Compete

Environment Science

NCF-Envirothon

Field-based environmental science: teams are tested outdoors on soils, forestry, wildlife, water and a current issue.

Run by National Conservation Foundation

Official website Reviews and tips

Key facts

Eligible grades
Grades 9 to 12
Source, checked 2026-09-02
Eligible ages
Not confirmed. This organiser may set eligibility by grade rather than age. We do not convert one into the other.
NCF-Envirothon publishes both a grade range and an age range. Non-traditional schools and youth organisations must follow the same grade and age limits. Source note: the only reference found for this was a third-party listing or encyclopedia, not the organiser. Eligibility must come from the organiser, so this is marked unconfirmed until a first-party page confirms it.
Source, checked 2026-09-02
Individual or team
Team · Exactly five students form the state or provincial team at the NCF-Envirothon. At least four of the original members of the team that won the state competition must take part. State-level team sizes differ: Georgia allows 4 to 6 students at its state contest, and Louisiana requires teams to start with five and finish with no fewer than four.
Where it runs
In person · United States, Canada, International
Entry cost
Low at local level; travel is the main cost at higher levelsSet by each state programme. Some states pay the NCF registration fee for their winning team; Georgia states that it does. Confirm locally.
Registration deadline
Set locally, not published as a single national date Set by each state or provincial programme, months before the summer national event. As an example of the shape, South Carolina's 2026 team registration deadline was 23 March for an April state competition. Find your own state's dates.
Competition dates
2027 dates and host not yet published. For reference, the 2026 competition ran 19 to 25 July 2026 at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi, and the 2026 current issue topic was Non-Point Source Pollution: It begins at home.
Difficulty
CompetitiveSerious preparation over a season. Advancing past the first round separates prepared students from unprepared ones.
Prizes
Scholarships at state and international levelRecognition and scholarships at the NCF competition; amounts were not confirmed on the pages checked.

What NCF-Envirothon is

Envirothon is unusual among science competitions because much of it happens outdoors. Teams of five are tested at field stations on soils and land use, aquatic ecology, forestry, wildlife, and a current environmental issue that changes each year. There is also an oral presentation component in which teams propose a solution to a land management scenario. It runs from county through state to an international competition.

How the competition works

Five testing stations within walking distance of each other, covering aquatic ecology, forestry, soils and land use, wildlife, and an annually rotating current environmental issue, plus an oral presentation. Each of the five station tests is one seventh of the total score and the preliminary oral presentation is two sevenths, so the presentation carries double the weight of any single station. Ties are broken first on the Current Issue score, then Soils and Land Use, then Aquatics.

Eligibility notes

Teams compete through their state or provincial Envirothon programme. Programmes exist across the United States and in Canadian provinces and some other countries.

How to register

  1. Find your state or provincial Envirothon programme through the official site.
  2. Form a team of five with an advisor, who is often a science teacher or a local conservation district staff member.
  3. Get the current year's study resources, including the current issue topic, which changes annually.
  4. Practise outdoors. Field identification cannot be learned from a textbook, and it is where teams gain or lose the most.

Register on the official site

What skills you need

  • Soil profile reading
  • Tree and wildlife identification
  • Water quality testing
  • Land management reasoning
  • Oral presentation
  • Working outdoors in poor weather

Recommended resources

Past problems and materials

Only materials the organiser or an authorised archive publishes openly are listed here.

Frequently asked questions

How much of it is outdoors?

Most of it. Teams rotate through outdoor field stations where they read soil pits, identify trees and wildlife signs, and assess water. Teams that only study indoors are consistently surprised by how different field identification is from a textbook photograph.

What is the current issue?

A theme that changes each year, announced in advance, which forms both a written station and the oral presentation. It is published on the official site along with learning objectives.

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