Embodiments of the present invention provide indexing, organizing, storing
and/or retrieving of environmental information regarding a proposed
environment-modifying project, including information about an
environment-modifying natural event or construction project ("project");
a natural, constructed or socioeconomic feature in the area of the
project ("setting"); a change to the setting brought about by the project
("impact"); or a feature designed to ameliorate a potential environmental
impact of the project ("mitigation"). The environmental information is
indexed with metadata that may be hierarchically organized and made
available to a reviewer in a controlled vocabulary or a user-defined
vocabulary.