General Resources
- Clean Water Initiative -
The Clean Water Action Plan, announced by President Clinton and Vice President Gore on
February 19, 1998, will protect public health and restore our nation's precious waterways
by setting strong goals and providing states, communities, farmers, and landowners the
tools and resources to meet them. It charts a new course emphasizing collaborative
strategies built around watersheds and the communities they sustain.
- Databases and Software
- Links to EPA's main data and software servers.
- Economy and
Environment Division - Carries out research and analyses of the interactions and
relationships between the economy and environmental pollution control as well as other
aspects of environmental economics. This includes determining the economic benefits and
costs of pollution control, the use of economic incentives for pollution control, and the
size, composition, and impacts of the pollution control industry.
- Envirofacts
Warehouse - A single point of access to select U.S. EPA
environmental data.
- Surf Your Watershed - A service to help you locate, use, and share environmental information on
your watershed or community.
U.S. Department of Commerce
- Census Bureau
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- Coastal Change Analysis
Program (C-CAP) - Designed to monitor change in terrestrial land cover and nearshore
benthic resources within coastal environments of the United States including the Atlantic,
Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, Alaska, Hawaii, and all U.S. territories and
possessions. C-CAP classifies types of land cover, analyzes and monitors changes in
coastal submerged habitats, wetland habitats, and adjacent uplands using remote sensing
techniques (satellite imagery and aerial photography).
- Environmental Information
Services:
- Environmental
Services Data Directory - NOAA data includes the latest GOES images of the U.S., the
latest weather reports for the U.S., pictures of Hurricane Emily hitting the Outer Banks,
studies of solar terrestrial physics, information on marine biology from the National
Marine Fisheries Service, sea surface temperatures from Coast Watch images, weather in
space, and many other things.
- International Year of the Ocean - In recognition of the importance of the marine environment, the United
Nations has declared 1998 the International Year of the Ocean (YOTO). This designation
provides individual organizations and governments with an important opportunity to raise
public awareness and understanding of the ocean and related issues.
- National Estuarine
Research Reserve Centralized Data Management Office - Established in support of the
System-wide Monitoring Program involving 22 sites around the US and Puerto Rico. The
purpose of the CDMO is the management of the basic infrastructure and data protocol to
support the assimilation and exchange of data, metadata and information within the
framework of NERRS sites, coastal zone management (CZM) programs, and other state and
federally- funded education, monitoring and research programs. This comprehensive
program consists of three phased components: (1) estuarine water quality monitoring, (2)
biodiversity monitoring, and (3) land-use and habitat change analysis.
- National Marine
Fisheries Service Fisheries Statistics and Economics Division - Serves as the
principal source of national fishery statistics. The Division provides: authoritative
advice and guidance on matters related to the collection of biological, economic, market
and sociological statistics on: domestic recreational fisheries, domestic commercial
fisheries, and foreign commercial fisheries.
- National Weather
Service Climate Data - Many types of environmental or weather observations can be
termed climate resources. These observations can be weather land surface observations,
ocean (marine) atmospheric observations, weather upper atmospheric observations, weather
radar observations, weather satellite observations (images or data).
- Office
of Ocean Resources Conservation and Assessment (ORCA) Datasets - Provides decision
makers with comprehensive scientific information on the resources of the nation's coastal
areas, estuaries, and oceans. ORCA program activities include: conducting a wide range of
information synthesis activities to identify and evaluate strategies for conserving
coastal and ocean resources and maintaining large databases on the characteristics of
coastal areas; measuring the status and trends of environmental quality of U.S. coastal
areas and the biological consequences of pollutants and other stresses on living organisms
and coastal ecosystems; coordinating research, evaluation, and planning efforts to
minimize the environmental effects of oil and hazardous materials spills and hazardous
waste sites; conducting assessments to support the recovery of monetary damages resulting
from injuries to natural resources to be used for planning, implementing, and monitoring
restoration alternatives.
- Oceanographic Products and
Services Division - collects, analyzes and distributes historical and real-time
observations and predictions of water levels, coastal currents and other meteorological
and oceanographic data.
