Using learning networks to understand complex systems: a case study of biological, geophysical and social research in the Amazon

Developing high-quality scientific research will be most effective if research communities with diverse skills and interests are able to share information and knowledge, are aware of the major challenges across disciplines, and can exploit economies of scale to provide robust answers and better inform policy. We evaluate opportunities and challenges facing the development of a more interactive research environment by developing an interdisciplinary synthesis of research on a single geographic region. We focus on the Amazon as it is of enormous regional and global environmental importance and faces a highly uncertain future. To take stock of existing knowledge and provide a framework for analysis we present a set of mini-reviews from fourteen different areas of research, encompassing taxonomy, biodiversity, biogeography, vegetation dynamics, landscape ecology, earth-atmosphere interactions, ecosystem processes, fire, deforestation dynamics, hydrology, hunting, conservation planning, livelihoods, and payments for ecosystem services. Each review highlights the current state of knowledge and identifies research priorities, including major challenges and opportunities. We show that while substantial progress is being made across many areas of scientific research, our understanding of specific issues is often dependent on knowledge from other disciplines. Accelerating the acquisition of reliable and contextualized knowledge about the fate of complex pristine and modified ecosystems is partly dependent on our ability to exploit economies of scale in shared resources and technical expertise, recognise and make explicit interconnections and feedbacks among sub-disciplines, increase the temporal and spatial scale of existing studies, and improve the dissemination of scientific findings to policy makers and society at large. Enhancing interaction among research efforts is vital if we are to make the most of limited funds and overcome the challenges posed by addressing large-scale interdisciplinary questions. Bringing together a diverse scientific community with a single geographic focus can help increase awareness of research questions both within and among disciplines, and reveal the opportunities that may exist for advancing acquisition of reliable knowledge. This approach could be useful for a variety of globally important scientific questions.

Reflections on designing a Biology/Humanities interdisciplinary module

This paper uses the reflections of a recent workshop on biology and the humanities subject areas to consider the potential for designing a first year interdisciplinary module that brings together teachers and learners in the Biosciences with their counterparts in English and History. It considers three building blocks of module design: aims and objectives; teaching and learning strategies; and assessment; and provides a commentary on the discussion of interdisciplinarity in the broader literature. The authors argue that interdisciplinary teaching and learning must be transformative, but not in the way many previous advocates of interdisciplinarity have assumed. Rather than transcending disciplines, the authors contend that the aim should be to enhance disciplinary understanding. Learners should emerge from the interdisciplinary module not having lost their identity as biologists, but having enhanced it. They should have become ‘better’ biologists in the sense of having developed a broader, critical understanding of the precepts of their discipline, as a first step to an understanding of biology inflected with a literary and historical awareness.