I am helena Mitasova, research svcientist from University of
Illinois and adjunct professor at NCSU, member of international team
of open source GIS developers.

Protection of environmenta was (besides the automated cartography)
one of the main forces behind GIS the research, developemnt and 
growth of GIS.
Currently, GIS plays a major role in storing and managing vast amounts
of environmental monitoring data (both from imagery, monitoring sites
and ...) and provides invaluable spatial access to these data
through Internet for the gneral public as well as research, governemnat, planners ...
Fedral ghencies have some of the most valuable environmental data
servers powereed by GIS - good examples are EMPCT Enviromaper, from EPA,
USHS water and air quality data. Many states also provide GIS enabled sites
for environmental data - Louisiana on mercury, atrazine, air pollution,
Illinois map watershed ... 
This geospatial access to data makes the data accessible to public without
are invaluable for local communities, ...., busnisess, ....
from homebuyers, developers, businesses local governemnts can use the
data to make decisions ....farmers, ....

access to data is fundamental, hwoever to make them useful we need
tools to combine them, analyze ...
GIS has the unique capabilities supporting integration of data
from many different sources such as imagery, radar and laser mapping,
monitoring sites, local mapping, etc and analysis these data to
assess the current state of the environemntal system (landscape and its
susbsystems, ecosystems,  It allows us to use the data to identify 
area with high environemntal risk, spatuo-temporal analysis rovides
a picture of trends in the environemnt, more accuratelly indetyfy
the sources of problems 
health risks!!!

GIS not only helps assess the current situation, trends and risks,
but when combined with numerical modeling also predict the consequances 
of the planned action (or inaction) - Over the past decade the geospatial
modeling has moved from mostly research tool or very simplified
spatially averaged models towards a tools which is being increasingly
accepted as one of the fundamental supporting tools for decision making -
although we are still struggling with high uncretainties in the models,
thanks to much more detailed data available, powerful computers and
visualization the environemntal simulations - e.g. groudwater pollution,
pollution in lakes, estuaries and open ocean, soil erosion and sedimentation,
air pollution are much more realistic and bsides averaged and total estimates
they also provide geospatial distrinbution of modeled phenomena - e.g. 
concentration of pollutants at any point in landscape at a given time -
allowing indetification of potential source of non point source pollution,
consequances of global warming on distribution of vegetation etc.

GIS processing,Analysis of monitoring data, modeling and prediction are
integral part of planning and decision support systems - mentioned before?
When choosing a location of busines environemnatl conditions need to be
taken into account

I included two examples demostrating the use of GIS for processing of 
monitring data - here is the  3D spatial distribution of Nitrogen in the Cheaspeake
bay in May 1990 - we get not only the averages or summarise or graphs,
but also the sense where are the critical locations - we can see one max. comming from
potomac and even bigger loads comming from the north while the southern ...
surface layers have more than bottom - imprtant for  assesing the impact on
ecosystem. - animation on our website shows how it develops over the year
clearly showing massive nitrogen loads from the North - this means
that Pennsylvania plays a crucial role in keeping Chesap bay healthy
although it does not have it. Multistate - regional scale problem

Secind example is at a very different scale -  landowner/farmer fiels/
small watershed scale. GIS provides the tools to analyze erosion risk and
sediment transport for current land use  - we can see large sediment loads comming out 
of the watershed and polluting the pond ....
Using the erosion risk map we can design better spatial distribution of the same
percent of land cover effectively reducing the sediment output to zero - eliminating 
the sediment pollution (with nitrates, phosphates, pesticide residuals etc) 
from the watershed. combined grassed waterway and contour filter strip - where 
it will be most effective.

While we had significant success in analysis of environemntal problems,
assessment of risks, etc, the major challenge for the future is the
to develop ifrastructure and tools which would allow to use large amounts
of geospatial, temporal data available from state-of-the-art maping and monitoring
technology for proactive protection of environemnta - we should be
able to predict the probelms and take action before they happen, better
assess the environemntal impacts of plannedd changes to landscape (development,
large construction, logging, drilling, building roads) before they
are implemented because fixing the problems can be extremely costly and
sometimes (in the worst case) even impossible.

Two fundamental requirements/needs:

we need to keep free access to enviroenmental data and tools as
it stimulates development of new technologies and tools both by academic
community and industry (availability of data is largely being credit
for USA leadership in GIS)
The free access also encourages environemntal protection - people can see for
themselves, make decisions which will impact ....