As I combed the places I go to read quality, in-depth articles on environmental issues this morning, I thought I’d share a few here today.

I most often look to Yale Environment 360 (@yaleE360). The quality of these concise reports, interviews, debates and news is unparalleled. Topics are from around the world. Right now you can read about the threat of highways to bears in Romania, learn how scientists are studying Maine coastal waters to help understand climate change, watch a video report on threats to biodiversity hotspot Yasuni Biosphere Reserve in Ecuador and read an interview of Jane Lubchenco (former head of NOAA) and efforts to heal divide between those who seek environmental protection for people and those for the intrinsic value of nature. You can also find Point/Counterpoint articles such as the current one on whether to lift the current embargo on the ivory tucks of elephants. Yale e360’s search function is lightning fast, but not in chronological order so you may need to wade through a lot to get a nugget or two and use targeted keywords. (Note that you can read e360 easily on your mobile device by keying e360.yale.edu/mobile into your browser.) If you are looking for a good organization for your year-end, tax-deductible donations, consider Yale e360 (note I don’t have any relationship with Yale e360 except as a fan and donor :).

Because my focus is on the Great Lakes and I’m writing from Michigan, the rest of these resources are regional.

With the collapse of newspapers and decline in jobs for journalists, environmental journalists–even at major newspapers–have all but disappeared. An exception is a group writing for Great Lakes Echo (@greatlakesecho) and is the place to start. This is a project of Michigan State University’s excellent Knight Center for Environmental Journalism (@KnightCenter) and provides environmental news mostly in the Great Lakes watershed. The site lists “hot topics” at the top and has sections on energy, climate, wildlife, farm, contamination and more.  In addition to the Twitter handle above, you can follow Great Lakes Echo on Facebook, via email or subscribe to RSS feed. While I’m not much on commentaries, I make an exception for the commentaries of Gary Wilson and Dave Poulson on Great Lakes Echo.

The Great Lakes Information Network (GLIN) is another resource although I no longer use it very often. This was the very first comprehensive Great Lakes online website and the overall site includes links to many Great Lakes topics. They also offer Daily News that you can get in a RSS feed. You can even get RSS feeds targeted to a Great Lakes state or province or a particular topic such as beach monitoring or wind energy. I do find GLIN suffers from broken links and right now their Legislative Tracking is down so keep that in mind.

Public radio can be a great resource. Michigan Radio’s The Environment Report (@EnvironReport), hosted by Rebecca Williams, airs in four-minute segments at 91.7 FM on Tuesdays & Thursdays at 8:50 am and 5:45 pm.  The Environment Report does focus on Michigan. Recent programs have asked listeners to nominate “survivor” ash trees in Michigan, described Great Lakes pirates and updated status of the accidental PBB poisoning of people in Michigan 40 years ago. You can search more broadly using the search function on National Public Radio.

I’ll be writing a post on Using Google Smartly soon so stay tuned. In the meantime, what about you? I’d love to hear about and share the sources you rely on and use.