LEWISTON —  The Maine Public Broadcasting Network will premiere two  television productions about a new way of combining biophysical sciences with social science and economics to study Maine’s changing landscape.

The original half-hour shows, airing at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 27, also examine how to sustain the landscape for future generations.

The first two episodes of “Sustainable Maine” focus on Maine fishermen, loggers and scientists from the University of Maine, the University of Southern Maine, Bates College and Bowdoin College as they work together. Their goal: to balance economic growth with environmental sensitivity and local traditions of land and water use in Maine.

The title of the first, “The Triple Bottom Line,” refers to the business concept that economic activity should not only benefit the traditional bottom line of profit, but also “meet the needs of the people and the planet.”

The show examines how this concept is being applied in Cobscook Bay off the coast of Eastport, where potential new advances in tidal power generation must also co-exist with traditional fisheries; and on a private woodlot in Otisfield where the landowner must take into account long-term land productivity and Maine traditions of recreational land use on private woodlands.

In the second episode, “Desperate Alewives,” the relationship between science, sociology and economics is illustrated as scientists work with local fishermen and citizen scientists to study alewife runs in the Androscoggin and Kennebec River watersheds. Their focus is to highlight the social, ecological and economic links between the long-term health of fresh water rivers and lakes, and the viability of coastal fisheries.

Three more episodes in the “Sustainable Maine” series are being produced for broadcast in 2012.