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Environmental Sciences Open Access Research

Welcome to our page dedicated to our best environmental sciences research. All the content on this page is fully open access, meaning it is free to read and share. Interested in research from a particular journal?  Sign up  to receive article alerts on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

News: Sustainable Earth launches

We're happy to announce that submissions are now open for Sustainable Earth.

Read about Sustainable Earth's ethos and aspirations from our Editor-in-Chief, Peter Newman in his blog ' Sustainable Earth  – science, policy, society'.

Find out more

Submit to one of our open collections!

Published in Carbon Balance and Management , this thematic series aims to form a collection of articles discussing the implementation of currently available  Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) in carbon cycle research.

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NOXious gases and the unpredictability of emerging plant pathogens under climate change

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Future productivity and phenology changes in European grasslands for different warming levels: implications for grassland management and carbon balance

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Beyond exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity: a response based ecological framework to assess species climate change vulnerability

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Possibility of applying unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and mapping software for the monitoring of waterbirds and their habitats

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Revista Chilena de Historia Natural

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Research Topics & Ideas: Environment

100+ Environmental Science Research Topics & Ideas

Finding and choosing a strong research topic is the critical first step when it comes to crafting a high-quality dissertation, thesis or research project. Here, we’ll explore a variety research ideas and topic thought-starters related to various environmental science disciplines, including ecology, oceanography, hydrology, geology, soil science, environmental chemistry, environmental economics, and environmental ethics.

NB – This is just the start…

The topic ideation and evaluation process has multiple steps . In this post, we’ll kickstart the process by sharing some research topic ideas within the environmental sciences. This is the starting point though. To develop a well-defined research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , along with a well-justified plan of action to fill that gap.

If you’re new to the oftentimes perplexing world of research, or if this is your first time undertaking a formal academic research project, be sure to check out our free dissertation mini-course. Also be sure to also sign up for our free webinar that explores how to develop a high-quality research topic from scratch.

Overview: Environmental Topics

• Ecology /ecological science
• Atmospheric science
• Oceanography
• Soil science
• Environmental chemistry
• Environmental economics
• Environmental ethics
• Examples  of dissertations and theses

Topics & Ideas: Ecological Science

• The impact of land-use change on species diversity and ecosystem functioning in agricultural landscapes
• The role of disturbances such as fire and drought in shaping arid ecosystems
• The impact of climate change on the distribution of migratory marine species
• Investigating the role of mutualistic plant-insect relationships in maintaining ecosystem stability
• The effects of invasive plant species on ecosystem structure and function
• The impact of habitat fragmentation caused by road construction on species diversity and population dynamics in the tropics
• The role of ecosystem services in urban areas and their economic value to a developing nation
• The effectiveness of different grassland restoration techniques in degraded ecosystems
• The impact of land-use change through agriculture and urbanisation on soil microbial communities in a temperate environment
• The role of microbial diversity in ecosystem health and nutrient cycling in an African savannah

Topics & Ideas: Atmospheric Science

• The impact of climate change on atmospheric circulation patterns above tropical rainforests
• The role of atmospheric aerosols in cloud formation and precipitation above cities with high pollution levels
• The impact of agricultural land-use change on global atmospheric composition
• Investigating the role of atmospheric convection in severe weather events in the tropics
• The impact of urbanisation on regional and global atmospheric ozone levels
• The impact of sea surface temperature on atmospheric circulation and tropical cyclones
• The impact of solar flares on the Earth’s atmospheric composition
• The impact of climate change on atmospheric turbulence and air transportation safety
• The impact of stratospheric ozone depletion on atmospheric circulation and climate change
• The role of atmospheric rivers in global water supply and sea-ice formation

Topics & Ideas: Oceanography

• The impact of ocean acidification on kelp forests and biogeochemical cycles
• The role of ocean currents in distributing heat and regulating desert rain
• The impact of carbon monoxide pollution on ocean chemistry and biogeochemical cycles
• Investigating the role of ocean mixing in regulating coastal climates
• The impact of sea level rise on the resource availability of low-income coastal communities
• The impact of ocean warming on the distribution and migration patterns of marine mammals
• The impact of ocean deoxygenation on biogeochemical cycles in the arctic
• The role of ocean-atmosphere interactions in regulating rainfall in arid regions
• The impact of ocean eddies on global ocean circulation and plankton distribution
• The role of ocean-ice interactions in regulating the Earth’s climate and sea level

Tops & Ideas: Hydrology

• The impact of agricultural land-use change on water resources and hydrologic cycles in temperate regions
• The impact of agricultural groundwater availability on irrigation practices in the global south
• The impact of rising sea-surface temperatures on global precipitation patterns and water availability
• Investigating the role of wetlands in regulating water resources for riparian forests
• The impact of tropical ranches on river and stream ecosystems and water quality
• The impact of urbanisation on regional and local hydrologic cycles and water resources for agriculture
• The role of snow cover and mountain hydrology in regulating regional agricultural water resources
• The impact of drought on food security in arid and semi-arid regions
• The role of groundwater recharge in sustaining water resources in arid and semi-arid environments
• The impact of sea level rise on coastal hydrology and the quality of water resources

Topics & Ideas: Geology

• The impact of tectonic activity on the East African rift valley
• The role of mineral deposits in shaping ancient human societies
• The impact of sea-level rise on coastal geomorphology and shoreline evolution
• Investigating the role of erosion in shaping the landscape and impacting desertification
• The impact of mining on soil stability and landslide potential
• The impact of volcanic activity on incoming solar radiation and climate
• The role of geothermal energy in decarbonising the energy mix of megacities
• The impact of Earth’s magnetic field on geological processes and solar wind
• The impact of plate tectonics on the evolution of mammals
• The role of the distribution of mineral resources in shaping human societies and economies, with emphasis on sustainability

Topics & Ideas: Soil Science

• The impact of dam building on soil quality and fertility
• The role of soil organic matter in regulating nutrient cycles in agricultural land
• The impact of climate change on soil erosion and soil organic carbon storage in peatlands
• Investigating the role of above-below-ground interactions in nutrient cycling and soil health
• The impact of deforestation on soil degradation and soil fertility
• The role of soil texture and structure in regulating water and nutrient availability in boreal forests
• The impact of sustainable land management practices on soil health and soil organic matter
• The impact of wetland modification on soil structure and function
• The role of soil-atmosphere exchange and carbon sequestration in regulating regional and global climate
• The impact of salinization on soil health and crop productivity in coastal communities

Topics & Ideas: Environmental Chemistry

• The impact of cobalt mining on water quality and the fate of contaminants in the environment
• The role of atmospheric chemistry in shaping air quality and climate change
• The impact of soil chemistry on nutrient availability and plant growth in wheat monoculture
• Investigating the fate and transport of heavy metal contaminants in the environment
• The impact of climate change on biochemical cycling in tropical rainforests
• The impact of various types of land-use change on biochemical cycling
• The role of soil microbes in mediating contaminant degradation in the environment
• The impact of chemical and oil spills on freshwater and soil chemistry
• The role of atmospheric nitrogen deposition in shaping water and soil chemistry
• The impact of over-irrigation on the cycling and fate of persistent organic pollutants in the environment

Topics & Ideas: Environmental Economics

• The impact of climate change on the economies of developing nations
• The role of market-based mechanisms in promoting sustainable use of forest resources
• The impact of environmental regulations on economic growth and competitiveness
• Investigating the economic benefits and costs of ecosystem services for African countries
• The impact of renewable energy policies on regional and global energy markets
• The role of water markets in promoting sustainable water use in southern Africa
• The impact of land-use change in rural areas on regional and global economies
• The impact of environmental disasters on local and national economies
• The role of green technologies and innovation in shaping the zero-carbon transition and the knock-on effects for local economies
• The impact of environmental and natural resource policies on income distribution and poverty of rural communities

Topics & Ideas: Environmental Ethics

• The ethical foundations of environmentalism and the environmental movement regarding renewable energy
• The role of values and ethics in shaping environmental policy and decision-making in the mining industry
• The impact of cultural and religious beliefs on environmental attitudes and behaviours in first world countries
• Investigating the ethics of biodiversity conservation and the protection of endangered species in palm oil plantations
• The ethical implications of sea-level rise for future generations and vulnerable coastal populations
• The role of ethical considerations in shaping sustainable use of natural forest resources
• The impact of environmental justice on marginalized communities and environmental policies in Asia
• The ethical implications of environmental risks and decision-making under uncertainty
• The role of ethics in shaping the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable future for the construction industry
• The impact of environmental values on consumer behaviour and the marketplace: a case study of the ‘bring your own shopping bag’ policy

Examples: Real Dissertation & Thesis Topics

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a research topic, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses to see how this all comes together.

Below, we’ve included a selection of research projects from various environmental science-related degree programs to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

• The physiology of microorganisms in enhanced biological phosphorous removal (Saunders, 2014)
• The influence of the coastal front on heavy rainfall events along the east coast (Henson, 2019)
• Forage production and diversification for climate-smart tropical and temperate silvopastures (Dibala, 2019)
• Advancing spectral induced polarization for near surface geophysical characterization (Wang, 2021)
• Assessment of Chromophoric Dissolved Organic Matter and Thamnocephalus platyurus as Tools to Monitor Cyanobacterial Bloom Development and Toxicity (Hipsher, 2019)
• Evaluating the Removal of Microcystin Variants with Powdered Activated Carbon (Juang, 2020)
• The effect of hydrological restoration on nutrient concentrations, macroinvertebrate communities, and amphibian populations in Lake Erie coastal wetlands (Berg, 2019)
• Utilizing hydrologic soil grouping to estimate corn nitrogen rate recommendations (Bean, 2019)
• Fungal Function in House Dust and Dust from the International Space Station (Bope, 2021)
• Assessing Vulnerability and the Potential for Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) in Sudan’s Blue Nile Basin (Mohamed, 2022)
• A Microbial Water Quality Analysis of the Recreational Zones in the Los Angeles River of Elysian Valley, CA (Nguyen, 2019)
• Dry Season Water Quality Study on Three Recreational Sites in the San Gabriel Mountains (Vallejo, 2019)
• Wastewater Treatment Plan for Unix Packaging Adjustment of the Potential Hydrogen (PH) Evaluation of Enzymatic Activity After the Addition of Cycle Disgestase Enzyme (Miessi, 2020)
• Laying the Genetic Foundation for the Conservation of Longhorn Fairy Shrimp (Kyle, 2021).

Looking at these titles, you can probably pick up that the research topics here are quite specific and narrowly-focused , compared to the generic ones presented earlier. To create a top-notch research topic, you will need to be precise and target a specific context with specific variables of interest . In other words, you’ll need to identify a clear, well-justified research gap.

Need more help?

If you’re still feeling a bit unsure about how to find a research topic for your environmental science dissertation or research project, be sure to check out our private coaching services below, as well as our Research Topic Kickstarter .

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Journals, books & databases

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Environmental Science: Advances

Uniting disciplines to solve environmental challenges Original thinking for a sustainable future

What would you like to know about Environmental Science: Advances?

Impact factor: n/a

Time to first decision (all decisions): 21 days**

Time to first decision (peer reviewed only): 55.0 days***

Editors-in-Chief: Zongwei Cai, Kevin Jones, Célia Manaia

Gold open access, APCs waived until mid-2024

Indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), ResearchGate, Scopus and Web of Science.

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Journal scope

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A new home for all environmental work addressing global challenges

Environmental Science: Advances  spans not only chemistry, but research from any discipline related to the environmental sciences.

We welcome research from any discipline that will contribute to the understanding of the environment, and to the advancement of several UN Sustainable Development Goals – original thinking to take on the world’s biggest challenges.

Environmental Science: Advances is  gold open access , with all article processing charges waived until mid-2024.

Find out why Environmental Science: Advances is a great home for your research .

Join us in tackling the UN SDGs

We welcome contributions to our cross-journal collections across our environmental science journals showcasing research that advances the following UN SDGs. State the following in your Comments to the Editor when you submit your next paper  on these themes: UN SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation – XXSDG0622 UN SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production – XXSDG1222 UN SDG 13: Climate Action – XXSDG1322 UN SDG 14: Life below water – XXSDG1422 All submissions to our Open Calls will undergo Initial Assessment by the journal Associate Editors and subsequent peer review as per the usual standards of RSC journals.

This journal is for anyone, in any discipline, working to advance environmental sustainability. We seek to publish work which improves our understanding of the environment and offers solutions or improvements to building a cleaner, safer, healthier, more sustainable and equitable world.

