Assessment Of Environmental Effects Research Articles

Computable general equilibrium models for sustainability impact assessment: Status quo and prospects

Sustainability Impact Assessment ( SIA) of economic, environmental, and social effects triggered by governmental policies has become a central requirement for policy design. The three dimensions of SIA are inherently intertwined and subject to trade-offs. Quantification of trade-offs for policy decision support requires numerical models in order to assess systematically the interference of complex interacting forces that affect economic performance, environmental quality, and social conditions. This paper investigates the use of computable general equilibrium (CGE) models for measuring the impacts of policy interference on policy-relevant economic, environmental, and social (institutional) indicators. We find that operational CGE models used for energy–economy–environment (E3) analyses have a good coverage of central economic indicators. Environmental indicators such as energy-related emissions with direct links to economic activities are widely covered, whereas indicators with complex natural science background such as water stress or biodiversity loss are hardly represented. Social indicators stand out for very weak coverage, mainly because they are vaguely defined or incommensurable. Our analysis identifies prospects for future modeling in the field of integrated assessment that link standard E3-CGE-models to themespecific complementary models with environmental and social focus.

Environmental modelling of use of treated organic waste on agricultural land: a comparison of existing models for life cycle assessment of waste systems

Modelling of environmental impacts from the application of treated organic municipal solid waste (MSW) in agriculture differs widely between different models for environmental assessment of waste systems. In this comparative study five models were examined concerning quantification and impact assessment of environmental effects from land application of treated organic MSW: DST (Decision Support Tool, USA), IWM (Integrated Waste Management, U.K.), THE IFEU PROJECT (Germany), ORWARE (ORganic WAste REsearch, Sweden) and EASEWASTE (Environmental Assessment of Solid Waste Systems and Technologies, Denmark). DST and IWM are life cycle inventory (LCI) models, thus not performing actual impact assessment. The DST model includes only one water emission (biological oxygen demand) from compost leaching in the results and IWM considers only air emissions from avoided production of commercial fertilizers. THE IFEU PROJECT, ORWARE and EASEWASTE are life cycle assessment (LCA) models containing more detailed land application modules. A case study estimating the environmental impacts from land application of 1 ton of composted source sorted organic household waste was performed to compare the results from the different models and investigate the origin of any difference in type or magnitude of the results. The contributions from the LCI models were limited and did not depend on waste composition or local agricultural conditions. The three LCA models use the same overall approach for quantifying the impacts of the system. However, due to slightly different assumptions, quantification methods and environmental impact assessment, the obtained results varied clearly between the models. Furthermore, local conditions (e.g. soil type, farm type, climate and legal regulation) and waste composition strongly influenced the results of the environmental assessment.

Environmental assessment of Swedish agriculture

This article describes an environmental assessment of Swedish agriculture, including upstream and downstream effects. The analysis is based on environmentally extended input–output analysis, but it is also supplemented with data from other sources. The analysis shows that direct effects by the Swedish agriculture are the most important, while indirect effects from other sources including mobile and impacts abroad are also considerable. The most important impacts from Swedish agriculture according to the analysis are eutrophication, global warming and resource use. The agricultural sector produces a large share of the Swedish emissions causing both global warming and eutrophication. In addition, current agricultural practice causes problems with loss of biodiversity. The most important actors in the sector are agriculture itself, but also all actors using fossil fuels: primarily the transport sector and the energy sector. In addition, consumers are important since they can influence the composition of agricultural production. The analysis shows the importance of including upstream and downstream effects when analysing the environmental impacts from a sector.

Genetic and Environmental Effects Assessment in Scots Pine Provenances Planted in Central Siberia

Scots pine provenance trials were established in 1964 in forest-steppe and in 1974 in southern taiga zones of Central Siberia from seeds collected over whole Russia. Tree-ring characteristics (radial growth and density chronologies) from 12 and 16 provenances planted in those plantations were measured densitometrically. Tree-ring analysis revealed a retention of a genetically fixed response to climatic factors proper to pines' origin. Trees from higher latitudes keep the orientation towards accelerated growth at the beginning of a growing season, which is followed by a rapid transition to formation of latewood cells and deceleration of growth earlier, than in medium-latitude trees. Main climatic factors controlling tree-rings formation differed slightly between different provenances within plantations. Genetically fixed ability of the provenances are not great (less than 15%), that proves high adaptability of pines to abrupt climatic change. Tree-ring formation of Scots pine provenances is mainly determined by the environmental factors.

