USMA Library Homepage: Geography and Environmental Engineering: Environmental Science

Welcome to Environmental Science

Environmental Science is a multi-disciplinary, integrative, science-based study of how humans affect the planet with the goal of creating a sustainable future for all. Environmental scientists explore, discover, describe and investigate the Earth (our home planet). Environmental Science goes beyond the traditional natural sciences to also incorporate knowledge from political science, ethics, public health, and economics. It seeks to connect the natural sciences (Biology, Ecology, Geology, Meteorology) that describe the environment with the human activities of business, industry, and government, seeking to minimize environmental degradation and promote sustainability. The program is designed to be flexible and relevant and helps you prepare to solve our most pressing unsolved problems (reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, eliminating the CO₂ emissions which are driving climate change, stopping population growth). The major is broad enough to give you options (law school, grad school, medical school, employment at all levels of government, business) and deep enough to make you a subject expert.

Databases

JSTOR (includes Books on JSTOR) This link opens in a new window
Provides access to scholarly journals and books in a wide range of disciplines.
User's Guide: https://support.jstor.org/hc/en-us/articles/360000063528-An-Introduction-to-Searching-on-JSTOR
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Scholarly journal collection providing full text access to current and archived content from over 500 titles. USMA Library Subscribes to a limited number of books through Project Muse. If you find a title of interest, please search for it in SCOUT.
EBSCOhost This link opens in a new window
Provides access to a wide range of databases, many with full text. Chose to search one database or search all.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Discover ebooks and peer-reviewed journals in the areas of physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, health sciences, and social sciences and humanities. It contains indexing, abstracts, and tables of contents for over 2,500 journals and over 35,000 ebooks.
ASCE Research Library This link opens in a new window
Portal to American Society of Civil Engineers publications. Includes journals and conference proceedings. E-Books not included.

Websites

Association for Environmental Studies and Science
- The purpose of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) is to serve the faculty, students and staff of the 1000+ interdisciplinary environmental programs in North America and around the world. We seek to strengthen teaching, research and service in environmental studies and sciences to support the professional development of Association members not just as individuals but also to advance Environmental Studies and Sciences as a whole.
Digital Commons Network
Dimensions: Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience
- Dimensions covers millions of research publications connected by more than 1.8 billion citations, supporting grants, datasets, clinical trials, patents and policy documents.
DOAJ: Environmental Science
- DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone.
Geodiode - The Ultimate Resource for World Climate and Biomes
- Geodiode on Youtube
Institution for Economics and Peace
- The IEP creates research, which is used extensively by governments, academic institutions, think tanks, non‑governmental organisations and by intergovernmental institutions such as the OECD, The Commonwealth Secretariat, the World Bank and the United Nations.
National Association of Environmental Professionals
- The National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP) was founded in 1975 as the peer group representing environmental science professionals. Over the years, NAEP programs have been continuously updated and refined to adjust to an expanding and diversifying membership base to address the needs of all those active in the profession.
United Nations - One place where the world's nations can gather together, discuss common problems and find shared solutions.
- Global Issues
  - As the world’s only truly universal global organization, the United Nations has become the foremost forum to address issues that transcend national boundaries and cannot be resolved by any one country acting alone.
- Sustainable Development Goals
  - provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership.

Articles

Human Population as a Dynamic Factor in Environmental Degradation
The environmental consequences of increasing human population size are dynamic and nonlinear, not passive and linear. The role of feedbacks, thresholds, and synergies in the interaction of population size and the environment are reviewed here, with examples drawn from climate change, acid deposition, land use, soil degradation, and other global and regional environmental issues. The widely-assumed notion that environmental degradation grows in proportion to population size, assuming fixed per capita consumption and fixed modes of production, is shown to be overly optimistic. In particular, feedbacks, thresholds, and synergies generally amplify risk, causing degradation to grow disproportionally faster than growth in population size.