Native Americans called it "misi-ziibi", meaning Great River. When Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reached it in 1541, he called it Rio del Espiritu Santo (River of the Holy Spirit). The Mississippi River for some might conjure up images of Mark Twain, the pen name for author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who grew up around it and whose fictional character, Huckleberry Finn, between fishing and swimming described the experience of being on it as kind of solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars.
The Mississippi River is something entirely different for students who are pursuing environmental degrees. For them, the river might be an untapped resource. Florida's Gulf Stream, another literary figure, is this way too. Santiago, the old man in author Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, fished the Gulf Stream for eighty-four days by himself in a skiff without taking a fish.
The Mississippi River and Florida's Gulf Streamhave historically served as major transportation routes. More recently, students in environmental degree programs have begun working to see if these waterways and others can provide routes to clean energy as well. Oceans blanket more than 70 percent of the surface of the earth and store most of the sun's energy, according to the Ocean Energy Council. Jacques Cousteau likened the amount of this energy to that of 16,000 nuclear plants a small portion of which could provide power to the world, information on the council website notes.
There's been a lot of attention given to climate change, which some say is being hurried along by human activities. In the United States, energy sources such as natural gas and petroleum are releasing the most harmful gases into the air, according to the US Energy Administration website. The environmental impacts of ocean energy are a part of what researchers are exploring as part of environmental degree programs in universities throughout the country.
Students in environmental degree programs at a South Florida university, for example, are working at a Center for Ocean Energy Technology towards generating cost-effective electricity from the Gulf Stream and the Florida Straits by developing technologies. In New Orleans, a RiverSphere Center for Excellence in Renewable Energy System that's associated with a university there provides opportunities for students in environmental degree programs opportunities such as testing, developing and demonstrating renewable energy from the Mississippi River.
Institutions in Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington also have research centers where students in environmental degree programs might participate in similar activities. The Oregon and Washington universities are partners in a Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center that the Department of Energy funds. Students in environmental degree programs at the Washington institution are working with tidal energy a form of ocean energy that the Ocean Energy Council suggests involves harnessing undersea currents with help from machines. Students in environmental degree programs at the Oregon institution can work on producing energy from waves that store the solar energy they receive from winds and then transmit that energyfor thousands of miles, according to the Ocean Energy Council. Solar energy from winds is absorbed first by the earth and is then ushered into the air, the council notes.
Students in environmental degree programs might also work with offshore wind energy. Harvesting offshore wind energy in Maine, where some 149 gigawatts, or almost 200 million hp, of offshore wind energy lies within 50 nautical miles of the coast, could create 15,000 jobs and bring $20 billion to the state, according to a January 2010 edition of Ocean Power Magazine. With OTEC energy, which is another form of ocean energy, environmental degree students might take surface water that's heated by the sun to make steam and then, by putting that steam through a turbine generator, create electricity.
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