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How we produce and consume food has a bigger impact on Americans' well-being than any other human activity. The food industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality, and the federal budget. From the earliest developments of agriculture, a major goal has been to attain sufficient foods that provide the energy and the nutrients needed for a healthy, active life. Over time, food production, processing, marketing, and consumption have evolved and become highly complex. The challenges of improving the food system in the 21st century will require systemic approaches that take full account of social, economic, ecological, and evolutionary factors. Policy or business interventions involving a segment of the food system often have consequences beyond the original issue the intervention was meant to address. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System develops an analytical framework for assessing effects associated with the ways in which food is grown, processed, distributed, marketed, retailed, and consumed in the United States. The framework will allow users to recognize effects across the full food system, consider all domains and dimensions of effects, account for systems dynamics and complexities, and choose appropriate methods for analysis. This report provides example applications of the framework based on complex questions that are currently under debate: consumption of a healthy and safe diet, food security, animal welfare, and preserving the environment and its resources. A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System describes the U.S. food system and provides a brief history of its evolution into the current system. This report identifies some of the real and potential implications of the current system in terms of its health, environmental, and socioeconomic effects along with a sense for the complexities of the system, potential metrics, and some of the data needs that are required to assess the effects. The overview of the food system and the framework described in this report will be an essential resource for decision makers, researchers, and others to examine the possible impacts of alternative policies or agricultural or food processing practices.
This is the fourth and final volume reviewing EPA's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP). After 4 years of review, the authoring committee retains its belief that EMAP's goals are laudable. However, because achieving the goals of this ambitious program will require that EMAP successfully meet the difficult scientific, practical, and management challenges, the committee continues to question whether and how well all these goals can be achieved. This final overall review reiterates that general assessment.
This report presents an initial approach to identifying and solving the problems of developing a monitoring system for Biosphere Reserves. To date, most proposals have only focused on the selection of Reserves, pollutants to monitor, etc.; the real-world problems of how to monitor and collect and preserve samples and of statistical considerations and the logistics involved, have not been considered. This report attempts to address these problems and proposes specific field work to determine what additional problems may be encountered and what research is still required to enable us to develop a responsive and cost-effective pollutant monitoring program for Biosphere Reserves. Items covered include sample site selection criteria, statistical considerations, pollutant level monitoring techniques suitable to background areas, the development of biological monitors and accumulators and the development and application of pollutant impact monitoring techniques. Quality assurance requirements are also discussed. The above subjects are set in a site-specific framework of Yellowstone National Park and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks.
Over the past decades, environmental problems have attracted enormous attention and public concern. Many actions have been taken by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others to protect human health and ecosystems from particular threats. Despite some successes, many problems remain unsolved and new ones are emerging. Increasing population and related pressures, combined with a realization of the interconnectedness and complexity of environmental systems, present new challenges to policymakers and regulators. Scientific research has played, and will continue to play, an essential part in solving environmental problems. Decisions based on incorrect or incomplete understanding of environmental systems will not achieve the greatest reduction of risk at the lowest cost. This volume describes a framework for acquiring the knowledge needed both to solve current recognized problems and to be prepared for the kinds of problems likely to emerge in the future. Many case examples are included to illustrate why some environmental control strategies have succeeded where others have fallen short and how we can do better in the future.
The current rate and scale of environmental change around the world makes the detection and understanding of these changes increasingly urgent. Subsequently, government legislation is focusing on measurable results of environmental programs, requiring researchers to employ effective and efficient methods for acquiring high-quality data. Envi