Climate change, biodiversity, carbon emissions, or natural hazards: by nature, environmental research must address challenges ignoring geographical borders, at the frontier of classical scientific disciplines and at the forefront of the international political agenda. Besides the global nature of these challenges, the scale and complexity of the resources needed and the development of information and communication technology have made necessary and enabled increased international collaboration in research and knowledge sharing. Developing world-class research infrastructures for environmental research is therefore one of the priorities of European authorities, both at the national and European Union level. Whether these research infrastructures are single-sited, distributed, or virtual (e-Infrastructures), they must offer unique services to the environmental scientific community. The panel will present how the European facilities are networking in the Carbon Observation System to better understand the exchange processes between the atmosphere, the terrestrial surface, and the ocean and in the European Plate Observing System to support research on solid Earth sciences. Together with the presentation of the current development of geosciences research facilities in the United States, this symposium will enable a debate on future international cooperation in environmental research.