What is the Environmental Management Alternatives Program (EMAP) and what kinds of projects are funded through it?
The steering committee’s intent is to try to facilitate interdisciplinary research by bringing together different academic disciplines that can focus on assessing and developing approaches to regional environmental problems. EMAP makes available seed funding of up to $20,000 for research projects that pair interdisciplinary academic working groups with community stakeholder groups. Of the ones that have been funded, two have dealt with local environmental health issues or problems: one with developing a groundwater model and assessment for a community, another one had to do with a health assessment in a community impacted by a toxic-waste site. Others have had a more overarching kind of development of regional perspectives. One that is currently under way is looking at environmental monitoring and stewardship as a follow-up to the State of the Region report. The follow-up was to better delineate what are some of the environmental indicators that we need to begin developing so we can ha
