Category Archives: Articles

Cultural Resources 101: Part of the Federal Environmental Process

The federal environmental process includes a myriad of individual subjects but there are five big players.  These are cultural resources, biology/ecology, hazardous materials, public outreach/involvement and permitting.  Cultural resources are relevant for every single federal project that must go through the environmental process.  The field encompasses archaeology (prehistoric and historic), historic architecture and Native American…
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Climate Science and GIS

GIS is growing and becoming vital to most sciences; right across the board in the public and private sector, everyone is realizing the benefits that digital mapping can bring to industry, to town planning, resource management and allocation, conservation and infrastructure management. In North America, it has been used to plot pipelines and plan relief…
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Future of Agriculture: Facts About GM Crops and Biotech

Biotechnology is a growing industry, a relatively new science that is expected to grow in importance over the coming decades as we find new ways to improve food yield, modify vital crops for hardiness and protection against disease and extreme weather, and to grow in some of the most remote areas on the planet. Typically,…
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Invasive Species: How They Affect the Environment

One consequence of globalization is that in addition to people and products moving across the globe, wildlife has been transported as well. This practice of transporting animals from their native regions to new areas dates back thousands of years. The Roman Empire frequently brought back animals from foreign lands to use for entertainment in the…
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History of Agriculture

There are many options for those wishing to study an agriculture-based degree due to the nature of the breadth of the subject. With the exploration of modern concepts such as GM, environmental change, sustainability as well as the business and scientific sides, potential students are spoiled for choice for employment and degree options. In most…
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Why Environmental Engineering Is Vital for Our Future

Humanity has always engineered the environment around us. From the earliest days of wetland drainage and the need to acquire fresh water, to keep it flowing and keep it clean enough to drink, building cesspits to take away our waste and to stop pollution of vital waterways, we have always strived to maximize our sanitation…
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Birds in a Changing Climate

Birds have been a prominent feature of life on Earth for eons. The adaptations commonly associated with this group of animals, such as feathers, hollow bones, and air sacs, evolved in piecemeal fashion almost as soon as dinosaurs arose over 230 million years ago.1 Present day birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs, a lineage that includes…
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Environmental Consequences of Fishing Practices

For centuries, humans have relied on the ocean for subsistence by harvesting its abundance of fish.  In recent decades, new technologies have allowed humans to remove fish from the ocean on a massive scale to supply Earth’s burgeoning population. Unfortunately, there are many negative environmental consequences to these practices and overfishing has been identified as…
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What Is Sustainability and Why Is It Important?

Sustainability is a broad discipline, giving students and graduates insights into most aspects of the human world from business to technology to environment and the social sciences. Define Sustainability The definition of “sustainability” is the study of how natural systems function, remain diverse and produce everything it needs for the ecology to remain in balance.…
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Introduction to Botany

Whether you call it botany, plant science or plant biology, it is one of the world’s oldest natural sciences. That means that most colleges and universities will have a botany or plant science degree in their Natural Science or Biology department. Many of the top universities have botany degrees, but there has been a decline…
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