The environment

A través de las últimas dos décadas, la sociedad colombiana ha venido tomando conciencia de la problemática del calentamiento de la Tierra y los potenciales impactos que se pueden generar sobre la economía, la cultura y en las riquezas de flora y fauna terrestres y marinas.

According to UN estimates, approximately nearly half of the world's population now lives in cities and that figure is expected to rise to almost 70% by 2050.

With such a wide range of social and economic uses, energy has become essential to global infrastructure and operations, regardless of economic or environmental cost.

In keeping with a congressional mandate (Public Law 104-484) and the Chemical Weapons Convention, the United States is currently destroying its chemical weapons stockpile.

The 2012 National Research Council report Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative highlighted the challenges of increasing national resilience in the United States.

From the origin of the leak, to the amount of oil released into the environment, to the spill's duration, the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill poses unique challenges to human health.

The International Space Station is a closed and complex environment, so some contamination of its internal atmosphere and water system is expected.

National interests in greater energy independence, concurrent with favorable market forces, have driven increased production of corn-based ethanol in the United States and research into the next generation of biofuels.

In May 2007, the National Academies Chemical Sciences Roundtable held a public workshop on the topic of Bioinspired Chemistry for Energy, where government, academic, and industry representatives discussed promising research developments in solar-generated fuels, hydrogen-processing enzymes, artificial photosynthetic systems, and biological-based fuel cells.

Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a solvent that is used as a degreasing agent, a chemical intermediate in refrigerant manufacture, and a component of spot removers and adhesives.

Understanding Risk addresses a central dilemma of risk decisionmaking in a democracy: detailed scientific and technical information is essential for making decisions, but the people who make and live with those decisions are not scientists.

The Department of Defense, through the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program, is currently in the process of constructing two full-scale pilot plants at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado and the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky to destroy the last two remaining inventories of chemical weapons in the U.

The social cost of carbon (SCC) for a given year is an estimate, in dollars, of the present discounted value of the damage caused by a 1-metric ton increase in CO2 emissions into the atmosphere in that year; or equivalently, the benefits of reducing CO2 emissions by the same amount in that given year.

The Safe Drinking Water Act directs the U.

Communities across the United States are subject to ever-increasing human suffering and financial impacts of disasters caused by extreme weather events and other natural hazards amplified in frequency and intensity by climate change.

Losses of life and property from natural disasters in the United States-and throughout the world-have been enormous and the potential for substantially greater future losses looms.

In this century, the United States will be challenged to provide sufficient quantities of high-quality water to its growing population.

The U.

In The Fishermen's Frontier, David Arnold examines the economic, social, cultural, and political context in which salmon have been harvested in southeast Alaska over the past 250 years.

Extremely hazardous substances can be released accidentally as a result of chemical spills, industrial explosions, fires, or accidents involving railroad cars and trucks transporting EHSs.

During the 20th century, the city of Los Angeles diverted surface water flowing into Owens Lake for water supply, transforming the large, closed-basin, saline lake into a small brine pool surrounded by dry playa.

In response to a request from Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and theDepartment of Homeland Security sponsored a National Academies study to assessthe safety and security risks of spent nuclear fuel stored in cooling pools and drycasks at commercial nuclear power plants.

The human-mediated introduction of species to regions of the world they could never reach by natural means has had great impacts on the environment, the economy, and society.

The human-mediated introduction of species to regions of the world they could never reach by natural means has had great impacts on the environment, the economy, and society.

This book, the result of a congressionally mandated study, examines the adequacy of the regulatory framework for mining of hardrock mineralssuch as gold, silver, copper, and uraniumon over 350 million acres of federal lands in the western United States.

In the quest to mitigate the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere, researchers and policymakers have increasingly turned their attention to techniques for capturing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, either from the locations where they are emitted or directly from the atmosphere.

Among its key responsibilities, the U.

Natural gas in deep shale formations, which can be developed by hydraulic fracturing and associated technologies (often collectively referred to as "e;fracking"e;) is dramatically increasing production of natural gas in the United States, where significant gas deposits exist in formations that underlie many states.

The stresses associated with climate change are expected to be felt keenly as human population grows to a projected 9 billion by the middle of this century, increasing the demand for resources and supporting infrastructure.

Tetrachloroethylene is a volatile, chlorinated organic hydrocarbon that is widely used as a solvent in the dry-cleaning and textile-processing industries and as an agent for degreasing metal parts.

The Everglades ecosystem is vast, stretching more than 200 miles from Orlando to Florida Bay, and Everglades National Park is but a part located at the southern end.

In the last 20 years, there has been a remarkable emergence of innovations and technological advances that are generating promising changes and opportunities for sustainable agriculture, yet at the same time the agricultural sector worldwide faces numerous daunting challenges.

In some coalbeds, naturally occurring water pressure holds methanethe main component of natural gasfixed to coal surfaces and within the coal.

The American chestnut, whitebark pine, and several species of ash in the eastern United States are just a few of the North American tree species that have been functionally lost or are in jeopardy of being lost due to outbreaks of pathogens and insect pests.

Great advances have been made in our understanding of the climate system over the past few decades, and remotely sensed data have played a key role in supporting many of these advances.

The National Academies' Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC) held a workshop to explore and evaluate current efforts to model physical processes of coupled atmosphere-land-ocean (A-L-O) models.

Tide gauges show that global sea level has risen about 7 inches during the 20th century, and recent satellite data show that the rate of sea-level rise is accelerating.

Across the United States, impacts of climate change are already evident.

The Mississippi River is, in many ways, the nation's best known and most important river system.

The global scientific and policy community now unequivocally accepts that human activities cause global climate change.

Extremely hazardous substances can be released accidentally as a result of chemical spills, industrial explosions, fires, or accidents involving railroad cars and trucks transporting EHSs.

In March 2015, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a workshop to explore the role that chemical exposures may play in the development of obesity.

Emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have ushered in a new epoch where human activities will largely determine the evolution of Earth's climate.

Many economic models exist to estimate the cost and effectiveness of different policies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Climate theory dictates that core elements of the climate system, including precipitation, evapotranspiration, and reservoirs of atmospheric and soil moisture, should change as the climate warms, both in their means and extremes.

Since the early 1970s, experts have recognized that petroleum pollutants were being discharged in marine waters worldwide, from oil spills, vessel operations, and land-based sources.

Following an earlier NRC workshop on public response to alerts and warnings delivered to mobile devices, a related workshop was held on February 28 and 29, 2012 to look at the role of social media in disaster response.

Following a series of natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, that revealed shortcomings in the nation's ability to effectively alert populations at risk, Congress passed the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act in 2006.

Many coastal areas of the United States are at risk for tsunamis.

The Edwards Aquifer in south-central Texas is the primary source of water for one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, San Antonio, and it also supplies irrigation water to thousands of farmers and livestock operators.