1.6 What Environmental Scientists Do
Doing science
But what would a working environmental scientist actually do, in the real world? Well, like most science, a lot of what we’re actually doing is gathering data. So that might include designing your experiment, being out in the field, creating and running digital models, or navigating online databases.
Sometimes this work is basic science, trying to understand natural systems better. But often the work we do is directed at trying to support decision makers and stakeholders with the information that will allow them to choose appropriate policies and practices. Basic science does this, too, of course, but often the applied science that environmental scientists do is, for example, assessing the environmental impacts of proposed construction projects, or surveying an area for endangered species.
And of course, as with so much of science, a big part of WHY we’re doing all this is to be able to predict the future. We’re understanding the systems and processes so that we can predict their behavior, and figure out how to impact them so that they come out how we want them to. We might study river systems to have a clean reliable water supply for our community, or to design effective flood control infrastructure. We might build models of future climate in order to predict where and how much surface water to expect. Or we might survey a river-side building site for potential environmental hazards, to protect the neighborhood and everyone downstream.
Environmental Science Faces Certain Unique Challenges.
- Complex systems and wicked problems. So much of what we study are these infinitely intricate, interlaced, and dynamic systems. They can’t be reproduced in the lab, they can’t be isolated, and in many cases they’re changing faster than we can really understand. There is no “control” planet to compare treatments to, or to experiment on. We’re all living in the experiment.
- Highly interdisciplinary. There are so many interacting parts and systems, any one of which you could spend a career specializing in. It makes understanding the interactions among them all that much more challenging.
- Highly politicized. Many of the systems, issues, and problems that we are trying to understand are very important to people to life on Earth, and they are also highly intertwined with human systems like transportation, food production, and manufacturing. So people have very strong opinions about them!
Environmental Metrics
We use environmental indicators or environmental metrics to monitor natural systems. We look for signs of stress, study environmental services, and track changes. We do this by gathering and analyzing data. But much of the skill and craft of what we do is in knowing what to measure, what data to gather. Environmental metrics are measurable and quantifiable (meaning they can be expressed as a number) aspects of the physical world which tell us something about the environmental question we are interested in.