Environmental Analysis reviews information gathered during NEPA assessments, summarizes the state of the art in methods and approaches, and defines future opportunities and new approaches required to link high-quality science to the decision-making process. Individual chapters address the process itself, present examples of recent experience with ecological impact assessment, evaluate social impact assessment and the important role the public must play, discuss the difficult challenge of assessing cumulative effects of multiple impacts, consider the regional and global implications of NEPA, and examine the important role of follow-up studies in the process. The authors of the 59 individual papers comprising this book represent the major sectors that have been key participants in the decision-making process from the beginning. These sectors include academia, national laboratories, federal agencies, state agencies, private industry, and foreign nations. Environmental Analysis will be interesting reading for environmental scientists, engineers, policy makers, and lawyers in government and academia; private consultants; and non-government environmental organizations.

This dissertation investigates the U.S. Forest Service's (USFS) implementation of the cumulative effects analysis (CEA) requirement under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The CEA regulation requires federal agencies to provide an analysis of environmental effects, with consideration of past, present, and foreseeable future actions by both public and private parties, often on broad geographic scales. Studies in the late 1990's found that compliance with CEA requirement was highly variable across agencies. Of late, judicial enforcement of the CEA requirement has been on the rise with the USFS the focal agency in the majority of decisions. This study investigates USFS implementation of the CEA requirement, with a focus on wildlife, and uses the Idaho Panhandle National Forest (IPNF) as a case study. Case law and NEPA document analysis, along with semi-structured interviews, are used to investigate: legal standards for CEA and wildlife analysis, the current state of CEA practice, impediments to implementation, and opportunities for improvement. The case law analysis reveals that plaintiffs have successfully challenged the agency for failure to consider other relevant projects in a CEA, lack of rationale for findings, reliance on stale data, and failure to include CEA at the appropriate junctures in the planning process. Findings from the IPNF case study indicate that landscape-level analysis and the inclusion of past actions in CEA continue to be major challenges in implementing the requirement. Confusion over the nature of the requirement, limited monitoring data, and lack of time and funding impede the agency's ability to effectively conduct CEA. Cumulative impacts to wildlife are measured in terms of changes to suitable habitat. No clear picture is provided of changes to habitat availability or population status over time. The efficacy of using habitat as a proxy for species presence is questionable, as is the scientific foundation of some tools used by the IPNF to support its wildlife CEA. Recommendations, such as improved monitoring, better understanding of species-habitat relationships, and options for increasing the scientific credibility of agency decisions, are discussed herein as ways to improve wildlife planning and CEA on USFS lands.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) introduced the environmental impact statement, transformed decision making by federal agencies, and spurred the growth of an extensive body of environmental law. This book takes a close look at the litigation of NEPA cases, including jurisdiction and related issues, standard and scope of judicial review, and the specific concerns of litigators. It identifies key NEPA issues and offers solutions to the challenges faced in practice, including climate change and its relationship to the NEPA process.

Marine mammals face a large array of stressors, including loss of habitat, chemical and noise pollution, and bycatch in fishing, which alone kills hundreds of thousands of marine mammals per year globally. To discern the factors contributing to population trends, scientists must consider the full complement of threats faced by marine mammals. Once populations or ecosystems are found to be at risk of adverse impacts, it is critical to decide which combination of stressors to reduce to bring the population or ecosystem into a more favorable state. Assessing all stressors facing a marine mammal population also provides the environmental context for evaluating whether an additional activity could threaten it. Approaches to Understanding the Cumulative Effects of Stressors on Marine Mammals builds upon previous reports to assess current methodologies used for evaluating cumulative effects and identify new approaches that could improve these assessments. This review focuses on ways to quantify exposure-related changes in the behavior, health, or body condition of individual marine mammals and makes recommendations for future research initiatives.