Electronic Green Journal

The creation of green libraries is approaching a tipping point, generating a Green Library Movement, which is comprised of librarians, libraries, cities, towns, college and university campuses committed to greening libraries and reducing their environmental impact. Constructing a green library building using a performance standard like LEED is a way some libraries are choosing to become green and sustainable. Environmental challenges like energy depletion and climate change will influence the type of information resources and programs libraries will provide to their communities.

A mitigation bank is a large wetland or wetland complex that is restored or created for the sake of selling credits to private developers or government agencies to compensate for the loss of natural wetlands. Mitigation banking is now emphasized within federal environmental policy. Proponents of banking claim that banking is beneficial to the environment, but studies have shown that this practice threatens biodiversity. The problem is consolidation. With banking, wetlands in a broad geographical area are collapsed into a relatively small area. Wetlands within banks tend to be larger and they are less diverse in type than the wetlands that are lost. Studies have shown that consolidation threatens the diversity and abundance of amphibians and wetland birds. Mitigation banking actually rests, not on arguments concerning its environmental benefits, but on arguments concerning the benefits it provides to humans.

The paper examines the forestland conversion in the period 2001-2005 and its socioeconomic determinants affecting such a change in Kien Luong district of southern Vietnam using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), and multiple regression techniques. The land use/ land cover (LULC) classes of the years 2001 and 2005 were in turn classified from Landsat ETM Plus 2001 and digitized from the district land-use map 2005. Corresponding socioeconomic data to the derived LULC classes were aggregated for the multiple regression analysis of determinants of the forestland conversion. The findings indicated that the loss of forestlands was driven by the quick growth of the rural economy in which the two largest contributors were the prompt expansion of agricultural and aquaculture lands. Such a land-use change initially hampered the agricultural development and ecological services. Addressing land-use suitability for production systems and socio-environmental costs of the changes was therefore an urgent need for the aim of more effective policies of utilization and management of land resources.

Column on environmental information resources.