Ethical research has underpinned the studies of human and other vertebrate subjects for over seven decades (Declaration of Helsinki, 2022; Nuremberg Code, 1946). Such frameworks acknowledge that there are potentially harmful impacts of science, and in essence prioritize ethically appropriate research over advancement in knowledge. As such, responsible and ethical research requires scientists to consider the potential impact of their research on organisms, and on our planet's environment more broadly. Scientific research using field, laboratory, and computational approaches inevitably generates an environmental impact in at least one of three principal ways: (a) fossil fuel emissions from travel, (b) energy consumption of scientific equipment, computing, and data storage facilities (Bauer et al., 2021;Portegies Zwart, 2020), and (c) material use (Grogan, 2021 Supplemental file). Given the potential for research to generate unintended consequences on the environment itself and recognizing that ecosystems are self-organizing systems with their own health (Schaeffer et al., 1988), performance (Herricks et al., 1989), stress (Odum, 1985, and rights (Stone, 1972), a framework for gauging the environmental impacts of scientific research is long overdue.The concept of advancing scientific discoveries while simultaneously pursuing stewardship of the environment and ecological systems has been an ongoing dialogue (Grogan, 2021; Lategan, 2012)-from peer-reviewed studies reporting on the environmental impacts of management and policy decisions on species, habitats, and ecosystem services (Peçanha Enqvist et al., 2018) to individual lifestyle choices of environmental scientists (e.g., Fox et al., 2009; Nature, 2015). However, these important efforts do not extend to acknowledging the impact of the research process itself, and associated protocols, on the environment. Because the scientific method inherently requires making measurements (e.g., environmental monitoring) and/or the consumption of natural resources and materials to conduct experiments in and on the environment, how then does the scientific community accomplish