Water Resources

Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) announced the completion of its first project in Mexico in alignment with its technical-scientific agreement signed in December 2012 with Mexico's federal environmental agency, the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC). The three-week survey of beach contaminants for the State of Guerrero, an area that encompasses several major resorts including Acapulco, found strong evidence of environmental pollutants including plastics, mercury, and petroleum pollution along the coastline.

In 2012, through a Switzer Leadership Grant, I had the opportunity to join the Adirondack Chapter of The Nature Conservancy to help advance work in freshwater conservation and climate change adaptation in the bi-national Lake Champlain Basin.

In addition to multiple concerns related to the CDC’s safety standards, methodology, and transparency, Hansen said he feels much of the blame falls on the state and the long history of lax oversight this incident exposed.

Evan Hansen, an environmental consultant with the Morgantown firm Downstream Strategies, has been wondering for several days about whether the health studies and water-sampling efforts included the other constituents of Crude MCHM. Posting his thoughts on Twitter, Hansen said the distinction between the two substances is important. "Are water tests in area being done for all constituents of Crude MCHM or just for 4-MCHM," Hansen posted. Read more

"Our project aims to clearly quantify environmental services such as water flow, carbon storage and biodiversity conservation that decision makers will consider as they evaluate projects from forest restoration to watershed management," said Jefferson Hall, Smithsonian staff scientist and project director. Read more

From 1996 Switzer Fellow Evan Hansen, whose West Virginia-based firm Downstream Strategies offers environmental consulting services with a core belief in the importance of protecting the environment and linking economic development with natural resource stewardship:

This reference resource, in atlas format, is an online-only compendium of maps and data sets accompanied by multimedia elements designed to illustrate key concepts in green issues and environmentalism graphically and interactively. Topics for the maps presented in this work were selected from articles in the 12-volume SAGE Reference Series on Green Society: Toward a Sustainable Future. Each map includes links to one or more of the series articles. Maps include interactive components, with clickable icons to deliver the data and statistics that make up each map.

From 2000 Switzer Fellow Jen Osha, who is coordinating an effort to bring bottled water to West Virginia residents whose water supply was contaminated by the chemical leak at Freedom Industries last week: