Environment and Environmental Studies

Energy touches our lives in countless ways and its costs are felt when we fill up at the gas pump, pay our home heating bills, and keep businesses both large and small running. There are long-term costs as well: to the environment, as natural...

The St. Johns River is the longest river in Florida, containing extensive freshwater wetlands, numerous large lakes, a wide estuarine channel, and a correspondingly diverse array of native flora and fauna. Water resource management in the river's...

When Drakes Estero, which lies within the Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS) about 25 miles northwest of San Francisco, California, was designated by Congress in 1976 as Potential Wilderness, it contained a commercial shellfish  mariculture...

 Of all the outputs of forests, water may be the most important. Streamflow from forests provides two-thirds of the nation's clean water supply. Removing forest cover accelerates the rate that precipitation...

The National Research Council's Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability hosted "Transitioning to Sustainability through Research and Development on Ecosystem Services and Biofuels: The National Academies' First Federal...

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) could alleviate the nation’s dependence on oil and reduce U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas. Industry-and government-sponsored research programs have made very impressive technical...

This report summarizes a workshop organized by the National Academies’ Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability. The workshop brought together a select group of program managers from the public and private sectors to discuss specific...

Scientific databases relating to the environment, natural resources, and public health on the African continent are, for various reasons, difficult to create and manage effectively. Yet the creation of these and other types of databases--and their...

In 1992, world leaders adopted Agenda 21, the work program of the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development. This landmark event provided a political foundation and action items to facilitate the global transition toward sustainable...

Sustainability is one of today’s many pressing issues that the National Academies addresses via studies and other mechanisms. National Academies studies relevant to sustainability are numerous and range from analyses of the state of science on...