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Detecting Ecological Impacts: Concepts and Applications in Coastal Habitats focuses on crucial aspects of detecting local and regional impacts that result from human activities. Detection and characterization of ecological impacts require scientific approaches that can reliably separate the effects of a specific anthropogenic activity from those of other processes. This fundamental goal is both technically and operationally challenging. Detecting Ecological Impacts is devoted to the conceptual and technical underpinnings that allow for reliable estimates of ecological effects caused by human activities. An international team of scientists focuses on the development and application of scientific tools appropriate for estimating the magnitude and spatial extent of ecological impacts. The contributors also evaluate our current ability to forecast impacts. Some of the scientific, legal, and administrative constraints that impede these critical tasks also are highlighted. Coastal marine habitats are emphasized, but the lessons and insights have general application to all ecological systems.
Monitoring Ecological Impacts provides the tools needed to design assessment programs that can reliably monitor, detect, and allow management of human impacts on the natural environment. The procedures described are well-grounded in inferential logic, and the statistical models needed to analyse complex data are given. Step-by-step guidelines and flow diagrams provide clear and useable protocols which can be applied in any region of the world, a wide range of human impacts, and any ecosystem. In addition, real examples are used to show how the theory can be put into practice.
Anthropogenic emissions of ammonia cause a host of environmental impacts, including loss of biodiversity, soil acidification and formation of particulate matter in the atmosphere. Under the auspices of the UNECE Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution, around 80 international experts met to review the state of scientific knowledge. This book reports their analysis. It concludes that threshold levels for ammonia effects have been underestimated and sets new values, it assesses the independent evidence to verify reported reductions in regional ammonia emissions, and it reviews the uncertainties in modelling ammonia, both in "hot spots" and at the regional scale.
Seawater desalination is a coastal-based industry. The growing number of desalination plants worldwide and the increasing size of single facilities emphasises the need for greener desalination technologies and more sustainable desalination projects. A comprehensive evaluation of potential environmental impacts of desalination plants, this book emphasizes discusses strategies for impact mitigation. The author proposes a best-available technology concept for seawater desalination technologies in combination with a methodological approach for the environmental impact assessment (EIA) of desalination projects. It outlines the scope of EIA studies, including environmental monitoring and toxicity and hydrodynamic modeling studies. The book also explores the usefulness of multi-criteria analysis as a decision support tool for EIAs and then uses them to compare different intake and pretreatment options for seawater reverse osmosis plants.
When Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, no environmental measurements were necessary to know the seriousness of the problem. Incidents like the Cuyahoga fire raise an important question: Can catastrophes-in-the-making be detected early enough to be prevented? For those in industry, such disasters point to the need for measures that can improve the environmental performance of processes, products, business practices, and linked industrial systems. In Measures of Environmental Performance and Ecosystem Condition, experts share their insights on environmental metrics. The volume explores the most productive relationship between measures of environmental performance and measures of ecosystem conditions. It reviews current approaches, evaluates structures for business decisionmaking, and includes a matrix for determining the environmental performance of industrial facilities. Case studies include: Development and application of a water-quality rating scheme for streams and reservoirs in the Tennessee Valley. Three years of successful experience with waste metrics at 3M. The book covers the range of environmental performance and condition metrics, from the use of material flow data to monitor environmental performance at the national level to the use of bioassays to measure the toxicity of industrial effluents. This book offers something for everyone--policymakers, executives, engineers, managers, and advocates--with a stake in the measurement of environmental performance and ecological conditions.
The U.S. Clean Water Act calls for the minimization of "adverse environmental impact" at cooling water intake structures. To facilitate an exchange of information among all stakeholders in the issue, the Electric Power Research Institute organised a national symposium in 2001 to discuss the meaning of adverse environmental impact and methods for its assessment. Technical experts in federal and state resource agencies, academia, industry and non-governmental organizations attended the symposium. This is a collection of peer-reviewed papers, intended both to inform and to encourage the development of rules regarding the minimization of adverse environmental impact at cooling water intake structures.
Assessing and Measuring Environmental Impact and Sustainability answers the question “what are the available methodologies to assess the environmental sustainability of a product, system or process?” Multiple well-known authors share their expertise in order to give a broad perspective of this issue from a chemical and environmental engineering perspective. This mathematical, quantitative book includes many case studies to assist with the practical application of environmental and sustainability methods. Readers learn how to efficiently assess and use these methods. This book summarizes all relevant environmental methodologies to assess the sustainability of a product and tools, in order to develop more green products or processes. With life cycle assessment as its main methodology, this book speaks to engineers interested in environmental impact and sustainability. Helps engineers to assess, evaluate, and measure sustainability in industry Provides workable approaches to environmental and sustainability assessment Readers learn tools to assess the sustainability of a process or product and to design it in an environmentally friendly way
The world's ecosystems are increasingly threatened by human development. Ecological impact assessment (EcIA) is used to predict and evaluate the impacts of development on ecosystems and their components,thereby providing the information needed to ensure that ecological issues are given full and proper consideration in development planning. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) has emerged as a key to sustainable development by integrating social, economic and environmental issues in many countries. EcIA has a major part to play as a component of EIA but also has other potential applications in environmental planning and management. Ecological Impact Assessment provides a comprehensive review of the EcIA process and summarizes the ecological theories and tools that can be used to understand, explain and evaluate the ecological consequences of development proposals. It is intended for the many individuals and companies involved in EIA and EcIA, as well as other areas of environmental management where impacts on ecosystems need to be evaluated. It will benefit planners, regulators, environmental consultants and scientists and will also provide an invaluable sourcebook and guide for the growing number of undergraduate students taking courses in applied ecology, EIA and related topics in environmental science. A practical management guide for the increasing numbers of practitioners of EcIA. A rapidly expanding subject driven by the proliferation of environmental legislation worldwide.
“Intertidal ecologists have been struggling with how to adequately monitor the tremendous diversity and heterogeneity of rocky shores for decades. Finally three of the most experienced and established people in the field have done it. Monitoring Rocky Shores will serve as THE central reference guide for scientists intent on understanding the complexities of intertidal ecology.”—John Pearse, coauthor of Animals Without Backbones “The incredibly high taxic, morphological, ecological, as well as biotic diversity of rocky shores makes them ideal sites for ecological studies; however this same diversity also presents innumerable challenges. Monitoring Rocky Shores is long overdue in helping investigators tackle these innumerable challenges. This book provides a broad and important introduction to the habitat, the animals, the methods, and the analyses required constructing informed hypotheses and scenarios for life on rocky shores.”—David R. Lindberg, Museum of Paleontology, co-editor of Phylogeny and Evolution of the Mollusca