Fundamental environmental research is welcomed, alongside modelling, fieldwork, applied studies, policy work and studies at the environmental and social science interface. Studies that enhance holistic environmental understanding, for example by connecting different environmental compartments, linking to human health and wellbeing, and joining up other disciplines, are particularly welcome.

Truly interdisciplinary, the journal welcomes research from any field related to the environmental sciences, global environmental change, and sustainability science. Inclusive collaboration across research disciplines is important for scientific advancement and as such, we welcome studies from a broad range of topics including:

• biosciences
• engineering
• soil science
• atmospheric science
• agricultural science
• climate science
• social science interface
• and much more

Studies that advance our understanding of the physical environment, environmental health, and environmental sustainability, or provide solutions to challenges in these areas are particularly welcome. All submitted manuscripts will be judged on their quality, interest, and potential impact, to ensure we publish novel and significant contributions.

Submissions

Submissions are initially assessed and taken through peer-review by our high-profile, internationally-recognised Associate Editors . Authors are free to choose a single-anonymised or double-anonymised peer review model, and a minimum of two reviewer reports are required.

High-quality peer review

All manuscripts published in Environmental Science: Advances undergo a rigorous peer review process, with the reputation, standards, commitment and expertise that you would expect from a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Society focused

Our team is part of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a not-for-profit organisation driven by its mission to support the scientific community and help everyone in it to succeed.

Open to all

Research that helps to tackle environmental challenges must be available easily and quickly. Environmental Science: Advances is gold open access, with all APCs currently waived.

Where disciplines unite

Is your focus oceanography? Soil science? Climate science? We welcome quality research from any area related to environmental science to present an accurate overview of developments.

Progressive publishing

Choose from single- or double-anonymised peer review, keep an eye on your article’s status using our article tracker, and feel confident about a constantly improving submissions process.

See who's on the team

Meet the board members on our Environmental Science: Advances journal.

Editor-in-chief Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China

Editor-in-chief Lancaster University, UK

Editor-in-chief Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal

Associate Editor Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Norway

Associate Editor Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Associate Editor Columbia University, USA

Associate Editor Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Associate Editor Fudan University, China

Editorial board member IDAEA-CSIC, Spain

Damia Barceló , Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research, Spain

Chuncheng Chen , Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Jiping Chen , Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, China

Zhi-Feng Chen , Guangdong University of Technology, China

Saikat Dutta , Amity University, India

Maofa Ge , Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Tom Harner , Environment and Climate Change Canada

Rong Ji , Nanjing University, China

Ramanan Laxminarayan , One Health Trust, Washington D.C., United States

Yongjie Li , University of Macau

Hemi Luan , Guangdong University of Technology, China

Jurgita Ovadnevaite , National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland

Francois Perreault , University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada

Debora Rodrigues , University of Houston, USA

Andreas Schäffer , RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin , Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany

Dörthe Tetzlaff , Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany

Mark van Loosdrecht , Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

Meizhen Wang , Zhejiang Gongshang University, China

Zhe Wang , Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Dengsong Zhang , Shanghai University, China

Xuan Zhang , University of California, Merced, USA

Emma Eley , Executive Editor ORCID:  0000-0002-6379-8502

Demitra Ellina , Deputy Editor

Alex Holiday , Editorial Assistant

Lucy Argyle , Editorial Production Manager

Jamie Purcel l, Assistant Editor

Alexander John , Assistant Editor

Emily Ellison , Assistant Editor

Jack Pitchers , Assistant Editor

Clare Fitzgerald , Assistant Editor

Lee Colwill , Publishing Assistant 

Neil Hammond , Publisher ORCID:  0000-0001-6390-8874

Featured Articles

Advancements in catalysis for plastic resource utilization.

The widespread production and utilization of plastic products have become ingrained in our society, resulting in a staggering amount of plastic waste, severe environmental challenges, and resource depletion. To address this issue sustainably, catalytic technology has emerged as a promising approach to break down non-biodegradable polymers into tiny organic molecules for secondary applications.

Preservation, storage, and sample preparation methods for freshwater microplastics – a comprehensive review

Due to their long-lasting negative effects on the environment and detrimental impact on the health of living organisms, microplastics (MPs), found in both water and sediment matrices, have attracted researchers' attention recently. Although various research and reviews have been conducted about MP occurrence and abundance in aqueous environments, less attention has been paid to freshwater matrices through which MPs enter oceans and seas.

Mechanochemical destruction of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in aqueous film-forming foams and contaminated soil

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are a class of synthetic chemicals of concern that exhibit extreme persistence within the environment and possess physicochemical properties that are resistant to targeted degradation. Comprising substantial concentrations of PFASs, aqueous film-forming foams (AFFFs) present a major exposure pathway to the environment having been applied to land at firefighting-training sites globally for decades.

Integrated 3D pore architecture design of bio-based engineered catalysts and adsorbents: preparation, chemical doping, and environmental applications

An integrated strategy combining 3D architecture design and chemical doping holds great promise for enhancing the performance of bio-based engineered carbon materials in environmental applications. This review paper critically examines the use of integrated hierarchical porous carbon derived from biomass (bio-based IHPC) as an engineered catalyst and adsorbent for environmental purposes.

Peer Review

All articles published in Environmental Science: Advances are subject to external peer review by experts in the field and all manuscripts submitted are handled by a team of internationally recognised Associate Editors , who are all practicing scientists in the field.

To offer our authors a more inclusive set of options, Environmental Science: Advances offers the following peer review options:

Single-anonymised peer review – where reviewers are anonymous and author names and affiliations are known to reviewers.

Double-anonymised peer review – both the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are anonymous.

More information can be found here .

The peer review for all articles submitted to the journal consists of the following stages:

Phase 1: Your manuscript is initially assessed by an associate editor to determine its suitability for peer review

Phase 2: If the manuscript passes the initial assessment process, the associate editor solicits recommendations from at least two reviewers who are experts in the field. They will provide a report along with their recommendation.

Phase 3: The associate editor handling your manuscript makes a decision based on the reviewer reports received. In the event that no clear decision can be made, another reviewer will be consulted.

Environmental Science: Advances is committed to a rigorous peer review process and expert editorial oversight for all published content. Please refer to our processes and policies for full details including our appeals procedure.

Ethical Requirements

Environmental Science: Advances authors, editors, reviewers and published works are required to uphold the Royal Society of Chemistry’s ethical standards . The Royal Society of Chemistry is a member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and our ethical standards follow COPE’s core practices and best practice guidelines . In cases where these guidelines are breached or appear to be so, the Royal Society of Chemistry will consult with COPE guidelines and act accordingly.

When a study involves the use of live animals or human subjects, authors must include in the 'methods/experimental' section of the manuscript a statement that all experiments were performed in compliance with the author’s institute’s policy on animal use and ethics; where possible, details of compliance with national or international laws or guidelines should be included. The statement must name the institutional/local ethics committee which has approved the study; where possible, the approval or case number should be provided. A statement that informed consent was obtained for any experimentation with human subjects is required. Reviewers may be asked to comment specifically on any cases in which concerns arise.

For further guidance on author responsibilities and code of conduct, which apply to Environmental Science: Advances and to all manuscripts submitted to Royal Society of Chemistry journals, please visit  our author hub .

Themed Collections

Environmental Science: Advances publishes themed collections on timely and important topics, guest edited by members of the environmental science research community. Topics and Editors for our themed collections are selected following consultation with the journal’s Editorial Board . Previous themed collections are available to read here and our open collections can be seen here . All submissions to our themed collections undergo an initial assessment by the journal Associate Editors and subsequent peer review as per the usual standards of RSC journals . If you would like to suggest a topic for a Themed Collection, please complete our Themed Collection proposal form .

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Open access

There are no submission charges for  Environmental Science: Advances , and no article processing charges until mid-2024. As part of the submission process, authors will be asked to agree to the  Environmental Science: Advances  open access terms & conditions.

We offer  Environmental Science: Advances  authors a choice of two Creative Commons licences: CC BY or CC BY NC. Publication under these licences means that authors retain copyright of their article, but users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. Read our open access statement for further information.

All published articles are deposited with LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, Portico and the British Library for archiving.

Dive into the benefits of open access publishing

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Read our Researchers’ voice report in response to Plan S

Article types

Environmental Science: Advances publishes:

Communications

Full papers, perspectives, critical reviews, frontier reviews, tutorial reviews.

• Comments and replies

Reviews and perspectives are normally invited, however suggestions for timely reviews are very welcome. Interested authors should contact the editorial office , with an abstract or brief synopsis of their intended review.

You can use our templates to help you structure and format your manuscript in the Royal Society of Chemistry style.

These must report preliminary research findings that are novel and original, of immediate interest and are likely to have a high impact on the  Environmental Science: Advances  community. Authors must provide a short paragraph explaining why their work justifies rapid publication as a communication.

Original research papers on any of the subjects outlined in the scope section and related areas are encouraged and welcomed. All papers should give due attention to overcoming limitations and to underlying principles. All contributions will be judged on the following four criteria.

1. Originality and insight 2. Quality and rigour of scientific work and content 3. Clarity of objectives and aims of the work 4. Appropriateness of length to content of new science

These may be articles providing a personal view of part of one discipline associated with  Environmental Science: Advances  or a philosophical look at a topic of relevance. Alternatively, Perspectives may be historical articles covering a particular subject area or the development of particular legislation, technologies, methodologies or other subjects within the scope of the journal.

Critical reviews must be a critical evaluation of the existing state of knowledge on a particular facet of environmental science. They should be timely and provide insights based on existing literature. They should be of general interest to the journal's wide readership.

All critical reviews undergo a rigorous and full peer review procedure, in the same way as regular research papers. Authors are encouraged to identify areas in the field where further developments are imminent or of urgent need, and any areas that may be of significance to the community in general. Critical reviews should not contain any unpublished original research.

All review content should consist of original text and interpretation, avoiding any direct reproduction. If a significant amount of other people's material is to be used, either textual or image-based, permission must be sought by the author in accordance with copyright law and must be made clear in the manuscript.

These are shorter, more focused versions of critical reviews on a well-defined, specific topic area covering approximately the last two-three years. Articles should cover only the most interesting/significant developments in that specific subject area.

The article should be highly critical and selective in referencing published work. One or two paragraphs of speculation about possible future developments may also be appropriate in the conclusion section.

Frontier reviews may also cover techniques/technologies that are too new for a critical review or may address a subset of technologies available for a given area of research within the journal scope.

Frontier reviews should not contain unpublished original research.

Tutorial reviews should provide an introduction and overview of an important topic of relevance to the journal readership. The topic should be of relevance to both researchers who are new to the field as well as experts and provide a good introduction to the development of a subject, its current state and indications of future directions the field is expected to take. Tutorial reviews should not contain unpublished original research.

Comments and Replies

Comments and replies are a medium for the discussion and exchange of scientific opinions between authors and readers concerning material published in  Environmental Science: Advances .

For publication, a comment should present an alternative analysis of and/or new insight into the previously published material. Any reply should further the discussion presented in the original article and the comment. Comments and replies that contain any form of personal attack are not suitable for publication. 

Comments that are acceptable for publication will be forwarded to the authors of the work being discussed, and these authors will be given the opportunity to submit a reply. The comment and reply will both be subject to rigorous peer review in consultation with the journal’s editorial board where appropriate. The comment and reply will be published together.

Journal specific guidelines

The following guidelines are journal specific. For general guidance on preparing an article please visit our  Prepare your article  and  Resources for authors  pages, the content of which is relevant to all of our journals. To learn more about the Royal Society of Chemistry's policies and processes, including licensing, peer review, publication ethics and formatting, please refer to our  Resources for authors page . 

Use of RSC template

There are no submission specifics regarding formatting; use of a Royal Society of Chemistry template is not required, though it is encouraged. Bibliographies should be formatted according to the following  Endnote  and  Zotero  style files to include the cited article’s title.

Authors are encouraged to include line numbering in submitted manuscripts. Although there is no page limit for Full Papers, the appropriateness of length of new science content will be considered by reviewers.

Submission Checklist

Please refer to our author guidelines for a list of files to provide when submitting to Environmental Science: Advances

Environmental Significance Statement

All submitted manuscripts must include an Environmental Significance Statement (120 words maximum) that should categorically state how the work is significant. This statement should be different from the abstract and set the work in a broader context regarding environmental science. It should aim to answer the following questions.

• What is the problem/situation?
• Why is it important to address/understand this?
• What is the key finding and what are the implications of this in relation to 1&2 above?

