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Ricklefs and Miller (2000) consider “environmental science” yet another subfield of ecology that focuses on the specific effects of humans on the environment.
According to them, the study of environmental science integrates the principles of Ecology, Chemistry, Physics, and other sciences with Economics, Politics, and Ethics.
Thus, environmental science is an amalgamation of all the disciplines of science and social sciences.
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Environmental Science attempts to solve the major environmental problems with the help of interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary approaches (Jantsch, 1970), i.e., the entire knowledge of all the disciplines of science such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology, Geography, Computer Science, Medical Science and Biotechnology, as well as of social sciences such as Economics, Sociology, and Psychology.
Environmental science is a subject which draws heavily from environmental biology, but depends more on trans-disciplinary approach.
Environmental scientists often study the action and fate of man-made substances, such as detergents and chemical pesticides, in the biosphere. This study is called eco-toxicology. Eco-toxicologists often use fish and other animals as models to study the action of toxic compounds (Misra, 1982; Mukherjee and Pankajakshi 1995; Feisthaur et al 2002).
Since all the three terms- ecology, environmental biology, and environmental science cannot be defined without reference to environment, they show too much overlapping which is inevitable and unavoidable. Some major problems and disciplines which provide input to environmental science are mentioned in Fig. 1.4.
