Environmental issues are complex. This is not surprising because our environment includes a vast number of non-living and living components that are constantly changing and interacting. We are part of the interaction, impacting our environment as it impacts us. Since our actions concerning the environment ultimately come back to influence the quality of our lives and those of our children, we must make informed, balanced decisions concerning environmental issues. Because these issues are so complex, setting environmental policy is one of our greatest challenges. The use of good science in environmental decision making is the best way to insure that air, water, soil, wildlife, and sustainable agricultural systems are utilized for the common good and protected for the use of future generations.

The WMU Environmental Research Center was established to meet the challenge of providing good science for use in formulation of environmental policy. The Center brings together the skills and perspectives of an alliance of researchers and educators, from a range of disciplines including the natural sciences, economics, political science, math and statistics, and other social sciences. The Center also seeks the involvement and participation of community, regional, state, national, and international groups, companies and officials involved in environmental decision making. By combining basic and applied research, experience and innovation, in truly collaborative, multidisciplinary inquiry, the center is producing innovative, workable solutions to a range of environmental issues that face our local communities, region and world.

The Center's mission is to engage in rigorous, interdisciplinary research and problem solving that investigates environmental issues and evaluates and implements effective solutions. This process provides balanced, unbiased information available for planners, policymakers and citizens to use in environmental assessment, and also produces new technologies for mitigating environmental problems. With the Environmental Research Center, Western Michigan University is one of the few universities that is structured to facilitate the interdisciplinary research and educational activities at the undergraduate and graduate levels needed to provide strong, basic science training and experience while addressing the complex cross-disciplinary issues that need solutions regionally, nationally, and internationally.

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