collaboration between Natural and Social Sciences - Status and Trends Exemplified in Groundwater Research

Groundwater connections and sustainability in social-ecological systems

Groundwater resources are connected with social, economic, ecological, and Earth systems. We introduce the framing of groundwater-connected systems to better represent the nature and complexity of these connections in data collection, scientific investigations, governance and management approaches, and groundwater education. Groundwater-connected systems are social, economic, ecological, and Earth systems that interact with groundwater, such as irrigated agriculture, groundwater-dependent ecosystems, and cultural relationships to groundwater expressions such as springs and rivers. Groundwater-connected systems form social-ecological systems with complex behaviours such as feedbacks, non-linear processes, multiple stable system states, and path dependency. These complex behaviours are only visible through this integrated system framing and are not endogenous properties of physical groundwater systems. The framing is syncretic as it aims to provide a common conceptual foundation for the growing disciplines of socio-hydrogeology, eco-hydrogeology, groundwater governance, and hydro-social groundwater analysis. The framing also facilitates greater alignment between the groundwater sustainability discourse and emerging sustainability concepts and principles. Aligning with these concepts and principles presents groundwater sustainability as more than a physical state to be reached; and argues that place-based and multi-faceted goals, values, justice, knowledge systems, governance and management must continually be integrated to maintain groundwater's social, ecological, and Earth system functions. The groundwater-connected system framing can underpin a broad, methodologically pluralistic, and community-driven new wave of data collection and analysis, research, governance, management, and education. These developments, together, can invigorate efforts to foster sustainable groundwater futures in the complex systems groundwater is embedded within. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Pathway profiles: Learning from five main approaches to assessing interdisciplinarity

Monitoring and evaluating interdisciplinarity is crucial for informing decisions about interdisciplinary (ID) policies, funding, and work. Yet, the recent explosion of ID assessment approaches represents an overwhelming buffet of options that has produced little consensus, limited guidance, and minimal insights into interdisciplinarity and its value to society. This article extends findings from a companion study that systematically reviewed the ID assessment field from 2000 to 2019. Engaging with the same extensive dataset but in a new way, we employ typological analysis and condense 1,006 published assessment designs into just five main assessment approaches called Pathway Profiles. We then tailor assessment guidance to each Pathway Profile, including potential settings in which each could be most useful and ways each could be modified to reduce challenges and increase rigor. Our goal in defining and interacting with the core of the ID assessment field in this way is not only to clarify activity in this vast and disjointed space but also to simplify and facilitate processes of understanding, choosing from, and strategically developing this diverse landscape. Pathway Profiles can be used as heuristic gateways to the ID assessment field, particularly when it comes to finding relevant examples, adapting designs to situations, and ultimately uncovering the true outcomes of interdisciplinarity.

Enhancement of Geoheritage and Development of Geotourism: Comparison and Inferences from Different Experiences of Communication through Art

Geoheritage is a geotourism resource that could lead to the sustainable development of society, and could contribute to information on geological and geomorphological characteristics, education, public awareness on geoconservation, and landscape protection. Understanding this cultural wealth is still limited, since the information available is often specialized. Communication addressed to the emotional sphere can profoundly engage people, and technical information can be transmitted more effectively. For several years, our research group dealt with geoheritage and geotourism in central Italy. This work aimed to investigate different communication methods, such as publications, announcements through social media, conferences, live performances, and field excursions aimed at the emotional involvement of the public. Furthermore, the emotional response of the public was explored through a digital survey. These communication methodologies enabled a broad public reach, without any distinction based on social origin, cultural background, or age. Narrating the landscape through different forms of art creates a personal relationship with the audience. The emotional participation of the people demonstrates the effectiveness of the method in transmitting scientific and cultural themes, such as the origin of the geological landforms, the culture and the traditions that the site generated, and the problems pertaining to its protection and conservation.

