New NHAES Research Proposes Framework for Mitigating Environmental Impacts | UNH Today

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The 5 Rs of Environmentally Conscious

Research
A newly proposed framework for mitigating
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The Environmental Responsibility

Framework

Key Finding:

A UNH research team has proposed the Environmental RELATED LINKS

Responsibility 5-R Framework (ER5F) to help scientists
reduce the environmental impact of their research. The
The Environmental
framework is centered around five Rs: Recognition, Responsibility
Refinement, Reduction, Replacement, and Framework: A toolbox
for recognizing and
Restoration. ER5F encourages researchers to:
promoting
Recognize that research can have environmental ecologically-
conscious research
consequences
Refine their research questions to minimize ECOSHEDS lab at
environmental impact UNH (Adam Wymore)

Reduce the resources and energy consumed by Adam Wymore faculty

their research bio
Replace materials with sustainable options and alter
Desneiges (Deni)
methods Murray graduate

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/2023/04/environmentally-conscious-research-framework[5/8/2023 1:53:31 PM]

New NHAES Research Proposes Framework for Mitigating Environmental Impacts | UNH Today

Restore the environment in the case of field spotlight

research

By introducing this framework, the authors hope to

promote enhanced awareness across the entire scientific
community and encourage researchers to identify and
mitigate the environmental impacts of their research.

Innovations developed by scientists at the New Hampshire

Agricultural Experiment Station (NHAES), like the Agricultural
Experiment Stations in 49 other states and U.S. territories, are
essential to ensuring that the U.S. food supply chain—from
producer to consumer—is abundant, safe and accessible to all
communities. In 2021, over 6,500 projects were conducted at
Agricultural Experiment Stations, each focused on responding to
a particular opportunity in their state or territory that can help
America’s food supply chain be more resilient to emerging
challenges.

Because of the inextricable relationship between food and the

environment, many Agricultural Experiment Station research
projects have components that assess environmental issues and
impacts. These projects are led by thousands of professors, who
are supported by thousands more staff, post-doctoral
researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students, as well
as collaborators from other public and private organizations. In
2021 alone, 26.3 million research hours were spent by
Agricultural Experiment Station scientists and staff developing
impactful agricultural and food research.

But what ethical guidelines help researchers ensure that the

protocols and methods they use consider the environmental
impact of the research itself?

A team of UNH researchers that includes Station scientist Adam

Wymore, a research assistant professor in the natural resources

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/2023/04/environmentally-conscious-research-framework[5/8/2023 1:53:31 PM]

New NHAES Research Proposes Framework for Mitigating Environmental Impacts | UNH Today

and the environment department at UNH, and Ph.D. student

Desneiges (Deni) Murray offers a framework for exactly that—
environmentally and ecologically responsible research—in a
recently published paper in Earth’s Future.

The proposed Environmental Responsibility 5-R Framework, or

ER5F, was inspired by the Institutional Animal Care & Use
Committee, the internationally recognized framework governing
animal care in research. The researchers found that there
currently exists no universally applied framework for mitigating
research impacts on the environment.

“Such frameworks exist for research involving animal and human

subjects, but there seemed to be a void of similar protocols with
respect to environmental subjects,” said Murray. “For ER5F, the
overall goal is acknowledging research’s environmental impact
and generating effective change towards mitigating the direct
and indirect consequences of scientific practices.

“For ER5F, the overall goal is acknowledging

research’s environmental impact and
generating effective change towards
mitigating the direct and indirect
consequences of scientific practices.”

The 5-Rs of the Environmental Responsibility framework include:

Recognition, Refinement, Reduction, Replacement and
Restoration. ER5F begins with Recognizing the impact that
research can have on the environment, with each subsequent ‘R’
providing an opportunity for “acknowledging, evaluating, and
mitigating the environmental impacts of scientific research,”
according to the journal article.

“Recognizing our impact is a very important first step,” Wymore

said. “This framework is not intended as judgement, but rather

https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/2023/04/environmentally-conscious-research-framework[5/8/2023 1:53:31 PM]

New NHAES Research Proposes Framework for Mitigating Environmental Impacts | UNH Today

as an honest assessment, and recognition is intrinsic to each of

the iterative and action-based goals of the subsequent R’s.”

“This framework is not intended as judgement,

but rather as an honest assessment, and
recognition is intrinsic to each of the iterative
and action-based goals of the subsequent
R’s.”

ER5F was designed to be used at any point within the scientific

process, from initial inception or proposal writing to data
collection and study completion.

"The ER5F process can be applied to lab, field and

computational work—each of which have different forms of
impact,” said Murray. “It’s neither intended to focus on an
individual’s personal actions or carbon footprint nor to provide a
legal framework, but rather to encourage the scientific research
community to consider the environmental impacts resulting from
the design and implementation of their research.”

“Sometimes ER5F will help identify opportunities for

environmental mitigation and other times it won’t—both
outcomes are okay and it’s really the effort that’s most
important,” she added.

The Environmental Responsibility Framework: A toolbox for

recognizing and promoting ecologically-conscious research was
co-authored by Deni Murray; Adam Wymore; post-doctoral
researcher Hannah Fazekas; Ph.D. students Eric Parker, Allison
Herreid, and Anna Mikulis (née Lowien); undergraduate UNH
student Isabel Cole; Nicolas Nunez from the University of Puerto
Rico; and agroecosystem scientist Mitchell Donovan of Terra
Informatics.

This material is based on work supported by the NH Agricultural

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New NHAES Research Proposes Framework for Mitigating Environmental Impacts | UNH Today

Experiment Station through joint funding from the USDA National

Institute of Food and Agriculture (under Hatch Multi-State award
number 1022291) and the state of New Hampshire. Additional
support was provided by the National Science Foundation and
EPSCoR project Canary in the Watershed (NSF EPS-1929148).
Support for DSM was provided by the NASA FINESST program
(Grant No. 80NSSC1441). No numerical data were used or
produced by this study.

You can read the published article, The Environmental

Responsibility Framework: A toolbox for recognizing and
promoting ecologically-conscious research, in the latest issue of
Earth’s Future.

WRITTEN Nicholas Gosling '06 | COLSA/NH Agricultural

BY: Experiment Station | nicholas.gosling@unh.edu | 858-
837-2103 (cell)

NH AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION

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