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GENERAL CONCEPTS FOR MEASURING CUMULATIVE IMPACTS ON WETLAND ECOSYSTEMS
Citation:
Risser, P. GENERAL CONCEPTS FOR MEASURING CUMULATIVE IMPACTS ON WETLAND ECOSYSTEMS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/J-88/493.
Description:
Because environmental impacts accumulate over space and time, their analysis is difficult, and we must incorporate the most recent scientifically defensible information and methods into the process. Methods designed to deal specifically with cumulative impacts have included checklists of characteristics or processes, matrices of interactions (rated according to their level of importance) between disturbance activities and environmental conditions, nodal networks or pathways that depict probable effects of disturbances, and dynamic system models. hese methods have been tested over the past decade and have proven generally successful. A cumulative impact matrix is proposed that sets up additive, synergistic, and indirect categories, each capable of variation in space and time. very interaction would be carefully examined to decide the likelihood of cumulative impact in any of the six categories. ecause of its "magnifying glass" approach, such a matrix could be a very useful analytical tool, using existing methods to uncover all the information presently available about the behavior of the ecosystem.