- Agriculture Network Information
Center - A distributed network that provides access to agriculture-related
information, subject area experts, and other resources.
- Agricultural Research
Service - One of the USDA's Research, Education and
Economics agencies, is the main in-house research arm of the USDA.
- Economic
Research Service Data Products - Official source for economic analysis and information
on agriculture, food, natural resources, and rural America.
- Pesticide Properties
Database - A compendium of chemical and
physical properties of 230 widely used pesticides. Information included in the database
focuses on 16 of the most important properties that affect pesticides transport and
degradation characteristics.
- National Resource
Conservation Service: A Federal agency that works
in partnership with the American people to conserve and sustain our natural resources.
The state partners within the geographic regions with which these pages are
concerned are linked on their respective pages.
- Technical Resources:
Including base map coverages, status maps, the National Resources Inventory (NRI)
database, and data bases on soil, water and climate, plants for conservation, the state of
natural resources in the US and more.
- Resource
Valuation and Use Research - Find
information on economics research in the Forest Service. The research program
consists of 10 Research Work Units at various locations around the country, including:
North Central Forest Experiment Station in St. Paul, MN; Northeastern Forest Experiment
Station in Radnor, PA; Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, OR; Rocky Mountain
Research Station in Fort Collins, CO; Southern Research Station in Asheville, NC, and the
Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, WI.
- U.S. Forest Service
- National Wetlands Inventory - Established to generate information about the characteristics, extent and
status of the Nation's wetlands and deepwater habitats.
- National Geospatial Data
Clearinghouse - Provides a pathway to find information about geospatial or
spatially referenced data available from USGS. The information is in the form of metadata.
- National
Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA)Program: designed to describe the status and trends in
the quality of the Nation's ground- and surface-water resources and to provide a sound
understanding of the natural and human factors that affect the quality of these resources.
As part of the program, investigations will be conducted in 59 areas - called "study
units" - throughout the Nation to provide a framework for national and regional
water-quality assessment. The study units within the geographic regions with
which these pages are concerned are linked on their respective pages.
- National Wetlands
Research Center - This site contains data, which is geospatially referenced and much
of which is biological in nature, and other information.
U.S. Congress
Economy and Environment
Fisheries
- National Fisheries Institute - A
non-profit trade association representing more than 1,000 companies in all aspects of the
fish and seafood industry. The Institute acts to ensure an ample, sustainable, and safe
seafood supply for consumers and strengthens members' ability to succeed in the worldwide
seafood industry.
General Environmental Data/Software
Legal
- Directory
of Multilateral Conventions on Marine and Coastal Topics - An ongoing project at the
Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, to make
available the texts of international multilateral conventions and other instruments.
- Summary of
Environmental Law in North America - The Commission for Environmental Cooperation
created this summary of Environmental Law in North America to improve public access to the
environmental law of the three parties to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),
i.e. Canada, Mexico and the US. The summary is also designed to serve as a research tool
for any person or organization interested in the environmental legislation of the three
countries.
Professional Societies
- American Agricultural Economics
Association - Its mission is to enhance the
skills, knowledge, and professional contributions of those economists who help society to
solve problems related to agriculture, food, resources, and economic development.
Publishes the American Journal of Agricultural
Economics, Choices, and the Review of Agricultural
Economics.
- Association of Environmental
and Resource Economists - Established as a means of exchanging ideas, stimulating
research, and promoting graduate training in resource and environmental economics.
Publishes the Journal of Environmental Economics and
Management.
- International
Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE) - A worldwide confederation of
agricultural economists and others concerned with agricultural economic problems,
organized to: Foster the application of agricultural economics to improve rural economic
and social conditions; Advance knowledge of agriculture's economic organization;
Facilitate communication and information exchange among those concerned with rural
welfare. Publishes Agricultural
Economics, the Journal of the International Association of Agricultural
Economists.
- Soil and Water Conservation Association - A
non-profit, scientific and educational organization of professional conservationists.
Publishes the Journal of Soil and
Water Conservation.
Sara Gottlieb / Maryland Sea Grant Extension
/ Last Updated: 02/05/99