Its field is applied ecology in the widest sense, without regard to the disciplinary boundaries created by modern academic study. Contributions are drawn from biology, botany, climatology, ecology, fisheries management, forest sciences, geography, geology, information science, law politics, public affairs, zoology, and a wide variety of other disciplines, often in combinations determined by interdisciplinary study. Hence, the journal serves to improve cross-disciplinary communication, and to make ideas and results from any one field available to environmental practitioners from other backgrounds. As the principal user of the realm of nature, humanity has a major responsibility to ensure that its impacts on the environment are benign rather than catastrophic. The aim is to present a wide spectrum of viewpoints and approaches, and to this end the journal consists of four main sections.
Forum contains addresses, comments, and opinions about environmental matters.
Articles in the Profile section describe and evaluate particular case-histories, events, policies, problems, or organizations and their work. Papers in the Research section present empirical, technical, or other scientific studies and their findings. The section on Environmental Auditing is for articles that cover methods of appraisal and accounting with respect to environmental resources or problems. Generally, the empirical research and auditing lead to a better understanding of environmental problems and usually of their solutions, the debate published in the journal's Forum helps construct better environmental research or policies, and Profile articles may contribute to either aim, or both. Innovative research is encouraged in the sense of both identifying new problems and formulating novel solutions to well known ones.