Digital Technologies and Open Data Sources in Marine Biotoxins' Risk Analysis: The Case of Ciguatera Fish Poisoning

Currently, digital technologies influence information dissemination in all business sectors, with great emphasis put on exploitation strategies. Public administrations often use information systems and establish open data repositories, primarily supporting their operation but also serving as data providers, facilitating decision-making. As such, risk analysis in the public health sector, including food safety authorities, often relies on digital technologies and open data sources. Global food safety challenges include marine biotoxins (MBs), being contaminants whose mitigation largely depends on risk analysis. Ciguatera Fish Poisoning (CFP), in particular, is a MB-related seafood intoxication attributed to the consumption of fish species that are prone to accumulate ciguatoxins. Historically, CFP occurred endemically in tropical/subtropical areas, but has gradually emerged in temperate regions, including European waters, necessitating official policy adoption to manage the potential risks. Researchers and policy-makers highlight scientific data inadequacy, under-reporting of outbreaks and information source fragmentation as major obstacles in developing CFP mitigation strategies. Although digital technologies and open data sources provide exploitable scientific information for MB risk analysis, their utilization in counteracting CFP-related hazards has not been addressed to date. This work thus attempts to answer the question, "What is the current extent of digital technologies' and open data sources' utilization within risk analysis tasks in the MBs field, particularly on CFP?", by conducting a systematic literature review of the available scientific and grey literature. Results indicate that the use of digital technologies and open data sources in CFP is not negligible. However, certain gaps are identified regarding discrepancies in terminology, source fragmentation and a redundancy and downplay of social media utilization, in turn constituting a future research agenda for this under-researched topic.

Gaps, biases, and future directions in research on the impacts of anthropogenic land-use change on aquatic ecosystems: a topic-based bibliometric analysis

Anthropogenic land use change (ALUC) satisfies human needs but also impacts aquatic ecosystems. Aquatic ecosystems are intrinsically linked with terrestrial landscapes, an association that is already recognized as a key factor to address future research and effective governance. However, the complexity and range of the impact of ALUC in aquatic ecosystems have been fundamental challenges and have implicitly routed the analysis to particular segments, drivers, management, or effects of the theme. In this study, we present an attempt to frame the subject in a broader context through a topic-based bibliometric analysis. Our aim is to identify possible biases and gaps in the current scientific literature and detect the main topics that have characterized the theme. Our results show an unequal distribution of articles by country when we analyzed the authors' affiliation and also a slight increase in contributions from social and economic disciplines, although they are still underrepresented. Moreover, we distinguish topics whose prevalence seems to change, especially those topics where the use of scenario analysis and multi-stressors are considered. We discuss the main biases and gaps revealed by our results, concluding that future studies on the impact of ALUC on aquatic ecosystems should better integrate social and economic disciplines and expand geographic frontiers.

A breeding pool of ideas: Analyzing interdisciplinary collaborations at the Complex Systems Summer School

Interdisciplinary research is essential for the study of complex systems, and so there is a growing need to understand the factors that facilitate collaboration across diverse fields of inquiry. In this exploratory study, we examine the composition of self-organized project groups and the structure of collaboration networks at the Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems Summer School. Using data from all iterations of the summer school from 2005 to 2019, comprising 823 participants and 322 projects, we investigate the factors that contribute to group composition. We first test for homophily with respect to individual-level attributes, finding that group composition is largely consistent with random mixing based on gender, career position, institutional prestige, and country of study. However, we find some evidence of homophilic preference in group composition based on disciplinary background. We then conduct analyses at the level of group projects, finding that project topics from the Social and Behavioral Sciences are over-represented. This could be due to a higher level of baseline interest in, or knowledge of, social and behavioral sciences, or the common application of methods from the natural sciences to problems in the social sciences. Consequently, future research should explore this discrepancy further and examine whether it can be mitigated through policies aimed at making topics in other disciplines more accessible or appealing for collaboration.

Research interdisciplinarity: STEM versus non-STEM

Research collaboration among interdisciplinary teams has become a common trend in recent days. However, there is a lack of evidence in literature regarding which disciplines play dominant roles in interdisciplinary research settings. It is also unclear whether the dominant role of disciplines vary between STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and non-STEM focused research. This study considers metadata of the research projects funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant Project scheme. Applying network analytics, this study investigates the contribution of individual disciplines in the successfully funded projects. It is noted that the disciplines Engineering, Biological Sciences and Technology appear as the principal disciplines in interdisciplinary research having a STEM focus. By contrast, non-STEM interdisciplinary research is led by three disciplines—Studies in Human Societies, Language, Communication and Culture, and History and Archaeology. For projects entailing interdisciplinarity between STEM and non-STEM disciplines, the STEM discipline of Medical and Health Sciences and the non-STEM disciplines of Psychology and Cognitive Science and Studies in Human Societies appear as the leading contributors. Overall, the network-based visualisation reveals that research interdisciplinarity is implemented in a heterogeneous way across STEM and non-STEM disciplines, and there are gaps in inter-disciplinary collaborations among some disciplines.

