Interdisciplinary knowledge exchange across scales in a globally changing marine environment

Abstract

The effects of anthropogenic global environmental change on biotic and abiotic processes have been reported in aquatic systems across the world. Complex synergies between concurrent environmental stressors and the resilience of the system to regime shifts, which vary in space and time, determine the capacity for marine systems to maintain structure and function with global environmental change. Consequently, an interdisciplinary approach that facilitates the development of new methods for the exchange of knowledge between scientists across multiple scales is required to effectively understand, quantify and predict climate impacts on marine ecosystem services. We use a literature review to assess the limitations and assumptions of current pathways to exchange interdisciplinary knowledge and the transferability of research findings across spatial and temporal scales and levels of biological organization to advance scientific understanding of global environmental change in marine systems. We found that species-specific regional scale climate change research is most commonly published, and "supporting" is the ecosystem service most commonly referred to in publications. In addition, our paper outlines a trajectory for the future development of integrated climate change science for sustaining marine ecosystem services such as investment in interdisciplinary education and connectivity between disciplines.

A cross‐scale framework to support a mechanistic understanding and modelling of marine climate‐driven species redistribution, from individuals to communities

“…As a result, new knowledge and techniques are often not widely shared and assimilated. Future development in this field would benefit greatly from improved communication across methods and disciplines, to catalyse and integrate new knowledge and produce new strategies for furthering our understanding of species redistributions (McDonald et al 2018, Kelly et al 2019.…”

Where the Ecological Gaps Remain, a Modelers' Perspective

“…In turn, this is likely to require cross fertilization from across many modeling lineages and scientific disciplines. The value of such cross discipline inspiration is being realized in many complex system relevant domains currently, witness the burgeoning of interdisciplinary science (Nature's 2015 special volume, 525, on interdisciplinarity;McDonald et al, 2018).…”

Inter-disciplinary, multi-scale science to support society to adapt under global change

“…However, communication can be difficult because scientists are not generally trained in general communication. Climate-related research also covers multiple scales (McDonald et al 2018), further complicating public engagement as messages can be complex or appear inconsistent, depending on the scale being discussed. As described in McDonald et al (2018), scientific disciplines conduct climate change research on multiple spatial, temporal and biological scales that often can result in difficulties with exchange of knowledge across these scales.…”

“…Climate-related research also covers multiple scales (McDonald et al 2018), further complicating public engagement as messages can be complex or appear inconsistent, depending on the scale being discussed. As described in McDonald et al (2018), scientific disciplines conduct climate change research on multiple spatial, temporal and biological scales that often can result in difficulties with exchange of knowledge across these scales. For example, Hauser et al (2016) reported that physical and chemical oceanographers conducted research at much larger scales than did biologists.…”