Start here
Environmental science students at Porter tend to work on a real place: the Porter River, the Millrace, a farm field east of campus. That changes the research. Besides the published literature, you will need data about the site (monitoring records, maps, soils) and history about how it got this way. This guide covers all three, for the Environmental Science B.S. and anyone doing field or watershed work.
Search the literature by process and setting together, for example “phosphorus runoff” with “agricultural watershed” and “Upper Midwest”. Then look for data on your own site before you design anything.
A note on timing: monitoring data and archival records take longer to get than articles. A request for scanned maps can take a week, and some data owners answer email only between field seasons. Ask for site data in the first month of a project, not the last.
Databases and indexes
- Environmental Abstracts Plus. About 2,300 journals across environmental science, policy and engineering. Start here.
- Water Resources Index. Hydrology, water quality and aquatic ecology, including government water reports that general indexes miss. You will use it in ENVS 3100.
- Ecology & Field Biology Index. Population, community and restoration ecology, with species-name searching.
- Porter River Monitoring Data. Fifteen-minute flow, temperature and dissolved-oxygen readings from four stations, 2011 to now, deposited in the Porter Research Repository by the Freshwater & Watershed Lab. It is open to anyone.
- Regulations & Permits Locator. Federal and Wesconsin environmental rules plus permit records searchable by facility. Use it for ENVS 3300.
Books and e-books
| Call numbers | Subject |
|---|---|
| GE 1–350 | Environmental sciences, environmental policy |
| QH 540–549.5 | Ecology |
| GB 651–2998 | Hydrology, rivers, lakes, groundwater |
| TD 1–1066 | Environmental technology, water supply, pollution |
| S 590–599.9 | Soils |
| QE 1–996.5 | Geology |
Field guides to Upper Midwest plants, birds, fish and mussels are on ready reference on Level 1. A second set circulates for field season. That set comes back damp every year, and the library has accepted this.
Specialized sources
- GIS data. County parcels, land cover, elevation and hydrography for Porter County are on the GIS lab server, with help for ENVS 2300 projects. Lab staff will also clip a statewide layer down to the county for you, which saves your laptop.
- Historical maps. Fire-insurance maps of downtown Porter Falls (1884–1950), county plat books and the 1938 flood survey are in Special Collections and are partly scanned.
- Mill records. The Millrace Woolen Mill’s dye-house records are being compared with sediment cores from the Millrace bed. Background is on the Millrace and Porter River, and the local history guide explains how to request them.
- Current research. The Millrace mussel survey is an example of a student project that cites both the monitoring data and the archives.
Citing and getting help
Environmental science courses use the author–date style. Cite datasets with the creator, year, title, version, repository and persistent identifier, and give the date range you actually used. Cite a map with its publisher, date, scale and the collection that holds it.
Henrik Dalby is the sciences librarian for the College of Science & Mathematics. He books consultations in Halvorsen 258 or online, and spends Friday mornings in the Freshwater & Watershed Lab during field season. Capstone students in ENVS 4900 should see him before submitting a data management plan. See also finding evidence in sustainability.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. This environmental science guide is fictional, and so are the Porter River monitoring data, the fire-insurance maps and the flood survey it describes. The databases, call-number shelving, collections and librarians on this guide are invented, so nothing here can actually be searched, borrowed or booked, and none of it describes a real library.