Antibiotic resistance and its environmental component is gaining more attention as part of combating the growing healthcare crisis. The One-Health framework, promulgated by many global health agencies, recognizes that antimicrobial resistance is a truly inter-domain problem in which human health, animal agriculture and the environment are the core and interrelated components. This prospectus presents the status and issues relevant to the environmental component of antibiotic resistance, namely the needs for advancing surveillance methodology: the environmental reservoirs and sources of resistance, namely urban wastewater treatment plants, aquaculture production systems, soil receiving manures and biosolids and the atmosphere which includes longer range dispersal. Much recent work has been done describing antibiotic resistance genes in various environments; now quantitative, mechanistic and hypothesis driven studies are needed to identify practices that reduce real risk and maintain effectiveness of our current antibiotics as long as possible. Advanced deployable detection methods for antibiotic resistances in diverse environmental samples are needed to provide the surveillance information to identify risk and define barriers that can reduce risk. Also needed are practices that reduce antibiotic use and thereby reduce selection for resistances, as well as practices that limit dispersal or destroy antibiotic resistant bacteria or their resistance genes that are feasible for these varied environmental domains.