Crossdisciplinary research contributions to the United Kingdom′s National Ecosystem Assessment

To date the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UKNEA) is the largest ecosystem service valuation project undertaken at the national scale. It is the result of combined efforts by natural scientists, economists, and social scientists from academic, private, government, and non-governmental organizations. We used a practical methodology to measure crossdisciplinary behavior in the UKNEA and examined the role of crossdisciplinary collaboration in a large-scale ecosystem assessment. We focused on the use of knowledge and techniques from other disciplines by individual research contributors. Our results suggest that the UKNEA integrated knowledge more successfully between neighboring disciplines, but struggled to overcome barriers between natural and social science. This provided a pragmatic balance for an initial exercise but that may be insufficient for longer-term policy uptake and integration of natural and social science supporting the ecosystem approach at broad scales and in complex social-ecological systems.