The International Society of Environmental Forensics has grown out of the need for a platform to present scientific investigations that address environmental contamination subjected to law, public debate, or formal argumentation as well as the evaluation of the basic science that serves as underpinnings to those activities. The goal of the ISEF is to regularly provide workshops, and training on subject matter encompassing all aspects of contamination within the environmental media of air, water, soil, and biota. The society also serves to promote the publication, and dissemination of relevant technical material in the journal Environmental Forensics, the official journal of the International Society of Environmental Forensics.

The society is an international consortium of expert faculty from a wide range of affiliations dedicated to the scholarly presentation of scientific material exploring the source, fate, transport, and identification of environmental contaminants. Contamination is delineated in terms of chemical characterization, biological influence, responsible parties and legal consequences. The society encourages the development of technical courses that focus on scientific and technical information, data, and critical analysis in the following areas:

Analytical Chemistry, including analytical techniques that provide definitive, quality results for analyses that are conducted to answer litigious environmental contamination questions
Geochemistry, including chemistry and physics of soil, water and air with respect to potential interactions with contamination

Atmospheric Chemistry, including occurrence, alteration, fate, transport and modeling of chemicals in the atmosphere

Environmental Fate Assessment, including partitioning and transformation of contaminant components between and within environmental media  

Environmental Transport Assessment, including geologic, hydrogeologic, oceanographic and meteorological controls on the migration or movement of contamination

Integrated Case Studies, employing environmental fate techniques described herein  

Legal Considerations, including strategic considerations for environmental fate in litigation and arbitration, and regulatory statutes and actions 

Other Environmental Forensics Organizations of Interest

Center for Australian Forensic Soil Science (CAFSS) (http://www.clw.csiro.au/cafss). For more information, Click Here.