This statement will be seen by the reviewers and will help ascertain the relevance of the article for a broad but technical audience and authors should use it to show that they have given serious consideration to problems that are environmental in nature. If the paper is accepted this statement will also be published. Manuscripts cannot be reviewed without this statement.

Guidelines for authors can be found below.

Cover Letter

Please supply a cover letter explaining the importance and environmental significance of the work, and why it is suitable for publication in Environmental Science: Advances .

An article should have a short, straightforward title directed at the general reader. The use of non-standard abbreviations and acronyms, very specialised terms, and the full names of genes or proteins should be avoided where possible. Please bear in mind that readers increasingly use search engines to find literature; recognisable, keywords should be included in the title where possible, to maximise the impact and discoverability of your work. Brevity in a title, though desirable, should be balanced against its accuracy and usefulness.

Author names

Full names of all the authors of an article should be given. To give due acknowledgement to all workers contributing to the work, those who have contributed significantly to the research should be listed as co-authors. Authors who contributed equally can be noted with a Footnote and referenced with a symbol.

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Antiviral-nanoparticle interactions and reactions

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Optimising air quality co-benefits in a hydrogen economy: a case for hydrogen-specific standards for NOx emissions

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Informetric Analysis of Highly Cited Papers in Environmental Sciences Based on Essential Science Indicators

1 Tianjin University Library, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300350, China

2 Information Science Institute, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300350, China

3 School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; nc.ude.auhgnist.liam@nadnayil

4 State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Water Resources and Environment, China University of Geosciences-Beijing, Beijing 100083, China; nc.ude.bguc@gnahznay

Highly cited papers in the Essential Science Indicators database refer to papers with citations in the top 1% of all papers in a research field, and they are considered to be symbols of scientific excellence and top performance of the past ten years. This study provided an informetric analysis of 7791 highly cited papers in the environmental sciences category during 2009–2019. Informetric indicators and visualization tools were applied to evaluate and present the performances of journals, countries/territories, institutions, top cited papers, and research hotspots. The results showed that the cumulative number of publications has increased exponentially, suggesting strong development of the environmental sciences category. There were 211 journals publishing highly cited papers, with Energy & Environmental Science as the leading journal. The USA ranked first with the highest number of publications and occupied the core position in the collaboration network, while Mainland China took the first place in independent research output. Review articles have an obvious advantage in terms of achieving high citations. “Adsorption”, “climate change”, and “heavy metal” were the most frequent keywords, with “microplastic” rising rapidly as a new research frontier in recent years. Five research hotspots were visualized from highly cited papers via cluster analysis.

1. Introduction

Environmental science is an emerging interdisciplinary field relating social needs and environmental problems. It involves many aspects, including air, soil, water, and ecology [ 1 , 2 ]. With the rapid development of the economy and industrialization process, our environment has suffered great pressure from population growth and the enhancement of production activities [ 3 , 4 ]. As a result, various environmental problems are increasingly prominent, such as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, ozone layer destruction, groundwater pollution, and ocean acidification [ 5 , 6 ]. In order to solve these environmental problems, great efforts (e.g., manpower, material, and financial resources) have been invested by governments and all sectors of society [ 7 ]. In recent years, environmental science has experienced remarkable development, marking a new stage of human beings’ understanding, utilization, and modification of the environment [ 8 ].

Essential Science Indicators (ESI) is an analytical database based on Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science Core Collection (WoS). Publication counts and citation data for ESI are derived from journals indexed in the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) of WoS during the past ten years [ 9 ]. In ESI, papers are divided into 22 research fields, and an article is assigned to only one field. ESI database reveals the performance and development as well as leading institutions, countries/territories, journals, and papers in a research field. For a specific ESI research field, highly cited papers (HCPs) refer to these papers with the citations entered the top 1% of all papers in each year. HCPs are considered to be a symbol of scientific excellence and top performance.

Informetric analysis of HCPs can help to identify significant research trends and the most influential research papers, while avoiding the bias of publishing year on citations. Such analysis has been performed in many fields, including economics and business [ 10 ], geosciences [ 11 ], and operations research and management science [ 12 ]. In the field of environmental sciences, Khan and Ho (2012) analyzed 88 selected articles with more than 500 citations, ignoring the publication year of those papers [ 13 ]. The citation count of a paper is always influenced by its publication year. Generally speaking, the earlier a paper is published, the more citations it will have. This paper aimed to provide a systematic informetric analysis of HCPs in the environmental sciences category. The objectives of this study are as follows: (1) evaluate the research performance of research outputs and the top cited paper in each year; (2) assess the top players in terms of journal, country/territory, and institution; (3) mapping hotspots and research developments with keywords analysis and cluster analysis.

2. Methodology

2.1. data source.

The publication data in this study were obtained from the Clarivate Analytics’ ESI and WoS database. According to 2018 Journal Citation Reports (JCR), environmental sciences is one of their 254 Web of Science Categories. The retrieval formula (WC = “Environmental Sciences” and PY = “2009–2019”) was used to search the publications in the SCIE and SSCI database (here, “WC” refers to Web of Science Category, “PY” refers to year published). The document types were restricted to “Article” and “Review”. Retrieval results showed that there were 559,498 SCIE/SSCI papers in the environmental sciences category. Among these, 7791 papers were marked as HCPs. In correspondence to HCPs, those 559,498 SCIE/SSCI papers were labelled as “all papers” (APs) in this study. Here, it should be noted that the ESI database is updated every two months, and the latest update time for this study was in January 09, 2020. Thus, the data source is relatively steady. The data of the 7791 HCPs were downloaded and analyzed comprehensively.

2.2. Data Analysis

Informetric analysis is a powerful and important tool in evaluating scientific performance and development of a research field [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. Many indicators were applied to assess the scientific performance, including publication indicators (such as the number of publications, publication share), citation indicators (such as total citations, citations per paper, H-index, percentage of papers receiving at least one citation), and journal indicators (such as the impact factor, JIF Quartile, Immediacy Index). Analysis of keywords has been widely used to identify hotspots and research trends in recent years [ 19 , 20 , 21 ]. VOSviewer, a visualization software, was utilized to construct the collaboration network and perform the co-word cluster analysis [ 22 ].

Figure 1 illustrates the indicators used in this study. Among them, H-index was introduced by Hirsch [ 23 ] and can be defined as follows: if the H-index of a journal is h, then it has h papers that are cited at least h times and its other publications’ citations are not more than h. HCPs/APs (%) means the percentage share of HCPs, and its world average value is 1%. This percentage reflects the overall standard of papers of one item (e.g., research category, journal, country/territory, institution). The Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) is an unbiased indicator of impact irrespective of research category, publication year, and document type. The CNCI of a document is calculated by dividing the actual citations by the expected citation rate for documents with the same document type, year of publication, and research category. A CNCI value of one represents performance at par with the world average of one research category. If CNCI > 1, the citation performance is considered above the world average; and if CNCI < 1, it is considered below average. Similar to CNCI, the Journal Normalized Citation Impact (JNCI) is defined as citation impact normalized for publication year, document type, and journal in which the document is published. If JNCI > 1, the citation performance is considered above the world average of its publishing journal, and if JNCI < 1, it is considered below average. The Immediacy Index (II) is the average number of times a paper is cited in the year it is published. Cited Half-Life (CHF) is an indicator of the quality of a scientific journal and is defined as the median age of the papers that were cited in the JCR year. Generally speaking, the higher the CHF, the more influential that journal is thought to be.

Analysis structure and indicators used in the study. TP: the number of publications; TC: total citations; CPP: citations per paper; IF5: 5-year impact factor; Quartile: JIF Quartile; H: H-index; % Cited: percentage of papers received at least one citation; HCPs/APs (%): percentage share of HCPs; CNCI: Category Normalized Citation Impact; JNCI: Journal Normalized Citation Impact; II: Immediacy Index; CHF: Cited Half-Life; CPY: citations per year.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. characteristics of scientific output.

Over the past ten years, the output of APs increased significantly from 33,396 in 2009 to 84,078 in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of 9.81%. Simultaneously, the number of HCPs increased from 512 in 2009 to 872 in 2019, with an average growth rate of 5.95%. The HCPs accounted for 1.04%–1.56% (average of 1.39%) of all papers (i.e., APs) from 2009 to 2019 in the environmental sciences category, which is obviously larger than the world average share of HCPs (1%). Figure 2 shows the cumulative number of HCPs and APs from 2009. One can see that the cumulative number of HCPs and APs fit Price’s curve with R 2 = 0.99, suggesting the exponential growth of cumulative amount of HCPs and APs. These results indicated the strong development of research output and the high impact potential of the environmental sciences category.

Cumulative number of (a) highly cited papers (HCPs) and (b) all papers (APs) in the environmental sciences category.

3.2. Distribuiton of Journals

There were 410 academic journals publishing papers in the environmental sciences category during 2009–2019, among which 211 journals published HCPs. Table 1 lists the top ten productive journals with the highest number of HCPs and APs. Five journals, including Journal of Hazardous Materials (JHM), Science of the Total Environment (STE), Environmental Science & Technology (EST), Journal of Cleaner Production (JCP), and Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP) belonged to both the top ten productive journals of HCPs and APs.

Leading journals of HCPs and APs in the environmental sciences category.

APs: all papers; HCPs: highly cited papers; TP: the number of publications; CPP: citations per paper; CNCI: Category Normalized Citation Impact; JNCI: Journal Normalized Citation Impact; Quartile: JIF Quartile; IF5: 5-year impact factor; H: H-index; II: Immediacy Index; CHF: Cited Half-Life; % Cited: percentage of papers received at least one citation. EES: Energy & Environmental Science; JHM: Journal of Hazardous Materials; STE: Science of the Total Environment; EST: Environmental Science & Technology; JCP: Journal of Cleaner Production; EPc: Energy Policy; WR: Water Research; NCC: Nature Climate Change; RSE: Remote Sensing of Environment; ACP: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics; Sustainability: Sustainability; ESPR: Environmental Science and Pollution Research; Chemosphere: Chemosphere; IJERPH: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health; EPt: Environmental Pollution.

As shown in Table 1 , Energy & Environmental Science (EES) had the highest quantity of published HCPs (837), accounting for 10.74% of total HCPs. The following four journals were JHM (718, 9.22%), STE (494, 6.34%), EST (461, 5.92%), and JCP (453, 5.81%). For citations per paper (CPP), EES, EST, NCC, and ACP had the best performance with more than 200 citations.

STE was the most productive journal in the environmental sciences category; it published 22,848 APs, followed by Sustainability (17,219), EST (16,805), JCP (16,206), and ESPR (16,097). EES had the largest CPP of 115, followed by NCC (76).

When comparing the citation indicators of HCPs with those of APs, one can see that the CPP, CNCI, and JNCI of HCPs were all larger than those of APs for the above-mentioned 15 journals, verifying the high quality of HCPs. The sixth column was HCPs/APs (%), which reflects the overall standard of papers published in a journal. Among the 15 leading journals listed in Table 1 , EES and NCC had the highest percentages of 23.76% and 21.4% respectively, which were significantly larger than the others 13 journals. As for impact factor, EES and NCC had the largest IF5 among all journals categorized in the environmental sciences category. EES had the highest H-index (298), followed by EST (215). Twelve of the 15 leading journals had an H-index larger than 100. These results indicated the high research quality of leading journals in the environmental sciences category as a whole.

The three journals with HCPs/APs (%) < 1% (i.e., Sustainability, ESPR, and IJERPH) had relatively low numbers of HCPs, % cited, immediacy index, IF5, H-index, and cited half-life when compared to the others 12 leading journals in Table 1 . Moreover, the CNCI of APs that published in three journals were less than 1, implying that their average paper quality was below the average level of the environmental sciences category. On the other hand, the large JNCI of HCPs indicated the large difference of paper quality between HCPs and APs. Those results suggested that improvement of paper quality is still needed for the three journals. It should be noted that the cited half-life and impact factor of IJERPH showed a steady increase, from 2.3 and 1.605 in 2001 to 3.6 and 2.468 in 2018, respectively, which indicated a gradual improvement of paper quality in recent years to some extent.

