1. A method for accessing environmental information, comprising the steps of: (a) receiving 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”); (b) associating at least some of the environmental information with metadata; (c) receiving a request from a computer for requested environmental information, the requested information being the environmental information itself or any information associated with metadata or other information derived at least in part from the environmental information; and (d) relating search terms, specific values or other user-specified indicators to the metadata and environmental information to facilitate retrieval of requested environmental information; and (e) retrieving the requested environmental information.