Category Archives: Careers & Specialties

Why Environmental Engineering Is Vital for Our Future

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 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

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?

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

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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Introduction to Environmental Finance

Introduction to Environmental Finance
What is Environmental Finance? Environmental finance is a field that on the surface is unfamiliar to most practitioners.  However, most are familiar with some of the tools or products of environmental finance such as emissions trading and land trusts for conservation.   This field essentially takes a financial look and methodology to address environmental issues.  The…
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The Environmental Impact of Roads

The Environmental Impact of Roads
Roads are increasingly common in today’s world as human development expands and people increasingly rely on cars for transportation on a daily basis. The United States contains over 4 million miles of roadways and an estimated 20% of land in the country is impacted by the presence of roads.1 This large network of roads has…
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Phytoliths: What They Are and What They Tell Us

Phytoliths: What They Are and What They Tell Us
Phytolith studies require an understanding of several disciplines at once. Though the method is used primarily as a tool of archaeology and anthropology (the study of humans in the past) it does require a solid background in plant biology. Therefore, people who go on to research and study phytoliths will often have a heavy focus…
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Entomology 101: Study of Insects

Entomology 101: Study of Insects
What is Entomology? Entomology is now a well-established degree and with the scope of the environmental sciences continuing to expand, the evidence that we can acquire from it is expected to continue to have the broadest possible appeal. Though classed as a subsection of zoology, it is a deep enough subject to require specific undergraduate…
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The Concrete Jungle: Study of Urban Landscapes as Environmental Science

The Concrete Jungle: Study of Urban Landscapes as Environmental Science
Many universities in North America and in Europe now offer studies of the urban environment BAs/BScs MAs/MScs in such subjects as Urban Studies and Urban Archaeology. The growing importance of our towns and cities means they are now a subject of major academic study – an area that is only expected to grow as we…
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