ERS315 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Pairwise Comparison, Impact Assessment, Biochemical Oxygen Demand

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Environment and Resource Studies
• Course: ERS315

Document Summary

Discuss the difference between impact magnitude and impact signi cance both before and after impact management. Be familiar with approaches to predicting impact significance and characteristics of effective impact significance prediction including the broader requirements of sustainability. Discuss follow-up to ea including monitoring, auditing and ex-post evaluation. Discuss reasons to monitor including compliance, management and understanding. Discuss the canadian government"s environmental effects monitoring (eem) program for pulp and paper mills and metal mines and how successful it has been. Consideration throughout ea stages but particular focus on residual effects. Significance or importance of an effect is a value judgement. Depends on how big the effect is, how likely it is to happen, how long it will last, how big of an area it will affect, its reversibility, and how much people value the thing being affected. Some values are prescribed by regulation (e. g. , species at risk (sar)) or policy (e. g. , no net loss of fish habitat)