Environmental laws around the world require some version of an environmental‐impact assessment surrounding construction projects and other discrete instances of human development. Information ...requirements for these assessments vary by jurisdiction, but nearly all require an analysis of the biological elements of ecosystems. Amplicon‐sequencing—also called metabarcoding—of environmental DNA (eDNA) has made it possible to sample and amplify the genetic material of many species present in those environments, providing a tractable, powerful, and increasingly common way of doing environmental‐impact analysis for development projects. Here, we analyze an 18‐month time series of water samples taken before, during, and after two culvert removals in a salmonid‐bearing freshwater stream. We also sampled multiple control streams to develop a robust background expectation against which to evaluate the impact of this discrete environmental intervention in the treatment stream. We generate calibrated, quantitative metabarcoding data from amplifying the 12s MiFish mtDNA locus and complementary species‐specific quantitative PCR data to yield multispecies estimates of absolute eDNA concentrations across time, creeks, and sampling stations. We then use a linear mixed effects model to reveal patterns of eDNA concentrations over time, and to estimate the effects of the culvert removal on salmonids in the treatment creek. We focus our analysis on four common salmonid species: cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii), coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), and sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka). We find that one culvert in the treatment creek seemed to have no impact while the second culvert had a large impact on fish passage. The construction itself seemed to have only transient effects on salmonid species during the two construction events. In the context of billions of dollars of court‐mandated road culvert replacements taking place in Washington State, USA, our results suggest that culvert replacement can be conducted with only minimal impact of construction to key species of management concern. Furthermore, eDNA methods can be an effective and efficient approach for monitoring hundreds of culverts to prioritize culverts that are required to be replaced. More broadly, we demonstrate a rigorous, quantitative method for environmental‐impact reporting using eDNA that is widely applicable in environments worldwide.
This paper aims to find ways to streamline the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) system in Thailand to increase its effectiveness by comparative analysis with China and Japan. This study is ...mainly focused on review, update and comparison of EIA systems between these three countries. It is intended to clarify fundamental information of the EIA systems and characteristics of the key elements of EIA processes (screening, consideration of alternatives, prediction or evaluation of impact, and public participation). Moreover, the number of the EIA projects that have been implemented in all the provinces in Thailand are presented. The results identified the similarities and differences of the EIA processes among the three aforementioned countries. The type of EIA report used in Thailand, unlike those in China and Japan, is an Environmental and Health Impact Assessment (EHIA), which is concerned with the health and environmental impacts that could occur from the project. In addition, EIA reports in Thailand are made available to the public online and the shortcomings of the process have details of barriers resulting from the projects to help future projects with reconsideration and improvements. In this study, it is pointed out that Thai's EIA system still lacks local EIA authority which needs to be empowered by implementing a set of laws or ordinance.
•Reviewed current EIA procedures in Thailand, Japan and China•The EIA database is getting improved so as to generate profile of EIAs in the past.•Thailand needs to empower the local EIA authority within the EIA system.•The potential impacts should be more concerned than their scale in Japanese EIA.•Time limits and transparency should be reconsidered in China's EIA system.
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•A novel thermal storage integrated evacuated tube heat pipe solar air heater.•Suitable for high temperature air heating applications.•A new common condenser heat pipe arrangement was ...introduced in the system.•High temperature air was obtained during off sunshine hours.•This new solar air heater is an efficient and environment friendly device.
This study aims to present a novel thermal energy storage integrated evacuated tube heat pipe solar air heater suitable for high-temperature applications. A new heat pipe arrangement was introduced in this study by attaching all the evaporator tubes of heat pipes to a common condenser section. A thermal energy storage medium was kept in a chamber within the common condenser unit of the heat pipe to obtain uniform outlet air temperature from the system when there is fluctuation in solar radiation. Therminol 55 was used as the sensible heat storage medium in the system. The Performance evaluation of the system was conducted by varying four airflow rates 0.03 kg/s, 0.1 kg/s, 0.2 kg/s and 0.3 kg/s, respectively. 0.03 kg/s resulted in a maximum outlet air temperature of 128 °C and the system delivered more than 100 °C of hot air until 10 h of operation. The maximum thermal and exergy efficiency obtained during each airflow rate was 38%, 77%, 85%, 89%, and 5.01%, 5.21%, 5.34%, and 5.76% respectively. An average of 6200 kJ energy was collected by the present system during its operation. The total money saved per month during the operation of TS-ETHPSD was 445 INR. The Payback Period for the system is 69 months. The solar air heater can be considered as an environment-friendly device as it can save 73 kg/month of Co2 from entering the atmosphere.