3.3. Research Performance by Country/Territory

The 7791 HCPs in the field of environmental sciences were published from 138 countries/territories around the world. Table 2 shows the top 15 countries/territories with the highest number of HCPs. The sum of these 15 countries/territories’ HCPs was 7057, including 90.58% of all HCPs. Of these 15 countries/territories, eight were in Europe, four in Asia, two in North America, and one in Oceania. The USA ranked as the most productive country/territory with an obvious advantage (2812, 36.09%). The second most productive country/territory was Mainland China (2322, 29.80%). The remaining top 15 productive countries/territories were England (1122, 14.40%), Germany (844, 10.83%), Australia (800, 10.27%), Canada (667, 8.56%), the Netherlands (640, 8.21%), France (551, 7.07%), Spain (494, 6.34%), Italy (463, 5.94%), Switzerland (450, 5.78%), Sweden (351, 4.51%), India (304, 3.9%), South Korea (281, 3.61%), and Japan (262, 3.36%). Thus, the USA and Mainland China had dominant positions in the scientific outputs of HCPs. Moreover, the USA and Mainland China had the highest academic influence with total citations of 557,240 and 302,799, respectively. Results indicated that the two countries/territories contributed not only nearly 60% of all HCPs, but also most of the HCPs’ total citations. For the percentage HCPs/APs (%), Switzerland had the highest value of 3.83%, followed by the Netherlands (3.78%) and England (3.14%). The USA and Mainland China had similar HCPs/APs (%) of ~2%. India had the poorest performance on HCPs/APs (%), CPP, and CNCI among these 15 countries/territories, indicating that its academic influence could be further strengthened by improving paper quality and visibility [ 24 ].

Characteristics of the top 15 productive countries/territories.

TP: the number of publications; HCPs: highly cited papers; APs: all papers; R: rank of each country/territory according to the number of publications; %: percentage share of papers in all HCPs or APs; TC: total citations; CPP: citations per paper; CNCI: Category Normalized Citation Impact; ICP (%): the number and percentage of international collaborative HCPs, MC (P): major collaborative country/territory (number of collaborative HCPs).

The international collaborations of these 15 countries/territories were studied. As shown in Table 2 , the USA was the major collaborative partner of the others 14 countries/territories. The USA also took a leading position in the output of internationally collaborative HCPs (1727), accounting for 61.42% of all HCPs in the country. Mainland China took the first place in terms of output of independent research with 1203 HCPs, and the USA took the second place with 1085 independent HCPs. International collaboration contributed more than 60% of all HCPs for each country/territory, except Mainland China (48.19%). On one hand, it suggested the high openness of these 14 countries/territories in the environmental sciences category. On the other hand, it means that the HCPs of these 14 countries/territories depended highly on other countries/territories, indicating their relatively weak independent research ability. Figure 3 illustrates the collaboration network of these top 15 countries/territories, where the size of node represents the number of HCPs and the thickness of line represents link strength. As shown in Figure 3 , the collaboration network was strongly connected, with all countries/territories collaborated with each other. In the network, the biggest node was the USA with 2812 HCPs. The highest link strength was between the USA and Mainland China with 546 collaborative HCPs. There were noticeable collaborative subnetworks too, including “USA–England–Germany”, “USA–England–Australia”, “USA–England–Netherlands”, “USA–England–France”, “USA–Germany–Netherlands”, and “USA–Germany–France”. Mainland China, as the second largest node, mainly collaborated with the USA and had relatively little collaborations with the others 13 countries/territories. Among the 10 strongest links, the USA occurred seven times. These results indicate that the USA occupies a core position in the collaboration network.

Collaboration network of top 15 countries/territories in the environmental sciences category.

3.4. Research Performance of Institutions

At the institution level, there were 6174 institutions publishing HCPs in the environmental sciences category. Table 3 presents the top 15 productive institutions associated with country/territory, TP, HCPs/APs (%), TC, CPP, and CNCI. Among them, six institutions were in the USA, three in Mainland China, and one each in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, and Spain. The Chinese Academy of Sciences ranked first with 629 HCPs, accounting for 8.07% of all 7791 HCPs in the environmental sciences category. The remaining institutions with more than 200 HCPs were the University of California with 409 HCPs (5.25%), followed by CNRS (284, 3.65%), the Helmholtz Association (250, 3.21%), and the United States Department of Energy (236, 3.03%). Among the top 15 institutions, the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) had the highest HCPs/APs (%) of 4.91%. The University of Chinese Academy of Sciences had the poorest performance not only in HCPs/APs (%), but also in CPP and CNCI, indicating that its academic influence should be further developed.

Characteristics of the top 15 productive institutions.

APs: all papers; HCPs: highly cited papers; TP: the number of publications; TC: total citations; CPP: citations per paper; CNCI: Category Normalized Citation Impact.

3.5. Top Cited Paper in Each Year

Considering that there is citation bias between old and new papers, the top cited paper in each year was studied. Table 4 displays the top cited paper, including title, total number of citations, document type, publication year, citation per year, and published journal, in each year.

Top cited paper in each year.

TC: total citations; PY: publication year, CPY: citations per year. BC: Biological Conservation EES: Energy & Environmental Science; RSE: Remote Sensing of Environment; ES: Ecosystem Services; WR: Water Research; JCE: Journal of Clinical Epidemiology.

The paper in the environmental sciences category titled “A comparative assessment of decision-support tools for ecosystem services quantification and valuation” had the highest number of citations, with 10,518. Second, the paper titled “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement” was cited 4458 times. Of the top 11 papers during 2009–2019, six were articles and five were review papers. Review papers accounted for 45.45% of the top cited papers during 2009–2019; i.e., article papers accounted for 54.55% of the top cited papers. Whereas, in all 7791 HCPs, the percentage of review papers was reduced to 24.11%, and that of article papers was increased to 75.89%. In all 559,498 APs in the environmental sciences category, the percentage of review papers was just 4.14%, and that of article papers was 95.86%. These results indicated that review papers in the environmental sciences category have an obvious advantage in achieving high citations. Those 11 papers were published in six different journals, among which six papers were from EES, and one each from ES, JCE, WR, RSE, and BC. Thus, EES also had distinct advantage in publishing the top cited paper in each year.

3.6. Research Hotspots of HCPs in Environmental Sciences

Author keywords are the essence and core of each piece of literature and reveal the areas of most interest to researchers. By analyzing author keywords, one can identify research emphasis and development trends [ 36 , 37 ]. As shown in Figure 4 , “adsorption”, “climate change”, “heavy metal”, “microplastic”, and “China” were the leading author keywords with no less than 100 occurrences during 2009–2019. Adsorption is a key process to study the environmental fate of contaminants and an important and effective method for the removal of environmental pollutants. Climate change has great influences on the global environment, inducing many environmental problems such as global warming, acid deposition, and ozone depletion. In 2013, carbon dioxide, the leading culprit in climate warming, exceeded 400 ppm for the first time. It sounded the alarm for climate warming again, and the corresponding number of HCPs reached a peak in 2013 with 28 HCPs. “China” was the top frequently used country as an author keyword in the field of environmental sciences. It should be noted that only one article used “microplastic” as an author keyword in 2009, but the number of papers using “microplastic“ as an author keyword rose to second place in the period of 2017–2019. This result indicated that “microplastic” is not only a research hotspot, but also new frontier in the environmental sciences category.

Top 10 high-frequency keywords of HCPs in the environmental sciences category.

Co-word cluster analysis can identify relationships between keywords, which can further reflect the research hotspots of HCPs in the environmental sciences category [ 19 ]. The cluster analysis of author keywords and Keywords plus was performed with VOSviewer software, and the results are shown in Figure 5 a. According to the cluster analysis result, the keywords were aggregated into five clusters. Cluster 1 (red items in Figure 5 a) involved the treatment of environmental pollutions and corresponding kinetic processes, which had the main keywords of “adsorption”, “removal”, “degradation”, “sorption”, “oxidation”, “activated carbon”, “aqueous solution”, “nanoparticle”, and “waste water”. Cluster 2 (green items) focused on urban ecological and environmental pollution management, including keywords such as “CO 2 emission”, “management”, “sustainability”, “urbanization”, “energy”, “policy”, “conservation”, and “economic growth”. Cluster 3 (blue items) referred to research on climate change, including keywords: “climate change”, “carbon”, “temperature”, “precipitation”, “emission”, “impact”, and “model”. Cluster 4 (yellow items) covered research on toxic pollutants and their impact on the ecological environment, including the main keywords of “heavy metal”, “cadmium”, “particle”, “pm2.5”, “particulate matter”, “microplastic”, “accumulation”, “contamination”, “soil”, “fish”, and “sea”. Cluster 5 (purple items) focused on wastewater treatment with keywords including “personal care product”, “wastewater”, “drinking water”, “aquatic environment”, “toxicity”, “pharmaceutical”, and “tandem mass spectrometry”. Figure 5 b is the overlay visualization of author keywords and Keywords plus, and the color of a keyword is determined by the average of publication year. For example, “microplastic”, “marine environment”, “graphene”, and “CO 2 emission” occurred frequently in recent years, while “kinetics” and “sorption” mainly occurred in earlier years. From Figure 5 a, one can find emerging hotspots of HCPs in the environmental sciences category, such as “microplastic” associating with “marine environment”, “CO 2 emission” with the energy consumption process, and performance of graphene in the environment.

( a ) Cluster analysis and ( b ) overlay visualization of paper keywords.

Based on the above keyword analyses, one can see that the treatment of environmental pollutants and corresponding kinetic processes was the biggest hotspot with the highest number of clustered keywords. However, regeneration and reuse of adsorbent and its secondary contamination are still lacking in systematic research. Secondly, as a novel environmental pollutant resistant to degradation, microplastics are widely known to be ideal carriers for organic pollutants and heavy metals, and have widespread distribution in the environment (e.g., marine environment, territorial soil, atmosphere environment, land and sea life, and even drinking water). Nevertheless, there remain some key technical points that need to be solved urgently in microplastic pollution, including its efficient separation and identification, and reliable source identification techniques and models. Moreover, research on microplastics has been mainly conducted in marine environments, and other environments should receive more attention in the future. In the last decade, biochar has played an increasingly important role in environmental remediation, carbon sequestration, and soil modification. How to enhance the adsorption capacity, and stability of biochar is an important but difficult task. In addition, as an important component of global water cycle, groundwater can transport a large number of pollutants into surface waters (river water, lake water, and ocean), which would potentially contribute to eutrophication, acidification, and the occurrence of red tides. Thus, groundwater needs to be further discussed and considered in the study of environment pollution.

4. Conclusions

This study adopted informetric methods to analyze HCPs during 2009–2019 in the environmental sciences category based on the ESI database. Insights were made into various aspects, including research output, the most productive journals, countries/territories, institutions, top cited papers, and research hotspots, with systematic informetric analysis and visualization tools. The results showed an exponential growth of the cumulative amount of both HCPs and APs, suggesting strong development of the environmental sciences category. EES had the highest number of HCPs and top cited papers, as well as the highest IF5, H-index, and HCPs/APs (%). Sustainability, ESPR, and IJERPH ranked as the top 10 productive journals in terms of APs in the environmental sciences category, but have lower paper quality. The USA and Mainland China were the leading countries/territories, and they had the highest number of HCPs, APs, and academic citations. The USA had a dominant position in the collaboration network of the top 15 productive countries/territories, and Mainland China took the first place in independent research output. As for institutions, the Chinese Academy of Sciences had the highest number of HCPs and total citations. Analysis of top cited paper in each year suggested that review papers have an obvious advantage in achieving high citations.

“Adsorption”, “climate change”, “heavy metal”, “microplastic”, and “China” were the most frequent author keywords. The study of microplastics is a new research frontier with rapid growth in recent years. Research hotspots of HCPs in the environmental sciences category mainly include the treatment of environmental pollutants and corresponding kinetic processes, urban ecological and environmental pollution management, climate change, toxic pollutants and their impact on the ecological environment, and wastewater treatment. The results of this study can provide insight for scholars in the field of environmental sciences, including comprehensive understanding of leading journals, countries/territories, and institutions in the research field, which can further guide paper submission, collaboration, and academic exchange. From these high-quality papers, one can also learn useful information, such as theory, tools, and methods, and trace the research hotspots and frontiers to find critical issues for scholars and governments.