Approaches to Measuring Trends in Interdisciplinary Research Publications at One Academic Medical Center

PURPOSE

To determine if interdisciplinary research has increased between 2005 and 2015, based on an analysis of journal articles containing at least 1 author from Johns Hopkins University, and to compare different methods for determining the disciplinarity of research articles.

METHOD

In 2017-2018, 100 peer-reviewed biomedical science articles were randomly selected from years 2005, 2010, and 2015 and classified as unidisciplinary or interdisciplinary based on Scopus author affiliation data (method 1). The corresponding authors of the 2010 and 2015 articles were sent a survey asking them to describe the disciplines involved in their research (method 2) and to define their research as unidisciplinary or interdisciplinary based on provided definitions (method 3).

RESULTS

There was a statistically significant increase in the proportion of interdisciplinary articles in 2015 compared with both 2005 and 2010 (P = .02). Comparison of the 3 methods indicated that 45% of the articles were classified as interdisciplinary based on author affiliation data (method 1), 40% based on the corresponding author's description of the disciplines involved in their research (method 2), and 71% based on the corresponding author's definition of their article's disciplinarity (method 3). There was a statistically significant difference in the proportion of articles classified as interdisciplinary between methods 1 and 3 (P < .001) and between methods 2 and 3 (P < .001).

CONCLUSIONS

This study found that interdisciplinary research increased at Johns Hopkins University over the past decade and highlights the difference between corresponding authors' views of their own research and other methods for determining interdisciplinarity.

EU Nitrates Directive, from theory to practice: Environmental effectiveness and influence of regional governance on its performance

Despite the European Nitrate Directive (ND) being issued almost 30 years ago, groundwater nitrate contamination is still a serious threat to ecosystems and human health. In one of the areas most affected by nitrates, the Lombardy Plain (Italy), the effectiveness of the ND and the capacity of governance to support its application correctly was assessed using a socio-hydrogeological approach. Nitrate trends over 11 years show that most regions present steady or increasing concentrations, highlighting how contamination can affect previously impaired situations and supposedly resistant and resilient aquifers. Stakeholder network analysis reveals that the governance framework does not support knowledge dissemination and changes in farmers' attitudes, hindering water quality improvements. Nitrogen input needs to be reduced and manure relocation monitored. The local governance scale has a key role in enhancing ND dissemination. Reports to the EU Commission should integrate multi- or interdisciplinary evaluation of trends, including governance dynamics, alongside hydrochemical information.

Evaluating a dialogue-based approach to teaching about values and policy in graduate transdisciplinary environmental science programs

This article discusses a formal evaluation of new curricular materials and activities designed to foster understanding of three key issues-expertise, risk, and sociopolitical constraints-related to values and policy in transdisciplinary environmental science. We begin by describing the three issues, along with current thinking about the most appropriate ways to address them in the context of transdisciplinary environmental science. We then describe how we created curricular materials and activities focusing on these three issues that could be tailored for use in a wide range of graduate environmental science programs. The curriculum was adapted by instructors for use in five graduate classes at two US universities, and we used a pre-test, post-test mixed methods design to evaluate its effects on students' ethical reasoning about values and policy. The results of this evaluation suggest that our semi-structured, dialogue-based curriculum enhances student awareness of and reasoning about values and policy in environmental research. We close with several educational recommendations for transdisciplinary environmental science programs that are grounded in our experience with this curriculum.

Sustainable Water Use in Agriculture: A Review of Worldwide Research

Sustainability of water use in agriculture is a line of research that has gained in importance worldwide. The present study reviewed 25 years of international research on sustainable water use in agriculture. A bibliometric analysis was developed to sample 2084 articles. Results indicate exponential growth in the number of articles published per year, with research in this field having acquired a global scale. Environmental Science and Agricultural and Biological Sciences are the main categories. Three journals—Agricultural Water Management, Water Resources Management and Nongye Gongcheng Xuebao Agricultural Engineering—published the most of the articles. China, the U.S., Australia, India and Germany produced the most research. The three institutions that published the most articles were all Chinese (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Agricultural University and Northwest A&F University). The most cited authors were Ridoutt, Hoekstra and Zhang. The keywords most frequently used include: water-use, irrigation, water-management, water-supply, and sustainability. A network map shows three clusters that focus on the environmental, agronomic and management aspects. The findings of this study can assist researchers in this field by providing an overview of research on the sustainability of hydric resources.