Case Studies in the Environment is happy to announce the winners of its 2020 Case Studies in the Environment Prize Competition for best environmental case study submitted to the journal through the November 15, 2020 submission deadline.

All entries to the competition went through a rigorous peer review process and were judged for their contributions to teaching environmental concepts to students or practitioners, including making the best use of the complement of learning support features that the journal provides, such as Case Study Questions, Teaching Notes, and Slides.

The top prize article for 2020 is “Stakeholders Reach Consensus in Troubled Waters: Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin, Southeastern USA,” from independent scholar and writer Kathleen Rugel.

“As always, we had the riches of a large number of excellent articles to choose from. However, we ultimately found Kathleen Rugel’s piece particularly compelling, as it clearly conveyed the role of key stakeholders in addressing the incredibly fraught politics of transboundary water management, as well as suggesting lessons that could be applied to similar situations in the future. It could be a an excellent piece for use in the classroom as well as by practitioners in the water management sector,” notes CSE Editor-in-Chief Wil Burns.

Runners-up for the 2020 prize competition include “Saving ‘Ōhi‘a: A Case Study on the Influence of Human Behavior on Ecological Degradation Through an Examination of Rapid ‘Ōhi‘a Death and Its Impacts on the Hawaiian Islands,” from Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine’s Dayna Martinez, Elena M. I. Duran and Natalie Bauer; and “Challenges and Opportunities for Communicating Lead Exposure Risks in Idaho’s Silver Valley,” from Courtney Marie Cooper, Madeline Sarah Goebel, Valerie Therese Wade and Chloe Bradley Wardropper—Chloe Wardropper is Assistant Professor of Human Dimensions of Ecosystem Management at the University of Idaho; Courtney Cooper and Madeline Sarah Goebel are Professor Wardropper’s past and current, respectively, student advisees; and Val Wade is an environmental health specialist with the Panhandle Health District.

Each of these prize-winning articles is free to read at online.ucpress.edu/cse.

The editors and publishing team behind Case Studies in the Environment extends a hearty thank you to all the authors who submitted articles for the 2020 competition! For previous Case Studies in the Environment Prize Competition winners, please see our prize competition landing page.


Case Studies in the Environment is a journal of peer-reviewed case study articles and case study pedagogy articles. The journal informs faculty, students, researchers, educators, professionals, and policymakers on case studies and best practices in the environmental sciences and studies.
online.ucpress.edu/cse