In this paper we discuss three rather special characteristics shared by many
environmental problems. Namely, that (i) the environmental variables in which we are
most interested constitute a stochastic process; (ii) the long-term or limiting behavior
and the short-term or transient behavior are often both important; and (iii) the
underlying probability distributions are likely to be influenced by the environmental
policies or remedies that we choose to impose. This third characteristic implies
the need to understand the impact of technologies and controls that influence
the dynamics of the system. The control theoretic perspective of environmental
engineering problems has, we believe, received less attention than it deserves in
the literature. Consequently, after a brief discussion of the exogenous, control-independent
case we focus on illustrating some special challenges and opportunities
embedded in the control-dependent situations
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