Under the radar: mitigating enigmatic ecological impacts

Raiter, Keren G.; Possingham, Hugh P.; Prober, Suzanne M.; Hobbs, Richard J.

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2014.09.003

Cited by 76 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…They include individually minor but collectively significant changes that take place over a period of time (US-Ceq 1978;Cocklin et al 1992;Therivel and Ross 2007); they include changes that may take place remotely from the location where the stressor is created; they include changes that may be undetectable by any specific monitoring method; they include secondary effects facilitated by, but not directly caused by, a given undertaking; and they include changes caused by interactions between multiple stressors and (or) multiple undertakings (Raiter et al 2014). They may be direct, indirect, antagonistic, synergistic, linear, or nonlinear, and they may manifest following a complex chain of events (CEARC 1988;Scherer 2011).…”

Section: Logical Connections Among Cea's Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Jones

2016

Environ. Rev.

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Cumulative effects assessment (CEA) is a sub-discipline of environmental impact assessment that is concerned with appraising the collective effects of human activities and natural processes on the environment. Aspirations for CEA have been expressed by many authors since 1969, when the foundation of environmental appraisal was laid by the US National Environmental Policy Act. This paper's purposes are (i) to review aspirations for CEA, relative to current practice; and (ii) to fully explain and critique the logic that connects CEA's operational steps and underlying philosophies. A literature review supports the following statements: Some conceptualizations emphasize the delivery of information to support decision making as the key purpose of CEA; others deem collaboration, debate, and learning as most important. Consensus on CEA's operational steps has been reached, but each step requires practitioners to make analytical decisions (e.g., about the scope of issues to include or the time horizon to consider) and objective rules for how to approach those decisions are lacking. Numerical methods for assessing cumulative effects are largely available, meaning that CEA's biggest problems are not scientific. CEA cannot succeed without substantive public engagement, monitoring, and adaptive management. CEA is best undertaken regionally, rather than project-byproject. CEA and planning are complementary, and should be merged. In its most enlightened form, CEA is a useful tool for ensuring that human undertakings ultimately conform to Earth's finite biosphere, but current practice falls short of the ideal, and CEA's logical derivation is not entirely sound. As regards CEA's big problems, sustainability has not been defined clearly enough to make criteria for judging the significance of cumulative effects indisputable; legal, regulatory, and institutional frameworks are poorly aligned for CEA; and objective criteria for judging the adequacy of CEA's scope, scale, and thresholds do not exist, which makes the question of how to provide general guidance to practitioners intractable. Recommendations call for sustainability goals to be clearly expressed as measurable targets. Furthermore, precaution in human enterprise should be exercised by avoiding, minimizing, restoring, and offsetting negative cumulative effects. CEA can assist by quantifying and optimizing trade-offs.Key words: environmental impact assessment, planning, environmental management, sustainability, conceptual model, precautionary principle.Résumé : L'évaluation des effets cumulatifs (EEC) est une sous-discipline de l'évaluation de l'impact sur l'environnement qui porte sur l'évaluation des effets collectifs des activités humaines et des processus naturels sur l'environnement. De nombreux auteurs ont exprimé leurs aspirations quant à l'EEC depuis 1969, le moment où les fondements de l'évaluation environnementale ont été jetés par le « National Environmental Policy Act » aux États-Unis. Les buts de cette étude sont (i) d'examiner les aspirations quant à...

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Section: Logical Connections Among Cea's Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Jones

2016

Environ. Rev.

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“…As one of the major features on human‐modified landscapes, roads provide connections that improve the development of remote areas and the quality of human well‐being (Forman et al, ). However, roads can negatively affect neighbouring ecosystems by interrupting biological and hydrological connections (Forman & Alexander, ; Raiter, Possingham, Prober, & Hobbs, ). For example, road–stream crossings may hinder animal migration, alter hydrological characteristics and sedimentation processes, and degrade habitat quality in river ecosystems (Forman et al, ; Januchowski‐Hartley et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trade‐offs among road–stream crossing upgrade prioritizations based on connectivity restoration and erosion risk control

Lin

Robinson

Walter

2020

River Research & Apps

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Prioritizing projects to improve cost‐effectiveness has become a common practice in natural resources management, especially in selecting sites for river restoration work. Previous studies for prioritizing road–stream crossing upgrade projects focused on either restoring river connectivity or reducing sedimentation, even though crossings can affect connectivity and sedimentation simultaneously. In this study, we simulated site selection to maximize the improvement of connectivity restoration and sedimentation reduction of three prioritization schemes targeting (a) river connectivity, (b) erosion risk, or (c) both objectives concurrently and compared the results. Furthermore, we examined the relationships between the cost‐effectiveness of prioritizations and watershed characteristics. We found significant differences among the effectiveness of prioritization objectives; thus, trade‐offs should be taken into consideration when prioritizing crossings. The incorporation of spatial interdependency among crossings and weighting objectives could significantly change the cost‐effectiveness. We also found that splitting the budget and using a portion to individually prioritize each objective could be more cost‐effective than using the whole budget to achieve concurrent objectives. Watershed characteristics like size and connectivity‐ and sedimentation‐related factors could be used to help identify effective management for both connectivity restoration and sedimentation control.

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“…Recent advances in remote sensing have allowed unprecedented advances in mapping human pressures from habitat conservation through time, especially for forested landscapes8. However, many forms of human pressure on the environment, such as our extensive roads and pasture lands, are harder to detect than outright habitat conversation, and often overlooked by space-borne satellites9. Cumulative threat mapping aims to surmount this limitation by including a range of human pressures within a framework that couples top-down remote sensing with data collected bottom-up via surveys10.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sixteen years of change in the global terrestrial human footprint and implications for biodiversity conservation

et al. 2016

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Human pressures on the environment are changing spatially and temporally, with profound implications for the planet's biodiversity and human economies. Here we use recently available data on infrastructure, land cover and human access into natural areas to construct a globally standardized measure of the cumulative human footprint on the terrestrial environment at 1 km2 resolution from 1993 to 2009. We note that while the human population has increased by 23% and the world economy has grown 153%, the human footprint has increased by just 9%. Still, 75% the planet's land surface is experiencing measurable human pressures. Moreover, pressures are perversely intense, widespread and rapidly intensifying in places with high biodiversity. Encouragingly, we discover decreases in environmental pressures in the wealthiest countries and those with strong control of corruption. Clearly the human footprint on Earth is changing, yet there are still opportunities for conservation gains.

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Under the radar: mitigating enigmatic ecological impacts

Cited by 76 publications

References 70 publications

Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Cumulative effects assessment: theoretical underpinnings and big problems

Trade‐offs among road–stream crossing upgrade prioritizations based on connectivity restoration and erosion risk control

Sixteen years of change in the global terrestrial human footprint and implications for biodiversity conservation

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