There are some limitations to this study. First, Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science Categories were used in data retrieval. Therefore, papers published in journals not categorized in the environmental science category were not included. Furthermore, this study focused on informetric analysis of HCPs, with only a preliminary analysis of APs. In addition, HCPs are just a part of papers published in the environmental sciences category; therefore, the cluster analysis of HCPs cannot be used to identify research loopholes or gaps.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, Q.M.; Data curation, Q.M.; Formal analysis, Q.M.; Investigation, Q.M.; Methodology, Q.M.; Resources, Q.M., Y.L. and Y.Z.; Software, Q.M.; Visualization, Q.M.; Writing—original draft, Q.M., Y.L. and Y.Z.; Writing—review & editing, Q.M. and Y.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research received no external funding.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Technological innovations for sustainable transformation towards carbon neutrality

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Sustainable transformation towards carbon neutrality can be achieved by the development of innovative low-carbon energy technologies. Despite the promulgation and subsequent implementation of various policies, many obstacles and challenges lie ahead in the long transition to the achievement of a sustainable transition towards carbon neutrality, including government behaviour, the market environment, and enterprise capacity. Seeking to overcome such substantial barriers to such development, this special issue focuses on urgent issues, with the theme of “Technological Innovations for Sustainable Transformation Towards Carbon Neutrality”. The call welcomes researchers worldwide to contribute to extensive discussions on this theme and share their original thinking and high-quality research output. Its primary focus is to determine how stakeholders who have developed new technologies and designed green transformation paths can attain their carbon neutrality goals.

The guest editors of this special issue (Prof. Dr. Xiongfeng Pan, Prof. Dr. Jia Liu, Dr. Nader Atawnah, Prof. Dr. Chew Tin Lee, Dr. Muhammad Imran Qureshi, and Dr. Rashid Zaman) have worked diligently to bring together a diverse range of papers that address some of the most pressing low-carbon technological innovation challenges of our time. For example, He et al. (2023) quantitatively studied the implications of the dynamic decision behaviour of stakeholders on the prefabricated construction market; Lu et al. (2023) proposed a three-step method to guide the establishment of an extensible carbon emission factor database for the construction industry; Kayani et al. (2023) investigated the intricate interplay between carbon emissions and foreign direct investment within the context of BRICS; Yu et al. (2023) examined the feedback mechanism of critical peak pricing on coal consumption of power generation side units; Pan and Wang (2023) evaluated the impact of marine ecological compensation policy on marine carbon emission efficiency; and Skrzypczak et al. (2023) explored the development of sustainable fertilizers from waste materials of a biogas plant and a brewery. This special issue presents the latest research and developments in low-carbon technology and deepens our understanding of how to promote and accelerate the development of low-carbon technologies and sustainable transformation.

We, the guest editors, would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief of the ESPR journal, the editorial assistant, and all the supporting staff for giving us this opportunity. We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to all the contributors and reviewers who have made this special issue possible. We hope that the papers in this special issue will inspire further research and innovation in this important field.

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Environmental Biology

(10 reviews)

Matthew R. Fisher

Copyright Year: 2018

Publisher: Open Oregon Educational Resources

Language: English

Formats Available

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Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Tobias Gerken, Assistant Professor of Integrated Science, James Madison University on 7/16/21

The text is composed as an introductory environmental science text. Consistent with the title of the book, the focus of the book is clearly set on biological processes with some additional consideration given to water issues, air pollution, and... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

The text is composed as an introductory environmental science text. Consistent with the title of the book, the focus of the book is clearly set on biological processes with some additional consideration given to water issues, air pollution, and energy. The introductory chapter of the book also provides a brief introduction to scientific inquiry and the concept of environmental justice. The textbook’s approach to environmental science is generally descriptive and qualitative, making the text in my opinion appropriate for a general education or liberal-arts based course. I personally consider working with data and problem solving a key skill for science classes and this is something that is at present not reflected in the text and would need to be supplemented.

For me, as a non-biologist, the biology chapters (Ecosystems, Ecology, Biodiversity) are most comprehensive, while still being accessible. Subsequent chapters covering water, air, and energy production are much more condensed and lack, in my opinion, a bit of depth. For example, climate change is covered only as a subsection of the air chapter and is treated in very broad strokes. A more detailed treatment of the science of climate change, regional and system specific climate change impacts and connections to the societal causes of anthropogenic climate change would have been helpful. A similar argument could be made for air and water pollution, which have large negative impacts on human health.

Also, and given that energy is a key component of the Earth system and human society, more details on their workings and key associated environmental issues would be helpful.

The book does not contain an index or glossary, but key-terms are bolded highlighting important definitions and concepts. The addition of a summary index would be good, but the full text can be downloaded as a searchable PDF.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

Overall, the content appears to be accurate and unbiased. The main limitation of this introductory text is that there is sometimes lack of detail or depth to the chapters on larger environmental issues, such that some important context (e.g. for climate change) is missing. I noticed one specific accuracy issue arising from this, for indoor air pollution. The section on indoor air pollution in the section on air pollution is titled: “Indoor air pollution (Major concerns in developed countries)” seems to imply by omission that indoor air pollution is mainly an issue in developed countries. However this is not the case as indoor air pollution from cooking fires presents a major health hazard globally. The chapter on human health (Chapter 6) correctly mentions this and it would have been good to reiterate this in the dedicated air pollution chapter.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

Environmental science and current environmental issues such as air pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss require regular updating of the text. The last major update to the text was in 2018 and sections are reasonably current. This text is based on two other open textbooks, OpenStax “Biology” and “Essentials of Environmental Science” by Kamala Doršner and I feel that the chapters of OpenStax are more current than the "Essentials" chapters. For example the water chapter contains a figure (Ch 7.2, Figure 2) about water scarcity that contrast 1995 as current with 2025 as the future and several graphs end in 2005 or present snapshots from c. 2005. I also found that number and figures in the human health and food chapters do not reference specific time periods, when comparing regions. For example, malnourishment and obesity are compared between regions (Ch 8.1, Figure 1) with no reference from when this data is. The accompanying text only makes reference to the last 20 years without specific a reference time. I understand that adding clear reference times, increases the need to keep the text current, but at least for the figures that is something that should likely be done and could also be easily accomplished by the individual instructor. Regarding climate change and air pollution, it would be good for the text to make reference to recent updates (e.g. the 4th National Climate Assessment) or the IPCC 1.5 degree special report or current trends in greenhouse gas emissions.

On a very positive note, the text does expose students to the ideas of environmental equity, environmental justice, and environmental racism, which is timely and unfortunately not yet standard.

Clarity rating: 5

The book is generally written in language accessible for lower-level college students or upper-level high-school students. Technical terms are clearly defined and bolded in the text and sometimes reappear to reinforce concepts. I would say that the text is sometimes a bit too dry giving clear explanations with context and direct appeals to interesting tidbits relegated to a few interspersed boxes and case-studies.

Consistency rating: 5

The text appeared to be consistent. I noticed that there are some minor formatting issues in the print-PDF, with some weird page changes and indentations, but this was not overly distracting from the contents. I noticed some imbalance in the way figures are used in the text: some chapters – like the biology chapters – have many figures demonstrating concepts, while other chapters for example chapter 1 seems to use photos as illustrations to visually break up the text.

Modularity rating: 5

I think the book is as modular as it gets, and it would be possible to re-arrange most chapters without confusing the reader. Chapters and chapter sections are fairly short with descriptive headings and concise, making it easy to divvy up readings/ work across class periods. I feel that sometimes the text is bordering on being too modular. For example, overarching concepts such as sustainability and how they related to each topic could be more clearly referenced across chapters to remind students about the bigger picture issues.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

Overall, the text has a logical structure, which is somewhat aligned with a bottom-up approach, after the introduction chapter the book covers biological topics from cellular biology to biodiversity and then pivots to environmental issues. I feel that either the book or individual instructors should provide some context on how these are related. There were a few instances, where I was surprised on how topics were arranged (for example joining air pollution, climate change, acid rain, and ozone depletion into a single chapter) or putting a box titled ‘Evolution in Action’ when talking about atomic composition. Similarly, the biodiversity chapter also includes a basic introduction to taxonomic groups, which at least for me feels out of place. At the same time, these are not major issues and can easily be overcome.

Interface rating: 5

I noticed only minor issues. One caveat is that the print-PDF has some additional formatting issues and at least one table (Chapter 6.3, Table 2) is cut-off in the PDF but not in the online version. Some of the figures could be higher resolution. Side-contents that is not part of the main text and labeled (‘Boxes’ or ‘Biology in Action’) could be more visually separated from the text (e.g. using actual boxes or shading). Some chapters contain QR codes to videos, which is a bit weird in the online version and even the PDF, since few students will use a printed copy and could simply access links directly.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I did not notice any major grammatical errors that reduced readability of the text.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I did not notice any issues regarding cultural insensitivity and the book introduces students to issues of environmental equity and environmental racism, which should be highlighted when discussing environmental issues. The book is somewhat U.S.-centric with examples and references to regulations on environmental issues somewhat focusing on the U.S., which makes sense given the intended audience and that regulations are highly country specific. Some additional examples or regional differentiation when discussing water and climate issues on the other hand would be beneficial.

Reviewed by Margarita Poromanska, Environmental Science and Biology Instructor, College of DuPage on 4/16/21

The textbook covers the most important environmental topics. No index or glossary is provided read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

The textbook covers the most important environmental topics. No index or glossary is provided

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The accuracy is good

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The treatment of the topics is contemporary. Future updates can be easily done.

There is a flow from chapter to chapter, with clear definitions and explanations.

The consistency is good

The textbook consists of 11 chapters, 342 pages, including end-of chapter review questions and an answer key.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The text is easy to navigate with a simple click (digital edition) from chapter to chapter, from one topic to another. Each chapter is provided with learning outcomes and a chapter outline.

It is well illustrated and provides online links, as well as lists of supplementary readings.

The grammar is good.

It provides with key case studies (Love Canal, The Aral Sea Crisis). It discusses Hetch Hetchy valley debate, The Tragedy of the Commons, among others.

Environmental Biology by Matthew R. Fisher can be used for beginner and intermediate Environmental Science/Environmental Biology classes.

Reviewed by pamela scheffler, professor, Hawaii Community College on 3/23/21

I am reviewing this book for a 100-level general education introduction to environmental science course. While the book lacks some of the detail of big publishing house textbooks it is still very thorough. It has a good range of topics/chapters... read more

I am reviewing this book for a 100-level general education introduction to environmental science course. While the book lacks some of the detail of big publishing house textbooks it is still very thorough. It has a good range of topics/chapters and within the chapters it is comprehensive and includes enough explanation that most liberal arts students will not be confused by the content. It is, however, lacking is an index and glossary. The addition of those sections would improve the usability of the book immensely. In addition, I would have liked to have seen more depth (additional chapters) on some topics. Ecology is covered in a single chapter with community ecology, population ecology and human population all together. Human population growth could easily be covered as a stand-alone chapter rather than a sub-section of the fields of ecology. Also missing is a treatment of waste and waste management which deserve coverage (possibly it is the difference of 'environmental biology' vs. 'environmental science,' but it is relevant to biology and would have been a good addition). I like to cover fresh water and marine science in detail so would prefer a stand-alone chapter on oceans. Ditto for climate change which is covered along with air pollution and ozone depletion -- it deserves deeper coverage. Finally, I would have preferred the inclusion of a chapter on solutions/sustainability. However, this is one of the best OER texts on environmental science that I have come across and what it lacks in comprehensiveness can be made up through lecture and classroom activities.

I did not find many errors and those I found were not substantial.

There are a few places where time-sensitive numbers are used and those will become dated but that is not impossible to teach around. Most of the book is written in a rather modular style which will make updating sections relatively simple.

Clarity rating: 4

The book is written in a very understandable manner with explanations of terms that are complicated for students seeing them the first time around. The addition of a glossary would make me turn my '4' to a '5' since that gives students a quick way to look up terms that they can't quite remember.

Yes. The voice feels consistent throughout the book. The style remains the same for all chapters.

Very clean set up with chapters and sub-chapters for each topic. I like that the first page of every chapter has an overview of the chapter as a whole as well as short overviews of most of the sub-content. The chapter summaries are also helpful.

The organization is fine. I think that anyone teaching has their own style and will pair ideas differently, but it is not a problem to assign chapters out of order -- each stands alone without too much reference to previous material and so the instructor can essentially reorganize the book to suite their own teaching style. It starts with a good overview of the science and the issues that surround it and its implementation. The only thing I really lament is that the book ends with a chapter on energy. It did not feel very final to me, I would have liked to have seen a final chapter that tied the book together as well as the first chapter introduced it. I usually finish with (not-so-depressing) sustainable solutions to the problems that I have bombarded students with all semester and, if teaching with this text, would add an additional reading as a final assignment rather than end with the energy chapter from this book.

