Environmental Science and Studies Courses & Research

Environmental Protection Agency: U.S. agency charged with developing and enforcing regulations to protect human health and the environment.

United Nations Environment Programme: Organization focused on global environmental policy and data collection.

Integrated Taxonomic Information System

National Science Foundation

National Library of Medicine

NOAA Habitat Conservation

Professional Organizations in Biology:

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS)

Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB)

National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

Encyclopedia of Life: Portal providing information on various species.

Google Scholar: This search engine is devoted entirely to scholarly research published or indexed online. Consider using the advanced search for more refined results.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species provides comprehensive information on the conservation status of plants and animals worldwide.

PubMed Central provides access to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free full-text digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.

Science Research:  A free, publicly available deep web search engine that uses advanced "federated search technology" to return high quality results by submitting your search query - in real-time - to other well respected search engines then collating, ranking and dropping duplicates of the results.

Scirus: This search engine focuses on scientific research published or indexed online. It allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists' homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information.

What is it? Why do I care? What does it really say?

You answer these three questions every time you use a source, whether you know it or not.

• Whether it is a website or a scholarly journal article...
• Whether it is for a 1st-year course or real life...

Start noticing how you answer these questions to ensure your sources are really meeting your needs.

The Three Questions:

• What is it: What is the source type and author credibility?
  • Quick Wikipedia checks are okay! You can also compare what other source say about that source.
• Why do I care: Does the source type and author credibility meet your needs?
  • Decide this at the beginning so you know whether to read the material or find something better.
• What does it really say: Perceive how the word choices influence the knowledge.
  • The author's word choices, included and excluded information, and the aim of the publication all make a difference in how or why you would use a source.