U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: National Wetlands Inventory

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From the Scout Report, University of Wisconsin, July 31, 2009:

http://www.fws.gov/wetlands/

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the primary federal agency that provides information on the state of the country’s wetlands, and this site provides extensive geospatial data on their current extent and location." Highly productive ecosystems, wetlands are so important in providing habitat and renewal of groundwater. There is a "Wetlands Mapper" and images from Google Earth. Digital wetlands data is downloadable by state or quadrant.

Research4Life collective website for developing countries

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UK Research4Life launches website – 07 Jul 2009

Research4Life has announced the launch of www.research4life.org.. The website will act as the public face of the Research4Life partnership for journalists, partners and institutions considering joining one of the programmes. It will include news about the programmes, information on the partners and participating institutions, testimonials and case studies.

Research4Life is the collective name given to HINARI, AGORA and OARE, the three public-private partnership programmes of the WHO, FAO, UNEP, Cornell and Yale Universities and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers. One hundred and fifty five publishers now participate in the programmes, including Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell and Oxford University Press and many university and learned society presses. Together with technology partner Microsoft, Research4Life seeks to help achieve the UN’s Millennium Development Goals by providing the developing world with access to critical up-to-date scientific research.

The website features examples of how the programmes are having a real-world impact on developing countries.

Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter 7/7/09

Ocean World: Coral Reefs

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Title:Ocean World: Coral Reefs
Url: http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/students/coral/index.html
Publisher: Texas A & M University.
Ocean World.

Description: Texas A&M University presents Ocean World, a Web-based educational resource for oceanography. The feature on coral reefs has the most direct life sciences application, with easy-to-navigate sections about the coral animal, coral reefs as the rainforests of the sea, symbiosis, ecosystem services, and coral reef threats and conservation. The Web site also includes a handy hypertext glossary, an interactive quiz, and annotated links to interesting Web sites, including sites that provide real-time reef images and data. While no formal lesson plans are provided, this Web site could be easily incorporated to a related classroom module for a range of grade levels.

Source: AMSER.org via Scout Report, Univ. Wisc. 6/5/09

Mother Nature News: MNN.com

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The Nature Conservancy News, via their newsletter today, introduced the Mother Nature News Network which provides information and resources about technology, transportation, earth matters, food, business, home, lifestyle and family.

"You can read Conservancy news, nature and environmental articles, blogs, videos and how-to guides, along with breaking news stories, such as:

  • MNN TV shows Conservancy videos and gives visual advice on everything from green party planning and green parenting to impassioned musicians and local-food chefs.
  • The Green News Roundup with daily environmental news and coverage from around the web including nature.org.content from each of The Nature Conservancy’s state programs.
  • Plus, read what MNN’s featured bloggers cover about the Conservancy and green living topics from transportation to family to business and food. "

Mother Nature News: MNN.com

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The Nature Conservancy News, via their newsletter today, introduced the Mother Nature News Network which provides information and resources about technology, transportation, earth matters, food, business, home, lifestyle and family.

"You can read Conservancy news, nature and environmental articles, blogs, videos and how-to guides, along with breaking news stories, such as:

  • MNN TV shows Conservancy videos and gives visual advice on everything from green party planning and green parenting to impassioned musicians and local-food chefs.
  • The Green News Roundup with daily environmental news and coverage from around the web including nature.org.content from each of The Nature Conservancy’s state programs.
  • Plus, read what MNN’s featured bloggers cover about the Conservancy and green living topics from transportation to family to business and food. "

Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE)

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Netherland OARE programme registers 1500 institutions in less than three years – 18 May 2009

Research4Life has announced that the Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE) programme has registered 1500 institutions since its launch in 2006, an increase of nearly 700 percent. Scientists, researchers and environmental policy-makers in 1,500 not-for-profit institutions in the world’s poorest countries will now gain free or low cost access to the latest environmental science literature from the world’s leading journals, books and databases. Research4Life is the collective name given to HINARI, AGORA and OARE, the three public-private partnership programmes of the WHO, FAO, UNEP, Cornell and Yale Universities and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers.

OARE’s sister programmes, HINARI Access to Research Initiative and Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), have also shown significant growth. Established in 2002, registrations for HINARI have grown by 61 percent since 2006 so that researchers at 3,866 not-for-profit institutions in 108 countries now have access to over 6,300 medical and health journals. Registrations for AGORA (established in 2003) have increased by 77 percent since 2006, providing researchers at 1,760 developing world institutions with access to 1,276 food, agriculture, and related social sciences journals.

More than 150 publishers now participate in the programmes, including Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer and many university and society presses. Together with technology partner Microsoft, Research4Life seeks to help achieve the UN’s millennium development goals by providing the developing world with access to critical up-to-date scientific research.

Click here to read the original press release.

Common Chemistry — online chemical database for public

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commchem.gif CAS launches free web-based resource for non-chemists – 15 May 2009

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society, has launched a new, free, web-based resource called Common Chemistry. This resource is helpful to non-chemists and others who might know either a chemical name or a CAS Registry Number of a common everyday chemical and want to pair both pieces of information.

Common Chemistry contains nearly 7,800 chemicals of widespread and general interest, as well as all 118 elements from the periodic table. With the exception of some of the elements, all other substances in this collection were deemed of widespread interest by having been cited 1,000 or more times in the CAS databases.

While not intended to be a comprehensive CAS Registry Number (CAS RN) lookup service, Common Chemistry does provide access to information on chemicals of general interest. The CAS Registry Number is recognised throughout the world as the most commonly used, unique identifier of chemical substances. The full CAS REGISTRYSM database contains more than 46 million organic and inorganic substances. Research discovery and patent tools such as SciFinder and STN allow users to search the entire database.

Click here to read the original press release.

Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter & CAS.

Note: Princeton University Library subscribes to the complete CAS Chemical Abstracts and Registry database — available as SciFinder Scholar.

Environmental Resource — new website coming from Gale Pub.)

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“GREENR: Your Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources
GREENR (Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources) is part of a new generation of online Gale resources offering authoritative content on the environment, energy and natural resources. Launching in June 2009, GREENR focuses on the academic study of sustainability and the environment. Both interactive and current, GREENR allows users to navigate open Web-like issue, organization and country portals. A one-stop site, this resource provides news, background information, video, unique commentaries, primary source documents and statistics in highly accessible, visually-appealing research areas, covering relevant categories including energy systems, healthcare, food, climate change, population and economic development.

GREENR is coming in June!
Researchers: ask your librarian for more information.”

Some websites are listed here.

Incidentally, the federal government has some good websites relating to environmental issues: www.epa.gov,
www.nrel.gov,
www.usgs.gov,
www.energy.gov

Through GPOAccess, Environment links are here.

This page of environment, energy and agriculture information links for the public is obtained via USA.gov.

Earth Day website from Univ. of Buffalo

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Earth Day 2009
1970-2009: 39 Years of Environmental Awareness
The University of Buffalo Libraries presents a CyberExhibit (originally curated in 2000 on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day) commemorating the anniversary of Earth Day, which includes: a brief history of Earth Day, a listing of selected international, national, state, local, and campus Internet resources, and other materials.

(Courtesy of Fred Stoss)

PEACE!

Frederick W. Stoss, M.S. (zool/ecol), M.L.S.
Associate Librarian
(Biological and Environmental Sciences and Mathematics)