All Posts - State Sustainability Index

Coal Source Sub-Indicator

Coal serves as the primary energy source for much of the United States, contributing 39 percent of total energy generated in 2013 (EIA – U.S. Electricity Generation 2015). [...]

Government Financial Sustainability Sub-Indicator

Evaluating a government’s financial sustainability is vital to a variety of groups that directly and indirectly interact with a government. Governments are the primary [...]

Socio-Demographic Sub-Indicator

The socio-demographic sub-indicator provides an overview of the population and certain income characteristics of the state sub-group. The socio-demographic indicator is [...]

Economic Performance Sub-Indicator

Economic Performance is an important indicator of the economic health, condition, and sustainability of states and counties. Economic performance can be assessed using a host [...]

Aquaculture Sub-Indicator

Aquaculture [...]

Pesticides Sub-Indicator

A pesticide is “any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest” (EPA 2014a). Classes of pesticides and [...]

Buffer Water Ag Metric

Buffer Zone Metric Buffer zones are areas that border water bodies and separate the water from, in this context, an agricultural operation. Buffer zones are constructed using [...]

Fertilizer and Water Quality Metric

Improper usage of fertilizer can pose serious threats to water quality due to its propensity of permeating into ground and surface water through runoff or simple leaching. [...]

Indiana Results

This portion of the State Sustainability Index represents a snapshot of agricultural impacts on water quality for the ten states examined and provides a framework for more [...]

Water Withdrawal Sensitivity Analysis Metric

The term water withdrawal refers to the removal of water from any water source. In the context of agriculture, water withdrawals are in the form of freshwater. Freshwater [...]