Colorado State University
ER-15: Sustainability Research Identification

Through CSU's School of Global Environmental Sustainability (SoGES), environmental sustainability has been defined as: humans coexisting with the natural world on a planet with finite resources. The definition is meant to encourage a linked societal-environmental-economics framework to advance understanding and generation of sustainability science.

From the School of Global Environmental Sustainability, there have been six areas of research strengths at CSU. These are primarily (but not limited to): climate change and energy food security environmental institutions and governance sustainable communities land and water resources biodiversity, conservation, and management To determine the number of faculty and departments involved in sustainable research (ER 16 and 17), the Office for the VP of Research devised a search criteria based on areas of strength at CSU. The resulting projects were then scanned for relevance and final numbers were drawn from this carefully evaluated compilation.

The Green Tome is also a publicly available material which describes not only research at CSU but also collaborations and projects generally. The compendium focuses on environmental aspects of Colorado State University’s physical campus, research, education, and outreach. It was complied through the efforts of the staff of the Office of the President, working with each university department to identify programs, actions, and research that provides a positive environmental benefit. Members of the Colorado State community were asked to submit information to the Office of the President to be added to the compendium to ensure an up-to-date perspective on environmental efforts of the university. The Green Tome was not used to count research projects/departments in subsequent STARS credits. It is listed here just as a more accessible way to explore Sustainable Research at CSU.