Importance of Field Work in Environmental Studies

There is simply no substitute for actually experiencing nature, to see, smell, and listen to the integrated pattern that nature has to offer.  Observing nature is the touchstone for understanding how life works; therefore, field studies serve quite literally as the grounding for the environmental studies. Effective response to complex environmental problems that we face today requires understanding of the natural and built environment, awareness of environmental problems and their origins, and the skills to solve these problems.

• Field work initiate the students into real world situations so that they can appreciate reality and develop appropriate skills to solve it. It increases students' knowledge, skills and subject understanding. 
• Field experiences encourage multiple ways of knowing: observing nature (extracting understanding), conversing with nature (developing empathy), and participating in nature (using resources).
• Learning imparted through field work is integrative, requiring holistic thinking that applies information and skills from multiple investigative approaches (theoretical, analytical, experimental, and modeling) to interpret, explain, predict, or confirm assertions about phenomena. 
• On an individual level, field studies often spark a “sense of wonder” that can launch students on a path of discovery-based science, resulting in lifelong commitment to careers in natural, environmental, and medical science.
• Field experiences also provide unparalleled opportunities for the development of intra- and interpersonal skills that are crucial to effective leadership. Such experiences can lead to greater interaction between the affective and the cognitive, thereby providing a bridge to higher-order learning (Rickinson et al. 2004).

         The value of field work in environmental studies is in fact vast: field experiences create not only better science but also better scientists, citizens, and people, thereby substantially affecting the human–nature relationships that form the basis for sustainability (Barrows et al. 2016).