Dr Phil Burton gave a length presentation on the many and varied topics of forest disturbance ecology, with a focus on the examples of wildfire and logging in western Canada. The goal of these blog posts is to detail, amongst other things, “what new information or knowledge did you learn from this presentation?”. Well, I’m a little stumped. The cascade of details overwhelmed my ability to synthesize the information. While I believe that Dr Burton is an accomplished researcher with a wealth of knowledge to share with his peers, I failed to gain much of what he had to share.

Learning, as I understand it, requires two key components: a framework upon which to place new pieces of information, and repetition. This has become a bit of a preoccupation of mine in grad school. How do I manage to distill new information and store it in long term memory? Given that my time is constrained, what do I prioritize? There is always something new that could be learned and would add value to my understanding of my topic area. But a major road block exists: the “entry level knowledge”. The framework.

In biology there is often an entry level hurdle to clear, and it can impact cross-discipline learning. To play, you must gain an understanding of the base facts of a field. What are the kinds of trees, how are they related evolutionarily, and how does this impact dispersal? What are derived characteristics, how do they help us understand the ecology of insects, and why are we concerned when aquatic insects disappear from a stream? Each piece of information requires some knowledge of something else. This isn’t by necessity a problem, but it does present an issue for cross-discipline communication.

This knowledge hurdle creates a boundary between fields. A marine biologist would struggle to have a conversation with a forest ecologist about disturbance, let alone with a social scientist about sustainability. What does this have to do with Dr Burton? I, with a background in plant diversity and ecology, struggled to assimilate useful information from his presentation. To really pull the synthesis out, I would have to rewatch the presentation several times, take detailed notes, and perhaps then I could generalize some part of his findings to my case (tundra ecosystems).

All this brings me to the thought: do we have a responsibility to learn how to communicate clearly to our peers? Is this, as part of the scientific enterprise, just as important as good methods and ethical studies? Or am I just too lazy and stupid to understand Dr Burton?