Environmental Science, with its rich, interdisciplinary complexity, poses important questions for planet Earth: Where have efforts to respond to threats against the environment led? And how can government, science, and industry best ensure a sustainable relationship with local, national, and global environments? To help navigate the many facets of these questions, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science (ORE) has drawn together a vast array of comprehensive, in-depth, overview articles that offer background and perspective to researchers delving into unfamiliar subjects.
Led by editor in chief Hank Shugart, W.W. Corcoran Professor of Environmental Sciences and the Director of the Center for Regional Environmental Studies at the University of Virginia, this dynamic, evolving resource incorporates the sciences and related disciplines, and combines cutting-edge, peer-reviewed scholarship with encyclopedic scope. Readers can access articles on topics that are regularly updated and linked to associated topics, themes, and resources — Physical sciences to health sciences, and social sciences to engineering, for example.
The content of ORE continually evolves with new developments in the field, strengthened by the contributions of authors, reviewers, and editors from the global scholarly community, directing readers to relevant resources — audio-visual materials, data sets, pedagogical tools, and more.
You can browse by subject:
- Agriculture and the environment
- Chemistry and toxicology
- Environment and human health
- Environmental economics
- Environmental ethics
- Environmental history
- Environmental sociology and psychology
- Policy, governance, and law
Browse the most recent articles
Articles listed in descending order by month, beginning with “Economics of Renewable Energy: A Comparison of Electricity Production Costs Across Technologies” by Govinda R. Timilsina and Kalim U. Shah, and “Hydroeconomics” by Manuel Pulido-Velazquez and Amaury Tilmant, both published online January 28, 2022.
Browse forthcoming articles
Advanced summaries of articles in progress such as “Ancient and Traditional Agriculture in South America: Highlands” by Geoffrey L. Taylor, Katherine L. Chiou, about the enduring legacy of ancient Inca agricultural and environmental practices, or “Ecotourism” by Giles Jackson, about the need for responsible travel that conserves the natural environment and sustains the well-being of local people, scheduled to be published January-March 2022. Most summaries provide links to related published articles!
Browse special projects
Articles from special edited collections also published as stand-alone printed volumes. For instance, “The Oxford Encyclopedia of Agriculture and the Environment” is an extensive compilation of articles related to the Agriculture and the Environment subject field.
There is material in the ORE that will enliven research in multiple disciplines — History, Economics, Ethnography, Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology, Biology, Climatology and more. Visit the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science and discover why Environmental Science may be the most important field of study in the world today. You can find ORE in the Library’s A-Z Databases list.