A generic model-based warning system for ground-level ozone monitoring

The paper describes a model based to develop a highly reliable operational public warning system for air pollution monitoring in Bordeaux, France. The developed methodology is based on hard and soft computing techniques. The proposed method combines new adaptive nonlinear state-space modelling techniques, a gain scheduling strategy and multi-layer perceptron neural networks. The warning system provides additional information regarding the duration of a smog episode that is very important for assessments of human health hazards and negative environmental effects. Experimental results are presented for ground-level ozone concentrations in Bordeaux metropolitan.

Influence of street characteristics, driver category and car performance on urban driving patterns

Driving patterns (i.e., speed, acceleration and choice of gears) influence exhaust emissions and fuel consumption. The aim here is to obtain a better understanding of the variables that affect driving patterns, by determining the extent they are influenced by street characteristics and/or driver-car categories. A data set of over 14,000 driving patterns registered in actual traffic is used. The relationship between driving patterns and recorded variables is analysed. The most complete effect is found for the variables describing the street environment: occurrence and density of junctions controlled by traffic lights, speed limit, street function and type of neighbourhood. A fairly large effect is found for car performance, expressed in terms of the power-to-mass ratio. For elderly drivers, the average speed systematically decreases for all street types and stop time systematically increases on arterials. The results have implications for the assessment of environmental effects through appropriate street categorisation in emission models, as well as the possible reduction of environmental effects through better traffic planning and management, driver education and car design.

Measuring Sustainable Development: The Use of Computable General Equilibrium Models

Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) of economic, environmental, and societal effects triggered by governmental policies has become a central requirement for policy design. The three dimensions of SIA are inherently intertwined and subject to trade-offs. Quantification of trade-offs for policy decision support requires numerical models in order to assess systematically the interference of complex interacting forces that affect economic performance, environmental quality, and societal conditions. This paper investigates the use of computable general equilibrium (CGE) models for measuring the impacts of policy interference on policy-relevant economic, environmental, and social (institutional) indicators.We find that operational CGE models used for energy-economy-environment (E3) analyses have a good coverage of central economic indicators. Environmental indicators such as energy-related emissions with direct links to economic activities are widely covered, whereas indicators with complex natural science background such as water stress or biodiversity loss are hardly represented. Societal indicators stand out for very weak coverage, not at last because they are vaguely defined or incommensurable. Our analysis identifies prospects for future modeling in the field of integrated assessment that link standard E3-CGE-models totheme-specific complementary models with environmental and societal focus.

Assessment of sex-specific genetic and environmental effects on bone mineral density.

Although it is widely accepted that genes contribute significantly to the variation in bone mineral density (BMD), the nature of the genetic contribution is poorly defined. There are large gender differences in BMD, although whether sex-specific genetic effects influencing variation in BMD contribute to these differences is not known. To address this issue, we studied 929 subjects from large families participating in the Amish Family Osteoporosis Study. Bone mineral density was measured at the hip and spine by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). We used variance decomposition procedures to partition variation in BMD into genetic and environmental effects common to both sexes and to men and women separately. After accounting for covariate effects, the heritability of BMD ranged from 0.63 to 0.72 in men and 0.80 to 0.87 in women. The residual environmental variance in BMD at the spine, but not hip, was significantly higher in men than in women (P < 0.05), reflecting a greater variance in BMD due to unexplained non-genetic factors in men. In contrast, there were no significant differences between men and women in the magnitude of the genetic variance in BMD, nor did the genetic correlation in BMD between men and women differ significantly from one. Overall, these analyses do not provide evidence for sex-specific genetic effects, suggesting that many of the genes influencing variation in BMD should be detectable in both men and women.

‘Objective‐led’ SEA in a Scottish local authority

AbstractScottish planners have expanded environmental effect assessment of development plans into the policy appraisal of their sustainability impacts. The application of this methodology is demonstrated in our review of the appraisal of the Perth and Kinross structure plan, which demonstrates the strengths and limitations of this objective‐led approach to strategic environmental assessment when compared with a baseline‐led one. Scottish Executive interim planning guidance for the European Union directive on strategic environmental assessment integrates the two approaches. This requires the local baseline to be clearly established and plan‐induced movements in it to be predicted, monitored and evaluated. It also requires the use of techniques capable of assessing all forms of impact, and better engagement with the public and environmental authorities. Implementation of the directive will tax the capacity of Scottish planning authorities to meet these requirements whilst retaining their preference for an objective‐led policy‐based approach to assessment. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Environmental effects of ozone depletion and its interactions with climate change: progress report 2003.