Buildings are responsible for many environmental issues during construction. Although many studies have evaluated buildings' life cycle embodied environmental impacts (LCEEI), the difference in units ...usually results in isolation and separation of impact assessments. Assessment results of different indicators and environmental issues often cannot be compared with each other. This paper proposed a building LCEEI evaluation approach by integrating building information modeling (BIM) and life cycle assessment (LCA). In the proposed approach, 24 environmental impact factors (EIFs) from the cradle to the grave are firstly calculated and then linked to 10 building-related environmental issues. The comprehensive assessment of embodied environmental impacts is conducted with a three-step normalization process, including characterization, nondimensionalization, and quantitation. A reinforced concrete structure building is selected as a case to demonstrate the proposed approach. The case indicates that mineral resource consumption, timber consumption, and fossil fuel consumption contribute the top 3 largest proportions (over 80%) to the LCEEI of reinforced concrete structure buildings. The material production stage is the most crucial stage to improve a building's environmental performance. Concrete, steel, and timber are the top 3 materials generating the most EIF. The study enriches the knowledge of sustainable construction by proposing a BIM-LCA integration approach to comprehensively evaluate the LCEEI of buildings at the design stage.
The potential of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process to respond to climate change impacts of development projects can only be realized with the support of policies, regulations, and ...actors’ engagement. While considering climate change in EIA has become partly mandatory through the EU revised Directive in Europe, African countries are still lagging. This paper assesses Tanzanian policies, laws, regulations, and EIA reports to uncover consideration of climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation measures, drawing from the transformational role of EIA. The methodology integrates content analysis, interpretive policy analysis, and discourse analysis. The analyses draw from environmental policy, three regulatory documents and three EIA reports in Tanzania using a multi-cases study design. The aim was to understand how considering Climate Change issues in EIA has played out in practice. Results reveal less consideration of climate change issues in EIA. The policy, laws, and regulations do not guide when and how the EIA process should consider climate change-related impacts mitigation and adaptation. The practice of EIA in the country is utterly procedural in line with regulations provisions. Consequently, environmental impact statements only profile the climatology of the study area without conducting a deeper analysis of the historical and future climate to enhance the resilience of proposed projects. The weakness exposed in the laws and regulations contributes to the challenges of responding to the impacts of climate change through the EIA process. It is possible to address climate change issues throughout the project life cycle, including design, approval, implementation, monitoring, and auditing, provided the policy and regulations guide how and when the EIA process should consider climate change issues. Additionally, increasing stakeholders’ awareness and participation can enhance the EIA process’s potential to respond to the impacts of climate change.
Considerable attention has been given to the effectiveness of environmental impact assessment (EIA) since the 1970s. Relatively few research studies, however, have approached EIA as an instrument of ...environmental governance, and have explored the mechanisms through which EIA influences the behaviour of actors involved in planning processes. Consequently, theory in this area is underspecified. In this paper we contribute to theory-building by analysing the effectiveness of a unique EIA system: the Danish system. In this system the competent authority, instead of the project proponent, undertakes EIA reporting. Additionally, the public, rather than experts, play a central role in quality control and the Danish EIA community is relatively small which influences community dynamics in particular ways. A nation-wide survey and expert interviews were undertaken in order to examine the views of actors involved in EIA on the effectiveness of this anomalous system. The empirical data are compared with similar studies on governance mechanisms in other countries, especially the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, as well as with earlier evaluations of EIA effectiveness in Denmark. The results indicate that the more extensive role attributed to the competent authority may lead to higher EIA effectiveness when this aligns with their interests; the influence of the public is amplified by a powerful complaints system; and, the size of the EIA community appears to have no substantial influence on EIA effectiveness. We discuss how the research findings might enhance our theoretical understanding of the operation and effectiveness of governance mechanisms in EIA.
•The effectiveness of the unique Danish EIA system is explored.•Results are compared with similar studies in the Netherlands and the UK.•Findings lead to hypotheses that contribute to theorising EIA effectiveness.
Understanding and communicating the environmental impacts of food products is key to enabling transitions to environmentally sustainable food systems El Bilali and Allahyari, Inf. Process. Agric. 5, ...456-464 (2018). While previous analyses compared the impacts of food commodities such as fruits, wheat, and beef Poore and Nemecek,
360, 987-992 (2018), most food products contain numerous ingredients. However, because the amount of each ingredient in a product is often known only by the manufacturer, it has been difficult to assess their environmental impacts. Here, we develop an approach to overcome this limitation. It uses prior knowledge from ingredient lists to infer the composition of each ingredient, and then pairs this with environmental databases Poore and Nemecek
360, 987-992 (2018); Gephart et al., Nature 597, 360-365 (2021) to derive estimates of a food product's environmental impact across four indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water stress, and eutrophication potential. Using the approach on 57,000 products in the United Kingdom and Ireland shows food types have low (e.g., sugary beverages, fruits, breads), to intermediate (e.g., many desserts, pastries), to high environmental impacts (e.g., meat, fish, cheese). Incorporating NutriScore reveals more nutritious products are often more environmentally sustainable but there are exceptions to this trend, and foods consumers may view as substitutable can have markedly different impacts. Sensitivity analyses indicate the approach is robust to uncertainty in ingredient composition and in most cases sourcing. This approach provides a step toward enabling consumers, retailers, and policy makers to make informed decisions on the environmental impacts of food products.
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