INTEGRATING ECOLOGY AND ECONOMICS VIA REGIONAL MODELING

This pager identifies two possible meanings for the notion of integrat ion of disciplines: (1) strong, in which the old disciplines are, in e ffect, merged, and a new discipline emerges using some combination of the insights of the old ones; and (2) weak, in which each discipline c ontinues to use and refine its own paradigm, appropriate to the system it studies, but in which they together create combined models of the interactions between the two systems. I then argue that strong integra tion will never be possible for ecology and economics but that weak in tegration is possible, useful in the world of environmental policy dev elopment, and intellectually challenging. The meaning and challenges o f weak integration are explored further by reference to a multidiscipl inary regional environmental modeling exercise of 20 yr ago-the Delawa re Estuary Region air and water pollution control model constructed at Resources for the Future. Finally, the problem setting assumed for th e Delaware (short-term, steady-state, conventional pollutants) is cont rasted with the new problems that cry out for integrated modeling (lon g-term, stochastic, exotic pollutants with poorly understood chronic e ffects).