United Nations Environment Programme, Environmental Effects Assessment Panel

Assessment of environmental management effects in a shallow water basin using mass-balance models

Comparative analysis of trophic networks was carried out to evaluate environmental management actions aimed at countering an environmental crisis in Orbetello Lagoon, Italy. Two mass-balance models of this shallow water coastal system were constructed, for 1995 and 1996. During this period, there was an observed change in the composition of the submerged vegetation that indicated a significant improvement in the lagoon’s ecology. Mass-balance models were built using the Ecopath modelling software in order to explain the energy transfer through the trophic levels (TLs) of the lagoon’s ecosystem. Comparative analysis of the two trophic networks allowed a complete description of the lagoon, and gave clear indications regarding the ‘eutrophication level’ sensu Nixon and the stage of system maturity sensu Odum of the ecosystem for the 2 years. The turnover rate (production/biomass ratio) of pleustophytes was proposed as an indicator of “environmental health” at the ecosystem level because it allows positioning the submerged vegetation as a whole along an axis of adaptation strategies to natural selection. All the indices of ecosystem maturity and stability examined showed that the lagoon was in a more stable condition in 1996 than in 1995, although the system was still in a condition of stress. The effects of management actions carried out in the system were quantified by estimating the changes in primary production and accumulation of detritus in the system. Management of the lagoon as an extensive aquaculture operation was assessed by analysing the fishery catch, the transfer efficiencies at different trophic levels and the impact of cormorants, and it was found to contribute to system stability.

Development of an operational model-based warning system for tropospheric ozone concentrations in Bordeaux, France

The paper describes the status of an on-going research program to develop a highly reliable operational public warning system for air pollution monitoring in Bordeaux, France. Experimental results are presented for ground-level ozone concentrations. Meteorological variables are used as input in order to obtain an estimate of the next day’s maximum ozone concentration. Moreover, the warning system provides additional information regarding the duration of a smog episode that is very important for assessments of human health hazards and negative environmental effects. The developed methodology is based on hard and soft computing techniques. The proposed approach combines new adaptive nonlinear state space modelling techniques, a gain scheduling strategy and multi-layer perceptron neural networks. A key characteristic of such a system is that its behaviour can be adapted to the short term changes of air pollution and consequently the model can handle the time-evolving nature of the phenomena and does not need frequent adjustments. The monitoring software is developed in a MATLAB ® environment.

Social impacts of out-of-centre shopping centres on town centres: a New Zealand case study

This paper provides a case study of the application of social impact assessment (SIA) to decisions on a proposal to build a large shopping centre on a greenfield site at Upper Hutt, New Zealand. The local city council made a variation to its district plan and gave the developer consent, but the decision was challenged in the Environment Court. An SIA was prepared by opponents, contending that the developer had not produced an adequate assessment of environmental effects, including impacts on the social and economic well-being of the community. The Court subsequently ruled against the development. This shows how assessment of social impacts in conjunction with economic assessment can contribute to environmental decision making. The proposed development would have had significant adverse effects on the role and amenity values of the Upper Hutt Central Business District, and on the social well-being of the people of Upper Hutt City.

Strategic Environmental Assessment of the Effects of European Union's Regional Development Plans in Doñana National Park (Spain).

The European Union's Structural Funds are implemented by means of Regional Development Plans (RDP), whose regionally scoped environmental assessment is required. We highlight the deficiencies faced by this approach when subregional areas with high conservation natural values are involved and illustrate it with the case of the RDP of Andalusia region on Doñana National Park area (Spain). Commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund, a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of the Andalusian RDP was carried out focusing on Doñana and its area of influence. This is a complex space where some of the most environmentally valuable features in the continent coexist with a surrounding intense and multi-sector economic activity, threatening its conservation. In the absence of an established sustainability framework in the Region, a "trickle-down" SEA approach evidenced the need to produce a set of environmental, economic and social guidelines for sustainable management of land, against which the RDP objectives were tested for coherence. An "incremental" SEA approach was also tested, which involved the identification of 79 measures and actions stemming from the RDP provisions and other concurrent planning documents reviewed and the qualitative assessment of their individual and cumulative potential impacts on Doñana environments. In the light of the results, a set of complementary mitigating measures was proposed for inclusion in tiered stages of the planning process. Measures to avoid, reduce, remedy and monitor the major types of impact were proposed, including provisions for public participation. SEA emerges as an instrument for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to carry out independent assessment of public development initiatives.