The online version is well-designed -- attractive and easy to navigate. I like the constant access to the Content menu while reading. The 'online,' 'pdf,' and 'ebook' links all opened to the same Open Oregon page for me, so I can't say comment the book would feel in printed form. The links to extras like videos, etc., all seemed to work and added to the educational experience in a non-obtrusive manner for those who want to use them.

I think I found one spelling error. Mostly it is a very clean book.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

I found the book to mostly focus on environmental science with little content that might be perceived as offensive. There is an introductory section on environmental justice and indigenous struggles. I thought that it was well-written and addressed the topics in a manner that was factual and inoffensive.

I think that this is a great OER textbook. It may not be the 'perfect' textbook, but is written in a way that including outside material to address missing content or skipping content that is not as relevant to the course being taught, will be a simple task to do. I appreciate that the 'voice' and organization are approachable for students who have not had a lot of science background and that this text informs without overwhelming.

Reviewed by Brad Carlson, Associate Professor, Wabash College on 2/24/21

I examined this book with two possible courses in mind: a non-majors environmental science course, and a 200 level ecology course for majors. For non-majors, it was nearly comprehensive (about a 4). It covered the primary environmental issues and... read more

I examined this book with two possible courses in mind: a non-majors environmental science course, and a 200 level ecology course for majors. For non-majors, it was nearly comprehensive (about a 4). It covered the primary environmental issues and provided a light primer on ecological concepts. However, many topics were arguably covered too briefly. For instance, the climate change section gave little sense of the relative impacts of different drivers of climate change (fossil fuels, land use change, etc.) and essentially no discussion of solutions beyond alternative energy sources (e.g., little or nothing about reforestation, carbon sequestration, etc.) Figures were somewhat lacking in parts of the text - for instance, the section on climate change discussed aerosols, albedo, sea level rise, disease spread, all without figures. For a majors course in ecology, it was inadequate. Many key ecological topics received only a cursory examination befitting of a high school textbook, at most, and broad theoretical ideas were minimal. Important concepts weren't covered in much depth at all: for example, a few thousand words is dedicated to community ecology, but more content here was focused on simplistic topics like prey being camouflaged to avoid predators than on the concept of competition and niches. There was very minimal quantitative content of any kind.

Little in the way of major inaccuracies, but some incompleteness (perhaps reflecting bias). For instance, as far as I could tell, organic agriculture was described essentially as environmentally superior in every regard, neglecting to discuss the lower yields (and hence higher land use) and reduced yield stability of organic agriculture.

Content seemed mostly up-to-date with room for further updates regarding dynamic topics (like climate change).

Generally was readable and written in a straightforward manner. I don't think the terminology would be too difficult for college students, although sometimes the explanations of terms may be separated from their first use. Some very important terms are unfortunately used with little explanation: the word "regulation" appears in the title and subheading when discussing population regulation, but the word is absent from the text, a notable omission given how many students struggle to understand the meaning of regulation in the context of population dynamics.

I noticed no inconsistencies and the format was relatively predictable, though "case studies" appeared in a somewhat surprising manner.

Overall it seemed to be about as modular as it could be, given the extent to which some topics need to be contextualized by other material.

I observed no organizational problems in general, though a straight read-through might lead someone to feel a bit confused by the pivots from general ecology to environmental issues.

Interface rating: 4

The general interface seemed perfectly fine on my device. The text did not always appear to match up well with the figures/tables - some figures were not cited in the text, and one table had a noteworthy blank value in it that was unaddressed and would likely raise unanswerable questions.

No errors I noticed.

There was recognition of racial/socioeconomic/global disparities in environmental impacts, which would be a key way to address this matter within the context of this text, though certainly more could have been said. Though I did not notice it to be explicitly stated anywhere, the book has an America-centric quality, to the point of referring to "Our nation...", which I would suggest should be removed.

Reviewed by Paula Mejia-Velasquez, Adjunct Professor, Leeward Community College on 7/23/20

This book is a good resource for an introductory level class on Environmental Science, covering most of the topics usually addressed in a class at this level. Some topics are explained in more detail than others, but all the topics presented in... read more

This book is a good resource for an introductory level class on Environmental Science, covering most of the topics usually addressed in a class at this level. Some topics are explained in more detail than others, but all the topics presented in the book are well explained. Several of the chapters include case studies, which help students connect the topics to real-life examples. Because of my personal interests, I would include more case studies in other chapters as well. For example, there are many examples of Biodiversity loss and restoration projects that could be included in the Biodiversity chapter. There are some topics that are missing in the book and that I consider crucial as part of any introductory level Environmental Science class: waste management and plastic pollution. Usually, these topics include concepts like landfills, waste to energy power plants, recycling, reducing waste, composting, and Pacific Garbage Gire. Climate change was included in the air pollution chapter, but it needs to be addressed in more depth, maybe devoting a whole chapter to it and include a more detailed section on how to decrease emissions.

The content of the book is mostly accurate and free of bias. However, there are several instances where the content is inaccurate or outdated. For example, in the section about climate change, the main consequences of climate change are presented as a future issue: “These changes will impact our food supply, water resources, infrastructure, ecosystems, and even our own health”. It then presents future scenarios on sea-level rise, ice melting, increases temperature, ocean acidification, and increases in storm frequency. All the scenarios included are presented as future scenarios, which is inaccurate and misleading because we are currently undergoing many of the severe consequences of climate change. In the future, of course, these effects will only get worse if greenhouse gasses emissions are not cut, but it is not accurate to present an issue as a future issue when it is already happening. The IPCC supplementary reading in this section is from 2013, so it should be updated with more up to date and accurate information, and also better descriptions of current and future effects of climate change.

The content of the book is relevant, as it covers most of the environmental issues that our planet is currently facing. In terms of longevity, the examples used in the book are good representations of the topics, but some of the case studies could be updated to include some recent developments relevant to the case studies or even replace the case study with a more recent event. For example, an environmental disaster like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the Flint Water Crisis could be great examples of environmental hazards, dangers of nonrenewable fuel extraction, the role of pollution in biodiversity decrease, and long term effects of toxic pollutants in the environment.

I find the book easy to follow and read, at a level that is accessible and understandable for undergrad students. Some terms are only mentioned in the text, but not defined, therefore a glossary would be helpful to increase the overall clarity of the content.

The book is consistent from beginning to end, presenting a similar writing style and format.

The organization of the chapters and the subunits is clear and consistent. Individual chapters or the subunits can be found easily on the chapter outline, and the order of the book content can be easily changed based on teaching preferences. For example, I first cover population and community ecology before moving to Biomes. This personalization in the topic’s order is facilitated by the fact that each chapter and subunit in the book can be linked independently, so one could easily just copy and paste the link to the school LMS or class website.

The topics in the book are presented in a logical order, but as stated above, the order of the chapters can be easily changed depending on how instructors teach their classes. The structure of the chapters and subunits is consistent throughout the book. Additional characteristics included in all chapters are learning outcomes, a chapter outline, a summary, and review questions. All of these characteristics are very useful to students, as they help them to understand what is expected of them in each chapter and they can use the review questions for self-evaluation.

The textbook is easy to navigate in its online version. I was very happy to see some videos included in the textbook, as well as links to other supplementary materials. Students really enjoy visual content and it is great if they can find it in the class textbook. Some videos on my computer looked like plain photos, so students might miss them. Maybe a caption can be added below the videos, including the video name (with hyperlink), author, and attribution, just to make clear it is a video. Some videos in the book have captions and some don’t. For example the video at the end of subunit “1.1. The Earth, humans and the environment” does not have a caption, but the video at the end of subunit “2.1 Matter” has a caption. There are some QR codes in the text that are useful if you have the printed version of the book, but they are not as convenient if you are accessing the textbook from a computer, or even from a phone. Maybe a link to the content can be added to the QR caption. I accessed the textbook using two different OER repositories to test the book’s navigation, it was smooth in both platforms. However, there were some figures missing in one of the OER repositories (i.e. Figure 1 in section 10.4. Climate Change), but this is probably a problem derived from the harvesting process of the materials by that specific repository. The pdf version of the book looks nice, the only things I found distracting were that it had several blank pages, and the questions at the end of the chapters had different font styles and sizes. Some of the figures in all of the 3 formats I accessed seem to be of low resolution, which renders them difficult to read if they are graphs or have some type of labeling. This is especially concerning in terms of accessibility. This is not unique to this textbook, as I have seen this in other OER textbooks as well.

The text contains no significant amount of grammatical errors.

I did not find the book to be culturally insensitive or offensive. It includes examples from a wide variety of places and ecosystems.

This book does a great job of covering and explaining most of the major environmental concepts and issues that are typically included in an introductory-level Environmental Science class. It includes videos and other supplementary materials, it is easy to read, each chapter includes learning outcomes, a chapter outline, a summary, and review questions. It could use some minor updates, but overall it is a great resource.

Reviewed by Judith Otto, Associate Professor, Framingham State University on 6/29/20

The text covers most areas and ideas of the subject appropriately, although in less detail than commercial textbooks. I reviewed this for a course on Environmental Science, where I would want more content on topics like energy resources and... read more

The text covers most areas and ideas of the subject appropriately, although in less detail than commercial textbooks. I reviewed this for a course on Environmental Science, where I would want more content on topics like energy resources and environmental regulations, but that is not a criticism of a textbook titled Environmental Biology. Unfortunately, there is no index or glossary. There are hyperlinks to many other resources like websites and video clips; these enhance the comprehensiveness and usefulness of the text. Learning objectives and an outline at the beginning of each chapter will help students to “pre-read” the text. Likewise, chapter summaries and comprehensive citations at the end of each chapter will help students to retain the main points and to seek further information on topics of interest. I believe that climate change deserves its own chapter, not a subsection in a chapter on Air Pollution.

Content is accurate and reasonably unbiased, although a few points “upon which reasonable people may differ” are presented as facts without supporting evidence.

The content is up to date. Some charts and graphs will need to be updated over the next five years. The text is written and/or arranged in such a way that necessary updates will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement.

The text is written in accessible prose suitable for the undergraduate reader.

Consistency rating: 4

The text is internally consistent in terms of terminology and framework, although some non-standard acronyms are used: e.g, CFOs instead of the more common CAFOs, for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.

The sequence of chapters/topics allows later chapters to build on earlier, more foundational material.. The organization of subunits is clear and well signposted.

The topics in the text are presented in a logical, clear fashion. The text is enhanced by bolded key terms. Each chapter contains multiple-choice test question banks, with answers provided in the appendix.

The textbook is attractively laid out in a single-column format suitable for on-screen reading. One table has its right-side cut off in the PDF version, and there are occasional font size and spacing inconsistencies, but these are not major distractors in reading the text.

The text contains only a handful of typographical errors.

Examples and case studies are drawn from a wide variety of geographical locations and biomes. There is no offensive or culturally insensitive language.

Reviewed by Natasha Gownaris, Assistant Professor, Gettysburg College on 4/23/20

I was impressed by the comprehensiveness of this textbook – which covers topics ranging from the structure of prokaryotic cells to environmental justice and Superfund sites. There were a few places that I found the textbook to be lacking (possibly... read more

I was impressed by the comprehensiveness of this textbook – which covers topics ranging from the structure of prokaryotic cells to environmental justice and Superfund sites. There were a few places that I found the textbook to be lacking (possibly because of my personal interests!) In particular: 1) Though marine and freshwater systems were discussed, the level of detail and examples provided throughout the book lean towards terrestrial systems. I think this does a bit of injustice to the ecosystems that cover most of our planet! For example, in the section on "biomes", eight major terrestrial biomes are detailed. However, for marine systems, only three "biomes" are discussed: the ocean, coral reefs, and estuaries. The ocean is such a large and diverse system and warrants more discussion (upwelling systems! hydrothermal vents! krill-dominated Antarctic food webs!). Or, in the least, the fact that this diversity exists can be stressed a bit more and the reader could be pointed to something like https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/mapping-marine-ecosystems/. 2) Interpreting data is so central to environmental biology, so helping students develop comfort with data, equations, and graphs is an important component to a course on the topic. There are a few equations in the text (e.g. the mark-recapture equation), but it would be great if more of this could be added (e.g. the equation for logistic population growth or for calculating diversity indices) in addition to providing more figures that require interpreting data (e.g. the Keeling curve when discussing CO2 in the atmosphere). 3) I was happy to see a section on water pollution and to see eutrophication brought up several times throughout the text, but I was surprised not to see much discussion of the many other types of (increasingly worrisome) anthropogenic pollutants – e.g. plastics and microplastics, sound pollution. 4) It might be worthwhile to add a bit more on international agreements as they relate to the environmental sciences. For example, things like CITES and the Paris Agreement are mentioned, but the Sustainable Development Goals would link up well with a lot of the concepts covered (food security, land/ocean preserves, etc.)

