Monitoring Ecological Impacts

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. Step-by-step guidelines and flow diagrams provide clear and useable protocols, which are applicable to real situations.

The state of ecosystems, biological communities and species are continuously changing as a result of both natural processes and the activities of humans. In order to detect and understand these changes, effective ecological monitoring programmes are required. This book offers an introduction to the topic and provides both a rationale for monitoring and a practical guide to the techniques available. Written in a nontechnical style, the book covers the relevance and growth of ecological monitoring, the organizations and programmes involved, the science of ecological monitoring and an assessment of methods in practice, including many examples from monitoring programmes around the world. Building on the success of the first edition, this edition has been fully revised and updated with two additional chapters covering the relevance of monitoring to the reporting of the state of the environment, and the growth of community based ecological monitoring.

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.

Long-term monitoring programs are fundamental to understanding the natural environment and effectively tackling major environmental problems. Yet they are often done very poorly and ineffectively. Effective Ecological Monitoring describes what makes successful and unsuccessful long-term monitoring programs. Short and to the point, it illustrates key aspects with case studies and examples. It is based on the collective experience of running long-term research and monitoring programs of the two authors – experience which spans more than 70 years. The book first outlines why long-term monitoring is important, then discusses why long-term monitoring programs often fail. The authors then highlight what makes good and effective monitoring. These good and bad aspects of long-term monitoring programs are further illustrated in the fourth chapter of the book. The final chapter sums up the future of long-term monitoring programs and how to make them better, more effective and better targeted.

The current rate and scale of environmental change around the world makes the detection and understanding of these changes increasingly urgent. Subsequently, government legislation is focusing on measurable results of environmental programs, requiring researchers to employ effective and efficient methods for acquiring high-quality data. Envi

The Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program was created by EPA to develop the capability for tracking the changing conditions of our natural resources and to give environmental policy the advantages ofa sound scientific understanding of trends. Former EPA Administrators recognized early that contemporary monitoring programs could not even quantify simple unknowns like the number of lakes suffering from acid rain, let along determine if national control policies were benefiting these lakes. Today, adding to acidification impacts are truly complex problems such as determining the effects of climate change, of increases in ultraviolet light, toxic chemicals, eutrophication and critical habitat loss. Also today, the Government Performance and Results Act seeks to have agencies develop performance standards based on results rather than simply on levels of programmatic activities. The charge to EMAP of ecosystems is, therefore, the same today as it was a with respect to measuring the condition decade ago. We welcome the increasing urgency for sound scientific monitoring methods and data by efforts to protect and improve the environment. Systematic nationwide monitoring of natural resources is more than anyone program can accomplish, however. In an era of declining budgets, it is crucial that monitoring programs at all levels of government coordinate and share environmental data. EMAP resources are dwarfed by the more than $500 million spent on federal monitoring activities each year.

Environmental Monitoring theme is a component of Encyclopedia of Environmental and Ecological Sciences, Engineering and Technology Resources in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The Theme on Environmental Monitoring is largely concerned with strategies in the preparation of environmental impact assessments, as well as in many circumstances in which human activities carry a risk of harmful effects on the natural environment.. All monitoring strategies and programmes on environment have reasons and justifications which are often designed to establish the current status of an environment or to establish trends in environmental parameters. The content of the Theme provides the essential aspects and a myriad of issues that are great relevance to our world with respect to environmental monitoring. These two volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers and NGOs

Environmental Impacts of Mining is a comprehensive reference addressing some of the most significant environmental problems associated with mining. These issues include destruction of landscapes, destruction of agricultural and forest lands, sedimentation and erosion, soil contamination, surface and groundwater pollution, air pollution, and waste management. The book presents an agenda for minimizing environmental damage and offers solutions for the restoration and remediation of degraded areas. This book is a ""must have"" for environmental consultants, regulators, planners, workers in the mining industry, geologists, hydrologists, hazardous waste professionals, and instructors in the environmental sciences.