Considering Cumulative Effects Under The National Environmental Policy Act

Environmental Policy and NEPA is a concise study of environmental policy-where we have come from, what we are facing and where we can go in the future. An outgrowth of initiatives taken by the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ), and edited by the current Associate Director, this publication studies the effectiveness and efficiency of the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Divided into three main sections, part one covers the historical background and trends of NEPA. Part two addresses current substantive and conceptual issues associated with the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process. Part three discusses future opportunities including impact on humans, effective public participation in the EIA process and the need for sustainability. This excellent reference brings together 28 contributing authors who combine their expertise to address a multitude of topics. Environmental Policy and NEPA is mandatory reading for the professional, researcher, government policymaker, activist, student or anyone looking for a complete presentation of the EIA process.

Environmental Analysis reviews information gathered during NEPA assessments, summarizes the state of the art in methods and approaches, and defines future opportunities and new approaches required to link high-quality science to the decision-making process. Individual chapters address the process itself, present examples of recent experience with ecological impact assessment, evaluate social impact assessment and the important role the public must play, discuss the difficult challenge of assessing cumulative effects of multiple impacts, consider the regional and global implications of NEPA, and examine the important role of follow-up studies in the process. The authors of the 59 individual papers comprising this book represent the major sectors that have been key participants in the decision-making process from the beginning. These sectors include academia, national laboratories, federal agencies, state agencies, private industry, and foreign nations. Environmental Analysis will be interesting reading for environmental scientists, engineers, policy makers, and lawyers in government and academia; private consultants; and non-government environmental organizations.

Marine mammals face a large array of stressors, including loss of habitat, chemical and noise pollution, and bycatch in fishing, which alone kills hundreds of thousands of marine mammals per year globally. To discern the factors contributing to population trends, scientists must consider the full complement of threats faced by marine mammals. Once populations or ecosystems are found to be at risk of adverse impacts, it is critical to decide which combination of stressors to reduce to bring the population or ecosystem into a more favorable state. Assessing all stressors facing a marine mammal population also provides the environmental context for evaluating whether an additional activity could threaten it. Approaches to Understanding the Cumulative Effects of Stressors on Marine Mammals builds upon previous reports to assess current methodologies used for evaluating cumulative effects and identify new approaches that could improve these assessments. This review focuses on ways to quantify exposure-related changes in the behavior, health, or body condition of individual marine mammals and makes recommendations for future research initiatives.

The book is comprised of practical environmental and socioeconomic information which can be used in planning and implementing CEAM studies. Such information has been compiled from CEAM practices in the USA, Canada, Australia, European, and many other countries. Considerable information on step-wise CEAM processes, along with connector methods and resource-related methods and tools for predicting, mitigating, and managing cumulative effects on key Valued Ecosystem Components (VECs), is included.