When alumnus Bill Sparrow decided to kayak the entire length of the Mississippi River, he and his wife Laura expected adventure. But they didn’t expect a whole new understanding of their country, its grandeur and its people.

U-M weather expert professor Perry Samson responds to questions about extreme weather, including hurricanes, tornadoes and thunderstorms.

U-M researchers found that schools located in areas with the state’s highest industrial air pollution levels had the lowest attendance rates—an indicator of poor health—as well as the highest proportions of students who failed to meet state educational testing standards.

The blitzkrieg advance of two closely related species of mussels—the zebra and quagga—is stripping the lakes of their life-supporting algae, resulting in a remarkable ecological transformation and threatening the multibillion-dollar U.S. commercial and recreational Great Lakes fisheries.

A startup company built on the inventions of graduate students in UM-Dearborn Prof. Pravansu Mohanty won the 2011 Clean Energy Prize.

Cristi Landy is part of GM’s big bet on plug-in technology and the Chevy Volt.

U-M professor Ricky Rood, an expert in world and regional climate issues, calls Pakistan’s catastrophic flooding “a case study of climate disaster.”

U-M people have played vital parts in the environmental transformations of the past 40 years. Three of them share their stories.

Plus: The biggest US environmental events since 1970.

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the United States has made huge progress in protecting the environment. It’s also made huge mistakes, and the unsolved problems are tougher than ever. Here’s a partial retrospective.