Environmental implications of gene flow from sugar beet to wild beet - current status and future research needs

Gene flow via seed or pollen is a basic biological process in plant evolution. The ecological and genetic consequences of gene flow depend on the amount and direction of gene flow as well as on the fitness of hybrids. The assessment of potential risks of transgenic plants should take into account the fact that conventional crops can often cross with wild plants. The precautionary approach in risk management of genetically modified plants (GMPs) may make it necessary to monitor significant wild and weed populations that might be affected by transgene escape. Gene flow is hard to control in wind-pollinated plants like beet (Beta vulgaris). In addition, wild beet populations potentially can undergo evolutionary changes which might expand their geographical distribution. Unintended products of cultivated beets pollinated by wild beets are weed beets that bolt and flower during their first year of planting. Weed beets cause yield losses and can delay harvest. Wild beets are important plant genetic resources and the preservation of wild beet diversity in Europe has been considered in biosafety research. We present here the methodology and research approaches that can be used for monitoring the geographical distribution and diversity of Beta populations. It has recently been shown that a century of gene flow from Beta vulgaris ssp. vulgaris has not altered the genetic diversity of wild Beta vulgaris L. ssp. maritima (L.) Arcang. in the Italian sugar beet seed production area. Future research should focus on the potential evolution of transgenic wild beet populations in comparison to these baseline data. Two monitoring models are presented describing how endpoints can be measured: (1) "Pre-post" crop commercialization against today's baseline and (2) "Parallel" to crop commercialization against GMP free reference areas/ populations. Model 2 has the advantage of taking ongoing changes in genetic diversity and population dynamics into account. Model 1 is more applicable if gene flow is so strong that most areas/populations contain GMPs. Important traits that may change the ecology of populations are genes that confer tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress. An assessment of environmental effects can realistically only be based on endpoints and consequences of gene introgression, which may include economic values of biodiversity in littoral and other ecosystems containing wild beet. In general, there is still a great need to harmonize worldwide monitoring systems by the development of appropriate methods to evaluate the environmental impact of introgressed transgenes.

Treatment and Cleanup Standards: The Development of End-Point Criteria for Oil Spills

ABSTRACT Every oil spill response operation has an end point when treatment or cleanup is stopped. How an end point is reached involves unique decisions that reflect the individuality of each spill incident. Factors involved in the decision process include assessments of the probable environmental and socioeconomic effects of the spill, the rate of natural recovery, the effects of the various treatment or cleanup options, and the effects of increasingly more stringent criteria or standards. Other factors that influence the decision process include the roles and responsibilities of the interested parties and the perceptions of the public sector. The establishment of end-point criteria is an essential step at the outset of a spill response in order to provide a foundation for selecting appropriate treatment or cleanup strategies and tactics and for planning operations activities and logistic support. A variety of techniques can be applied to measure treatment or cleanup end points, and typically these are qualitative rather than quantitative measurements. Field analytical techniques that define the presence or absence of hydrocarbons can be used to measure a treatment end point, but this approach can be complicated if other hydrocarbon sources are present in the affected area. Chemical and toxicological data may be appropriate for damage assessment studies but it may well be impractical, or even illogical, to expect that analytical techniques can provide accurate and timely assessments for measuring the treatment or cleanup end point in all circumstances.

Does the New South Wales Threatened Species Conservation Act Provide Some Lessons for Biodiversity Conservation and Planning Integration in New Zealand?

New Zealand's Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) has been seen as a significant advance in the implementation of sustainable development and integration of conservation issues into the development planning process. The development of New Zealand's Biodiversity' Strategy has shown that the RMA has had minimal effect on slowing the loss of biodiversity, the loss of critical habitats or threatened species. This article contrasts integrated threatened species and resource management planning in New South Wales with New Zealand. Councils, planners and the planning process have failed to integrate threatened species in formation and recovery plans into resource management planning, or apply consistent criteria to Assessments of Environmental Effects for planning consent applications. Consequently the RMA is vague on what conservation bottom-lines are required for biodiversity protection and this is being developed in an ad hoc manner through case law at the Environment Court. The Government's proposed National Biodiversity Policy Statement provides an opportunity to ensure biodiversity conservation and resource management integration in policy statements and plans under the RMA, including national biodiversity assessment criteria, similar to the “Seven-part Test” from the NSW Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995. The Department of Conservation also needs to prepare statutory threatened species recovery plans and identify threatened species habitat in regional conservation management strategies.

