natural history  

An interesting paper on the decline of scientific natural history in developed countries:

Tewksbury, J.J. et al. (2014) Natural History's Place in Science and Society.  BioScience 64 (4): 300-310  doi:10.1093/biosci/biu032

and an editorial in response from Nature:

Editorial (2014) Natural Decline. Nature 508, 7–8 (03 April 2014) doi:10.1038/508007b

The project that gave rise to the Tewksbury paper has a website:

http://naturalhistoryinitiative.net/