Introduction

Welcome to Environmental Sustainability Science. This text was written in  2025 as a survey text for graduate students, broadly covering aspects of science related to environmental sustainability. In a rapidly changing world, a sound foundation in environmental science is essential for all those who are working in support of a sustainable planet – researchers, planners, managers, policy-makers, advocates, and citizens of the world.

Environmental Sustainability Science is a free and open textbook licensed under CC BY NC 4.0 , edited and largely written by Vicky Meretsky, Ph.D., of the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington. Chapter 7 was co-authored with Ms. Janet Mireku and Chapter 10 was largely written by Ms. Mara Flynn, both master’s students at the O’Neill School. Colleagues who commented on portions of the text are acknowledged with deepest appreciation in the chapters with which they assisted.

Environmental Sustainability Science was developed from Introduction to Environmental Science and Sustainability, licensed under CC BY 4.0 and edited and co-authored by Emily P. Harris, M.S., with the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of West Florida. Very little of Ms. Harris’ text remains, mostly due to differences in level and date, but I owe a great debt for the model of science and craft her text provided. Ms. Harris in turn acknowledged these open sources .

Acknowledgments

My work in the world of open educational resources in support of online, asynchronous teaching owes an enormous debt to

Ms. Kayla Kinzel, online instruction designer from eLearning Design and Services in Indiana University’s University Information Technology Services, and

Ms. Haley Norris, open education librarian with Indiana University Libraries.

Creation of this text was supported by a Course Material Fellowship from Indiana University Libraries and support from the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.

Cover photo of sheep grazing under La Ola solar farm, on Lanai, Hawai’i’, by Merrill Smith of the US Department of Energy, is in the public domain.

This book was last updated on February 2026.

To those who may modify this text in the future

Users of the present text may use it freely. Those who modify it create a new product, for purposes of copyright. Because this text carries a CC BY-NC designation,  materials from it may not be used in derivatives intended for sale or profit . For non-commercial purposes, the vast majority of images, tables, and figures in this text and its associated PowerPoints can be used in derivative products  of this text because these materials are in the public domain or are covered by Creative Commons licenses that require only attribution (CC BY).  A few of these materials have share-alike Creative Commons licenses (SA) and are not bound by the BY-NC license of the text. However, some materials are AdobeStock images covered by educational license; these can only be reused by authors who are also covered by an educational license. In addition, a few illustrative items are used by permission from the authors or authoring organizations; these cannot be used in any derivative products of this text without new permission from the authors.