We aspire to be able to quantify the systems we study at all scales. At the most fundamental level, Environmental Science represents the application of mathematics, chemistry, and physics to environmental systems, but Environmental Science also embraces biological concepts like homeostasis and productivity and geological concepts like tectonics and deep time. What sets Environmental Science apart from the fundamental sciences and kindred fields like ecology, geology, hydrology, or climatology, is the consistent reference to systems of interacting components. Environmental Science is transdisciplinary, and it emerges on its own as a distinct field of study that relies on a foundation of other sciences but aspires to a level of knowledge and understanding that is more than the sum of knowledge and understanding in those fields. Although it is possible for a single person to assimilate a very large body of knowledge and understanding and to actually study environmental systems on the largest scales, it is far more common for environmental science to be pursued by teams in which different persons contribute different types of expertise to a given problem.
Some careers are scientific in the academic sense and involve original research.
Other careers in Environmental Science are more accurately considered technical and involve measurements and assessments following established protocols and applied to the solution of definite problems. Examples of the latter are jobs in consulting firms, large corporations, and government agencies. The systems that require assessment and the problems that require solutions are extremely diverse. In addition to specific types of technical expertise, environmental scientists bring to such projects a broad understanding of environmental systems and an ability to communicate with other persons who may have different technical specialties. In fact, an essential component of preparing persons for careers in Environmental Science is to prepare them to communicate across the subsidiary disciplines like biology, geology, and hydrology and to build a shared understanding of the systems under study that, like the field of Environmental Science, transcends the traditional disciplinary boundaries.