American Indian tribes across the nation are facing pressing ecological challenges related to alterations in species distribution, access and availability of water, shifting community structures, and other phenomena correlated to climate change. At the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI, Albuquerque, NM), faculty and staff believe the…

More than a year and a half after the University of Minnesota made headlines when an administrator halted the premiere of an environmental documentary, controversy and questions persist at the Twin Cities university. "Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story" took nearly four years to make. It explores how agricultural runoff and…

Transportation is one of the biggest contributors to the destruction of the environment. Results from environmental research and pursuant governmental regulations are changing the way companies do business and how transportation systems address the future. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been at the forefront in leading environmental…

An environmental research project was carried out by a consortium established among scientists and university lecturers in collaboration with two high schools. High school students participated in a long-term study of the local temporal profiles of tropospheric ozone and the relationship to pollution and meteorological parameters. Low-cost…

The environmental and social effects of hurricane-related flooding and the recent oil disaster in southeastern Louisiana, and the current global crisis in world fisheries, are case studies that reveal the need for scientific work that is carried out and disseminated with conscious attention paid to the important relationship between scientists,…

Despite the existence of a clear scientific consensus about global warming, opinion surveys find confusion among the American public, regarding both scientific issues and the strength of the scientific consensus. Evidence increasingly points to misinformation as a contributing factor. This situation is both a challenge and an opportunity for…

For the past two years, a steady stream of visitors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has made the roughly 7,000-mile trek from Cambridge to Abu Dhabi to help build what aspires to be the first graduate-level research university devoted entirely to fostering renewable, clean, and sustainable sources of energy. Set to open this…

In 1996, faculty at Sitting Bull College (SBC, Fort Yates, North Dakota) developed its Environmental Science (ENS) Program, basing it on the scientific method and techniques students would need for employment in environmental technician positions with local and tribal agencies. Over the course of 15 years, this employment-based training evolved…

Undergraduate students pursuing a three-year marine biology degree programme (n = 86) experienced a large-group drama aimed at allowing them to explore how scientific research is funded and the associated links between science and society. In the drama, Year 1 students played the "general public" who decided which environmental research…

The breadth and depth of the environmental crisis and the consequently wide and inclusive interpretations of "sustainable development" has promoted a disparate range of academic responses encouraging a loose interpretation of environmental education and Education for Sustainable Development. This in turn reduces the capacity for the…

Universities are uniquely positioned to lead society toward sustainability and their collaborations with community organizations are essential to this transition. The Biodiesel Program at Loyola University at Chicago Center for Urban Environmental Research and Policy provides a case study of course-based service learning projects facilitating…

In 2007, "Environmental Education Research" dedicated a special issue to childhood and environmental education. This paper makes a case for "early childhood" to also be in the discussions. Here, I am referring to early childhood as the before-school years, focusing on educational settings such as childcare centres and…

Disaster studies have made important progress in recognizing the unequally distributed consequences of disasters, but there has been less progress in analyzing social factors that help create "natural" disasters. Even well-known patterns of hazard-creation tend to be interpreted generically--as representing "economic development" or…

This article discusses Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE), a worldwide, hands-on science and education program for primary and secondary students. GLOBE brings together students, teachers, scientists, and community members to collaborate on inquiry-based investigations of the environment. Now in its 13th year, more…

This paper addresses the challenge of "locating the environmental in environmental education research" and does so with particular reference to previously published work by St Maurice (1996), Stables (2001) and Kaufman et al. (2001). At one level these three extracts are about the same thing: that is, they are about environmental education…