I did not note many inaccuracies but there were a few places that I wasn't sure were inaccurate or just simplifications/lack of detail. For example, the author seemed to be describing trophic cascades on coral reefs in the section on this biome, but it wasn't clear if this description was correct (fishing leading to an increase in predation on corals) – I think of this trophic cascade as impacting coral because parrotfish (which usually eat algae off the coral, reducing competition for light) populations have declined through trophic cascades. I did note an error in Review Question 1 of Chapter 2 (the answer should say something like "the heavier carbon isotope"; even 12C is an isotope). Two other small things: 1) my understanding is that phytoplankton produce more like 50-70% of the oxygen on earth (not 40%), 2) when discussing mutations and evolution, it would be good to make clear that most mutations are not beneficial.

I was surprised by the lack of references in the text. Much of the information likely does not require a reference, but some statements should be backed up by a reference. For example, "A 1986 study estimated that 40% of the product of terrestrial plant photosynthesis — the basis of the food chain for most animal and bird life — was being appropriated by humans for their use. More recent studies estimate that 25% of photosynthesis on continental shelves (coastal areas) is ultimately being used to satisfy human demand." could definitely use references since the author is referring to specific studies. My main concern here is showing by example since it is sometimes a struggle to get students to properly acknowledge their sources.

Most of the information seemed timely enough (and certainly kept more up to date than non-open textbooks) and easy to update. The one thing I was surprised about was the author's language when discussing climate change. There was a lot of "may" and a lot of future tense. The scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows that many of the impacts the author discusses *will* occur and that, in fact, they are already occurring. For example, in Section 5.4, the author talks about climate change driven extinction and states that it "has not yet had a large impact" and later in this chapter states that "climate change will alter regional climates" but we are already seeing these impacts. Maybe add an image of temperature anomalies here to make this clear?

For the most part, the text is clear and easy to read. There were some sections, however, that had long sentences that were a bit difficult to get through (especially if not the terms are known to the reader). For example, the very first section starts with a long statement that includes terms like "carrying capacity", though these terms may not yet be known to the student. In some sections, adding tables or additional figures could be helpful to students if possible. For example, a simple table showing the life history characteristics of r vs. K-strategists might be an extremely useful guide for students not familiar with this categorization. There are also a few sections that should be dropped or have more detail added for clarity. For example, at the end of the section on biomes the author briefly lists several types of wetlands (bogs, marshes, swamps, mudflats, salt marshes) but provides no further information on how these are differentiated. In the section on the carbon cycle, the author very briefly mentions subduction, which feels abrupt and out of place without more detailed discussion of plate tectonics. The information covered by the book is impressive, and I know not everything can be covered in detail, but it might be better to remove statements like this rather than give a surface-level description.

The textbook was very consistent overall (structure of each chapter, types of figures used – e.g. similar figures used for all biogeochemical cycles). There is some inconsistency in the level of detail across topics, but that is true of any textbook. I do think there could be more balance in the focus on terrestrial vs. marine systems (as outlined above). I did not always feel that the chapter summaries really captured the focus of the chapter (e.g. there might be a couple of sentences on something very briefly covered, and only one sentence on something discussed in detail in the chapter), but appreciate that the author took the time to create this extra resource for students.

The textbook is sufficiently modular so that educators might assign sections in a different order or only assign certain chapters to their class. For example, I would personally move up the sections on ecology (population growth, community interactions) then introduce the various biomes to showcase these concepts. I do, however, think that the sections on evolution should be moved up in the text/should be the first ecological concepts covered. Though it does mean that there is some repetition, concepts are in large part explained with enough detail each time they are brought up, so that it isn't necessary that the student has read the preceding chapter. For example, eutrophication is brought up several times in the text and briefly defined each time.

The chapters were very well organized, with well-thought-out subsections and helpful additional features (learning outcomes, additional readings, summary, review questions). Though it would be helpful to have a glossary or appendix, readers can easily search for terms using a PDF version of the book. It might be useful to add some overarching themes to the text to provide a broader structural framework for students. For example, feedback loops have relevance to many topics in environmental biology (e.g. global warming, ice melt, and albedo) and seeing this concept in different contexts is a nice way to tie the field together. One smaller comment is that it would be easier to point students to figures if they were named based on the chapter (e.g. Figure 2.1 rather than every chapter having a Figure 1).

I tried both PDF versions and the online version and had no problems with the interface. It is useful to have the chapter subsections linked so that you can get to them quickly by clicking on them in the table of contents. In general, my students seem to like that you can easily leave yourself comments and jump back to that section with PDF versions of textbooks. As mentioned below, the only thing I would change is swapping out the QR codes for links (though this might cause difficulty if students choose to get the book printed).

There were a few places that could use a bit of wordsmithing (e.g. under "The Nature of Science" there are three sentences in a row that end "about the world" or "about the natural world") but overall I found the book very readable and well-written. There are a few small typos (e.g. two periods at the end of a sentence in the section "Types of Biodiversity") but I didn't notice many or feel they interfered with my reading of the book.

I did not find the book to be culturally insensitive. I appreciated that the book not only included but started off with a discussion of topics like environmental ethics and environmental justice.

I like the use of figures and videos throughout the text, and even more of these might be useful. Students seem to especially enjoy the youtube links in open textbooks. Another option might be to include links to podcasts, TED talks, interactive websites/visualizations, etc. to aid student understanding. There were a couple of places where relevance of the linked media was not immediately apparent to me – for example, Figure 1 in Chapter 2 which covers "the history and future of everything". I also found using QR codes cumbersome and expect my students would just skip these resources.

Reviewed by Beth Reinke, Assistant Professor, Northeastern Illinois University on 4/20/20

Overall, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to environmental science appropriate for an undergraduate class. Some sections were incredibly comprehensive, including those on biodiversity, photosynthesis and its importance, estimating... read more

Overall, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to environmental science appropriate for an undergraduate class. Some sections were incredibly comprehensive, including those on biodiversity, photosynthesis and its importance, estimating population size (making it easy to design an associated lab using these methods), and an excellent description of major biomes that read well instead of like a data table in sentence form. Some of these sections approached the content level I’d expect of Campbell’s Biology, rather than an interdisciplinary book. For instance, the evolution chapter contained a lengthy section on the history of evolutionary thought. There were some minor things I was surprised to find omitted. For instance, the precautionary principle is introduced early on, but the opposite principle, innocent-until-proven-guilty, is never mentioned, despite this being the more common approach used by Western governments. An introduction to the electromagnetic spectrum in early chapters would also have primed students for later discussion of infrared radiation and the different effects of ultraviolet lights. Despite a discussion of the debate around using nuclear energy, there were no details on nuclear energy or the process. Diagrams of nuclear plants and an in-depth discussion of plant operation and safety would have been helpful. Quite surprisingly, there was almost no mention of plastic pollution or municipal solid waste (MSW). MSW was only mentioned in passing as a potential renewable energy source, with no time dedicated to landfills, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or mitigating solid waste pollution. No text was dedicated to discussing recycling plants or processes, the three R’s, or the difficulties of exporting waste to be recycled. I do believe this is a significant oversight that will hopefully be corrected in later versions.

This book impressed me immediately with two sections in the first chapter that are oft neglected or put at the very end as an afterthought in many other environmental science books: “Environmental Ethics” and “Environmental Justice & Indigenous Struggles”. This was a refreshing change of pace to the typical introductory chapters of Environmental Science books. The first chapter also contains an extremely important section on the process of doing peer-reviewed science (page 13). This topic is often neglected in undergraduate courses across the sciences but is so essential (in my opinion) to helping students understand how science is done and why science literacy is so important. The text also contains great sections on zoos and their conservation successes and failures, an introduction to the concept of wilderness preserves reinforcing cultural perceptions of humans being separate from nature, and a great thorough discussion on GMOs and selective breeding. Finally, the section on modern agriculture and its effects is the most thorough I’ve seen in this type of textbook. Many sections contained actionable items for students and readers to do or be aware of to mitigate the issue being discussed, including a weighing of the different types of wood that I haven’t seen in any other textbook. All content was accurate to the best of my knowledge, though sentences were sometimes poorly worded (e.g., ‘Limiting nutrient’ appears to be defined as ‘necessary for growth’ which is misleading; page 79) or conflicted slightly with the associated figure (the discussion of taxonomy says that the “most specific [category] is species” and then the figure shows subspecies). Other things feel awkwardly omitted which makes me think maybe there is a reason I’m unaware of for excluding them, such as the two types of mimicry being discussed in detail in Section 4.4, without naming them as Batesian and Mullerian. The discussion of the differing capacity of regions of the world to switch to renewable geothermal or solar energy could have benefited from maps showing these trends (which I have seen elsewhere).

The last major update to this book occurred in November 2019 and included updates to sections with current information. The book includes a reference to the Flint Water Crisis in Chapter 1, and to President Trump, for example. Given the recent drastic changes in federal regulations, I expect more updates will be added to discussions of the Paris Agreement, governmentally-regulated acceptable levels of toxins, and the EPA. Many graphs with projections end in the 2000’s and are due for updates. There are some sections that don’t seem relevant for an environmental science book. A detailed introduction of prokaryotic vs. eukaryotic cells doesn’t seem necessary for a solid understanding of environmental science and is never touched on again after its introduction.

There are some definitions and acronyms that could use more explanation for an undergraduate class. For example, the first chapter refers to ‘per capita’ consumption without defining ‘per capita.’ CFCs and PCBs are also alluded to without definition in the first chapter. Taken literally, the clarity is poor on some graphs that appear to be low-resolution and are difficult to read.

The content in this textbook is very consistent. There are, however, lots of inconsistencies in formatting. For instance, in some cases figures span pages awkwardly and tables extend off the page, there are changes in text size for no reason, and sometimes words are bolded as vocabulary words while other times they are bolded for emphasis.

Like with most textbooks, key vocabulary words are bolded. Some of these are repeatedly defined which enhances the modularity of sections and chapters (e.g. biome in Section 3.1 and 3.3). Many of the early chapters contain supplementary resources and links but these dwindle as the book goes on, so if students are only introduced to later chapters, or chapters out of order, they will not know to reference those.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

Each chapter contains a set of objectives at the beginning, a summary section at the end, and a set of review questions with answers in the appendices. Some chapters contain subsections, denoted by small caps, or labeled as boxes. The text is written in a very readable voice and sections are no longer than they need to be. This book takes the approach of starting very specifically within environmental science, discussing the process of science and the importance of environmental studies and environmental justice, before diving into building the foundation of knowledge (e.g., atoms, energy, chemistry in Chapter 2). I think this works well, but have not tried this approach, to this breadth, in the classroom. There are a few major topics that I believe should be introduced much sooner than they are: evolution and climate change. Evolution doesn’t get introduced until Chapter 5 despite it being fundamental for understanding chapters like Chapter 4: Community and Population Ecology (as even noted in the famous Dobzhansky quote). A brief discussion of evolution, selection, and adaptation should probably be a subsection of Chapter 2. Similarly, Chapter 5 refers a lot to consequences of climate change but climate change itself isn’t defined or explained until the second-to-last chapter of the book. Given the consequences of climate change, it wouldn’t be difficult or far-fetched to frame most of the sections in the context of climate change, if it’s introduced first. The subsections, denoted by small caps such as “Evolution in Action,” “Biology in Action”, and “Evolution Connection” aren’t well differentiated and appear somewhat arbitrary. They pop up in the middle of marginally related topics. This is especially confusing in early chapters before evolution is discussed at all.

Interface rating: 3

The text pages are short but dense, without the spaces, columns, and colorful figures that typically space out text in a print textbook. I prefer it this way but students may disagree. Figures numbers restart in each subsection which can make them tricky to refer to in class or in class worksheets. Figures also aren’t always referenced in the text, are sometimes referenced incorrectly (e.g. Figure 2 is cited when Figure 3 should be, as on page 245), and are formatted inconsistently (not really a significant issue but still worth noting). Pages also don’t have a header or a footer stating the chapter or section, which made quickly referencing previous sections of the pdf a hassle. There is strange formatting in the review questions at the ends of chapters, in figures, between sections, and in text sizes. These are not major issues at all and don’t interfere with readability. In the pdf version, internal links do not work, except in Table of Contents, (but links going externally do). Some external links are behind paywalls (all National Geographic links) or are broken (Flint water crisis in Section 1.5, ‘multiple countries’ in Section 6.2) There are some figures that are links to MinuteEarth videos. These are very cool but are easy to miss so make sure you check them out! A major flaw, to me, is that many figures especially in the second half of the book, are QR codes. These codes are not clickable and so if students are reading on desktops or laptops, it will be cumbersome to get out their cell phones just to access the external links. Additionally, students without smartphones, or with older models, may be unable to access this content without clickable links.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

There are occasional typos and grammatical errors. There are some incomplete sentences (e.g. beginning of page 51, end of page 112), some omitted words (first sentence of page 84) or omitted spaces (top of page 94). These aren’t common enough to be distracting but are more prevalent than I’d expect in an edited print textbook.

