Open Access to JESS Special Edition for March Issue
from JESS Editor-in-Chief Tony Rosenbaum:
The Journal of Environmental Studies (JESS) is pleased to announce that articles concerning the Food, Energy Water Nexus will be available online and accessible to all readers until April 23, 2016. This Special Issue features selected presentations from the 16th National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the Environment, sponsored by the National Center for Science and the Environment (NCSE) in January 2016, from related NSF workshops, and from other endeavors supported, among others, by NSF, USDA, NASA, the US Forest Service, NOAA, the US Geological Survey, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Papers are open access at the journal’s website. The conference, engaging approximately 1200 individuals from diverse disciplines and sectors, explored opportunities and challenges in applying science at the Food, Energy, Water Nexus. Papers in this issue assess the nature of human and scientific challenges raised by considering food, energy, and water systems together at scales from cities, to aquifers and river basins, to the entire globe. Many of the papers identify research agendas or address specific critical research challenges such as identifying appropriate questions, developing and using analytical tools, spatial computing, sensing and monitoring, and defining metrics at appropriate scales.
Additional papers address important environmental challenges at the nexus, such as resilience and human adaptations, engineering, infrastructure, sustainable ecosystems, nutrients, aquifer depletion, public values, mediating human conflicts, sustainable energy systems, engineering solutions, and integrative systems management. One paper argues persuasively for advancing a “Community of Practice” that develops the cross-cutting tools and skills for those working on the very diverse set of initiatives described in this issue. It is appropriate after reviewing so many challenges that the issue ends with a commentary providing “A Positive Vision of Sustainability.”