Geochemical Assessment of Environmental Effects of Ash from Yatagan (Mugla-Turkey) Thermal Power Plant

Yatagan Thermal Power Plant consumes low-quality ligniteproduced from the Yatagan Basin, located in the western part ofthe Aegean region nearby Mugla City. The basin is aligned in anorthwest-southeast direction. The dominant wind direction isalso northwest-southeast, which controls the boundary of thewaste at the disposal site. In this study, the concentration of30 volatile elements was analyzed in coal, bottom ash, fly ashand background soil. The study area was divided into grids. The size of the grids was 1 km2 for the background soiland 50–100 m for the ash in the vicinity of the wastedisposal site. 15 fly and bottom ash, six coal and nine-background soil samples were analyzed according to a sequential technique using ICP-AES. The results reveal that heavy metal concentrations in the coal are below the world averages for coal whereas those of bottom ash and fly ash arewithin the world averages for the respective ashes, indicatingheavy metal enrichment. It is recommended that extra care shouldbe taken to prevent subsurface contamination in the study area.

Indicator-based assessment of environmental hazards and health effects in the industrial cities of upper Silesia, Poland.

Using an indicator-based approach, we assessed environmental hazards and related health effects in populations of industrial cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants in Upper Silesia, Poland, and analyzed the relationship between environment and health. We adopted the method developed by Dutkiewicz et al. for assessing large geographic areas. Based on routinely collected environmental and health data, two groups of indicators, environmental indicators (EIs) and health status indicators (HSIs), related to environmental contamination were selected. The EI and HSI values were normalized and aggregated into synthetic measures using Strahl's taxonometric method. The synthetic measures indicated the intensity of environmental hazards and health outcomes. We used a three-level index scale to compare and rank the cities under the study and, consequently, to facilitate decision making. Findings of the assessment identified cities where actions aimed at reducing environmental hazards and improving population health status should be established as priorities. These cities included Chorzów, Katowice, Sosnowiec, Bytom, and Zabrze. We found a high correlation between the synthetic measures of environmental indicators and the synthetic measure of health status indicators (r = 0.77), as well as a high level of consistency between environmental hazard indices and environmental-related health status indices (73%). This may indicate the existence of a causal relationship between the environmental contamination within industrial cities and the health status of their inhabitants.

Runoff rates, chemical speciation and bioavailability of copper released from naturally patinated copper

The release of copper, induced by atmospheric corrosion, from naturally patinated copper of varying age (0 and 30 years) has been investigated together with its potential ecotoxic effect. Results were generated in an interdisciplinary research effort in which corrosion science and ecotoxicology aspects were combined. The aim of the investigation was to elucidate the situation when copper-containing rainwater leaves a roof in terms of runoff rate, chemical speciation, bioavailability and ecotoxicity effects. Data have been collected during a three-year field exposure conducted in the urban environment of Stockholm, Sweden. The potential environmental effects have been evaluated using a combination of a copper specific biosensor test with the bacterium Alcaligenes eutrophus and the conventional 72-h growth inhibition test with the green alga Raphidocelis subcapitata. The results show annual runoff rates between 1.0 and 1.5 g/m 2 year for naturally patinated copper of varying age. The runoff rate increased slightly with patina age, which mainly is attributed to the enhanced first flush effect observed on thicker patina layers. The total copper concentration in investigated runoff samplings ranged from 0.9 to 9.7 mg/l. Both computer modeling and experimental studies revealed that the majority (60–100%) of released copper was present as the free hydrated cupric ion, Cu(H 2O) 6 2+, the most bioavailable copper species. However, other copper species in the runoff water, such as, e.g. Cu(OH) + and Cu 2(OH) 2 2+, were also bioavailable. The copper-containing runoff water, sampled directly after release from the roof, caused significant reduction in growth rate of the green alga. It should be emphasized that the results describe the runoff situation immediately after release from the copper roof and not the real environmental ecotoxicity. Therefore the data should only be used as an initial assessment of the potential environmental effect of copper runoff from building applications. Future risk assessments should also consider dilution effects of copper, changes in its chemical speciation and bioavailability during environmental entry, and type and sensitivity of the receiving ecosystem.