See the comment above about the Environmental Ethics and Environmental Justice & Indigenous Struggles sections. This book is definitely geared towards a North American audience, though it does contain Case Studies and standard examples from around the world. The first chapter contains a cursory description of environmental racism, with a somewhat dismissive approach to the topic, and a brief introduction to environmental justice that is not expanded upon in further chapters.

This book also has an associated Google Drive folder of lecture slides. The slides are View Only but contain lots of great exercises (Think-Pair-Share, etc.) and links to external sources that make them a valuable resource. Updates to the book are also listed in the front, making continued use of this textbook simple from semester to semester. Note: I reviewed the downloaded pdf version of this OER so any page numbers or formatting issues mentioned below may not be accurate across platforms.

Reviewed by Michael Renfroe, Professor, James Madison University on 1/8/20

This text covers a very broad topic and is, for the most part, comprehensive in its treatment of the topics. There are a few areas where some increased explanation would be helpful for clarity. For example, in the discussion of eutrophication... read more

This text covers a very broad topic and is, for the most part, comprehensive in its treatment of the topics. There are a few areas where some increased explanation would be helpful for clarity. For example, in the discussion of eutrophication the author does not adequately explain the role of aerobic decomposers in oxygen depletion leading to hypoxia/anoxia and subsequent fish kills. In Chapter 5 – Conservation and Biodiversity, the section on Conservation of Biodiversity is under-developed. There is no mention of aquatic biodiversity, its importance, or methods for conservation. There is no glossary or index included with the text.

The content is accurate and there is no obvious bias. The authors go to great measures to speak from an objective perspective. If anything, the perspective is a bit too sterile and dispassionate, rendering the text a bit boring.

The broader principles and content information are timeless. Some of the case studies are a bit out of date. For example, case study 7.5 The Aral Sea does not mention any of the multinational remediation efforts that are underway to remediate this aquatic ecosystem.

The text is composed in a clear fashion. Terminology is defined or explained as it is introduced. Some figure legends could be expanded a little to improve the ability of the figure to stand alone without reference from within the text.

Consistency rating: 3

Some chapter sections are much more developed (6.3 Environmental Toxicology) than others (6.4 Bioremediation). There is somewhat uneven coverage of topics. The role of the intertidal sea star as a keystone species could be given increased coverage, especially given changes in the Pacific northwest oceanic community that is occurring now. The text refers to soils being depleted and interactions in the ecosystem being lost, but does not explain what interactions maintain the ecosystem or whether they can be restored.

The chapters could be easily redacted as to sequence, or could be selected to form shorter subject coverage. The units are easily sub-divisible into smaller sections.

The topics are in a logical progression, but also could be easily reorganized into a different progression depending upon what one wished to emphasize in the course or how one wished to organize and sequence the material.

When printed, there were changes in font sizes from paragraph to paragraph within sections. Also the review questions print out in different font sizes within a single chapter.

Few errors were noted. Most are minor such as the following sentence from Section 4.3. “Clean drinking water and proper disposal sewage has drastically improved health in developed nations.” The sentence should probably read “Clean drinking water and proper disposal of sewage has drastically improved health in developed nations.” An alternative version could be “Clean drinking water and properly disposed sewage has drastically improved health in developed nations.”

The text addresses multiple perspectives and addresses cultural differences in an objective and respectful manner.

The text goes into Matter, Energy, and Cell Structure in some detail, yet does not cover essential details of photosynthesis and respiration either in the context of energy cycling or in the carbon cycle. A course in environmental science is not likely to be a student's fist science course. Therefore Chapter 2 is likely to have been covered in greater detail in some previous course. I think this chapter could be eliminated. The section on protecting biodiversity is wholly inadequate with a mere four pages covering conservation practices. The importance of nature (and especially plants) to human psychology and physiology (biophilia and phytoncides) should be mentioned given the large body of published evidence on this topic. The text regularly makes bold statements, then leaves the topic without elaboration. For example, toward the end of section 5.3, it is stated: "The world's growing human population faces significant challenges in the increasing costs and other difficulties associated with producing food." This begs the question of how do we address these challenges? We need to leave our students with some sense of hope. Overall, this is a laudable work, but I would like to see some tweaking of the level of coverage of various topics.

Reviewed by Karen Bledsoe, Instructor, Chemeketa Community College on 5/23/19

The book covers most topics found in other environmental science books, with enough background material (ecology topics covered in general biology courses) for understanding of basic ecological principles. Some topics I did not notice: soil... read more

The book covers most topics found in other environmental science books, with enough background material (ecology topics covered in general biology courses) for understanding of basic ecological principles. Some topics I did not notice: soil erosion, habitat fragmentation, and desertification in the context of habitat loss, solid waste issues (including recycling uses and limitations, microplastics in the environment, plastic waste in general, landfills, garbage burners, and exporting solid waste), effects of the loss of genetic diversity on endangered wildlife, and newer innovations in renewable energy (such as tidal energy and solar glass).

I’m pleased to see the term “scientific inquiry” used to describe the processes of science. However, the book still speaks of “THE scientific method,” as though there is a single set of steps for “doing science.” The authors may want to look into literature on scientific inquiry in education for more up-to-date and comprehensive descriptors of the processes of science. Two issues I have with the presentation of photosynthesis: 1) I prefer a plant-centered view, in which fixing energy in the form of carbon compounds is THE reason autotrophs carry out photosynthesis. The presentation suggests that oxygen generation – only a waste product of photosynthesis – is the important goal. 2) It would be easy to draw a common misconception out of some of the language here: that photosynthesis MAKES energy. In fact, photosynthesis USES energy to manufacture energy-rich carbon compounds. Discussion of biomes is standard in life science textbooks, but I think it’s imperative that students understand that “biome” is an abstract concept. I stand in the middle of the southernmost end of what the map describes as Boreal Forest, and I see a region that was dominated by oak savannah and patches of coniferous forest and maple woodland before it was broken up into farms, all framed by conifer-enrobed mountains. “Biome” is a broad-brush description of a general climate pattern. A finer-grained look will reveal a patchwork of ecotypes, right down to the microbiomes on different sides of the same hill. The discussion of GMO crops does, as it should, distinguish between traditional methods (selective breeding, hybridization) and insertion of new genes via laboratory methods. However, the illustration in the chapter does not. It implies that “traditional” methods of cross-breeding cause strands of DNA to hybridize into entirely new chromosomes. While crossing-over does occur during meiosis, the figure does not accurately describe that. The section on sustainable agriculture needs fleshing out. The methods employed by Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms are highly sustainable and yet don’t fit the brief descriptions outlined here. Consider Community-Supported Agriculture, old-fashioned “truck farms” serving farmer’s markets, the loss of farmland to suburbs and the rise of the “food, not lawns” movement and urban agriculture to address the problem, and much more. Climate change really deserves its own chapter and an in-depth discussion that includes how scientists know that humans are contributing to climate change. Ocean acidification is included in one small section, and could be expanded. The chapter on energy includes a discussion of renewable energy that touches on the most common forms of renewable (and more or less sustainable) energy: solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, biomass, ethanol, and biodiesel. The authors might also look at tidal energy generators, the prospects of hydrogen fuel (it takes electricity to make hydrogen fuel, so why not use electricity directly? In what cases would it make more sense to make hydrogen fuel?), and interesting community approaches such as gyms that hook the exercise machines to the electrical system to run the lights, the turbines Portland, OR has installed in the storm sewer system, and the capability of homeowners to produce their own electricity via solar roofs, solar panels, small wind turbines, and so on. And what about solar roadways?

The discussions of sustainability, environmental ethics, and environmental justice are both comprehensive and concise. Highly relevant to today’s environmental science students because it includes multiple stakeholders. The discussion of equity is brief, but I’m glad to see it included. Obviously material on environmental problems, sustainable energy, sustainable agriculture, and human-devised solutions will have to be updated frequently. The book appears fairly current, while including historical examples.

Writing is clear and accessible to lower-division college and upper high school readers. Layout includes sufficient white space and few long, intimidating paragraphs. Diagrams are chosen to enhance understanding. Typeface size is adjustable.

Chapters are organized in a consistent manner. Writing style and formatting is consistent throughout.

Chapters are organized in a “bottom-up” fashion typical of life science textbooks, from atoms and molecules to the entire biosphere, ending with human effects. I think an instructor could arrange a course as they wished without having to present the chapters in order. For example, the chapters on matter and energy could be referred to while presenting material on energy flow and material cycling. Understanding matter and energy are necessary to understanding ecological concepts, but the arrangement allows for presenting the material on a “need to know” basis.

Chapters are divided into short sections and paragraphs, which makes reading fairly easy.

Pull-down menu access to each chapter is simple to navigate. Throughout the book there are links to websites with further information and activities to enhance student learning. So long as these are kept up to date and replaced now and then with more recent resources and modules, I think this can be a useful addendum to an online textbook. Adjustable typeface size helps with accessibility. Most figure captions are descriptive to assist students with vision issues.

No grammatical errors found.

The book has a fair discussion of environmental justice and equity at the beginning, putting in in line with modern takes on environmental science and sustainability. The theme is picked up again in the chapter on environment and human health.

The first part of the book contains short, comprehensive discussions of material found in most standard introductory life science textbooks, while the second half details environmental issues largely from a human perspective. I would like to see a presentation of the field methods of environmental science – HOW populations are studied, for example, in the population chapter. Further, each chapter resources section could include actionable items, that is, suggestions for activities students can do at home or in the classroom to demonstrate chapter concepts. Students should be able to step outside, observe the environment around them, and draw conclusions based on their observations. Some chapters, such as the chapter on environment and human health, include a case study – case studies could be included in each chapter as a demonstration of scientific inquiry applied to environmental problems, and including cultural and social issues. But also consider inclusion of some less human-centered material, considering the rest of the biosphere less as something we use and that impacts us and more as a web of living things that are also trying to survive on this planet.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Environmental Science
• Chapter 2: Matter, Energy, & Life
• Chapter 3: Ecosystems and the Biosphere
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Energy & Environmental Science

A corrosion-free zinc metal battery with ultra-thin zinc anode and high depth of discharge.

Zinc metal battery featuring high capacity, low cost, and environmental benignity has been receiving more attention than ever. Regrettably, due to the intrinsic thermodynamic instability of metallic zinc in conventional aqueous electrolytes, giant challenges still remain before its broad application. Herein, we report a corrosion-free zinc metal battery with an ultra-thin zinc anode and high depth of discharge by rational electrolyte engineering. This weakly coordinated aprotic electrolyte endows the metallic zinc with excellent thermodynamic stability in static storage by avoiding the generation of H+ and the zinc foil experienced no evident corrosion even after soaking for two weeks, which provides an important benchmark for employing ultra-thin metallic zinc anode down to 10 μm-thick. Besides, benefiting from its distinctive weakly-coordinated solvation structure (i.e., [Zn(DMI)3]2+ and [Zn(DMI)4]2+), this electrolyte endows the zinc metal battery with superior electrochemical performance at a high depth of discharge. 10 μm Zn||10 μm Zn symmetric cells stably cycled for 7220 hours at the current density of 1 mA cm-2 and 10 μm Zn||15.3 mg cm-2 PANI full cells stably ran for 1700 cycles at the current density of 50 mA g-1, exhibiting a high capacity retention of 82.5%. Lastly, we revealed that the superior dynamic performance of the aqueous electrolyte is attributed to the faster mass transfer in the electrolyte rather than a lower de-solvation energy in the electrode/electrolyte interphase. This work illustrates a potential pathway for the commercial application of zinc metal batteries.

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R. Yao, Y. Zhao, L. Wang, C. Xiao, F. Kang, C. Zhi and C. Yang, Energy Environ. Sci. , 2024, Accepted Manuscript , DOI: 10.1039/D3EE04320G

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