Science and the experience of nature

How should human societies act to enhance ecological integrity and improve human well-being in tandem, now and in the future? In this Perspective, we suggest that this question is not simply a matter of defining the appropriate science and policy, or in achieving improvements in the quality of science communication. Instead, science and policy must draw from deeper waters. We discuss a deeper transdisciplinary approach that gives attention to the meanings that societal groups find in their environments, as well as the ways in which these meanings are embedded in landscapes and other aspects of material culture and inform the individual and collective sense of self. A humanistic environmental science, in short, examines human experience of a dynamic, yet changeable nature.