Letter to the Readers

Dear Reader,

This book was written by undergraduate students who were enrolled in the course “Introduction to Environmental Science”, taught at The Ohio State University. All of the students featured in this book are first-time authors and represent nearly two-dozen departments within Ohio State.

This 2nd edition of ScienceBites is broken into five distinct chapters: (i) invasive species, (ii) human-wildlife conflict, (iii) pollution, (iv) climate change and (v) sustainability. Each chapter contains five articles and one poster, each authored by a unique undergraduate student, for a total of 30 contributing student authors. Each work describes an environmental challenge and explores ways that humans are using cutting-edge research to come up with solutions to these problems. Each author has chosen a topic that is of personal importance.

Our goal for this book is to highlight the creative work of our students and to publish a free resource that can be used by other students who are interested in learning more about environmental science. We hope that these articles serve as an inspiration to preserve and protect Earth for all life. We are very proud of the work of our student authors and hope that this book will serve as encouragement for others.

Best,

Brian H. Lower

Associate Professor

The Ohio State University