Assessing and Managing the Ecological Impacts of Paved Roads (2005) / Chapter Skim
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6 Planning and Assessment
6 Planning and Assessment
Pages 170-203
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From page 170... ...
The second section addresses issues and problems with the planning processes, and the third describes an array of ecological evaluation tools and methods used in planning and project development, including rapid assessment methods. The fourth section addresses some potential solutions, including a conceptual framework for integrating environmental factors along with other considerations in the planning phase.
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From page 171... ...
The environmental resource agencies also are devoting greater resources to transportation planning and project development. Stakeholder involvement in examining ecological impacts of roads has had some success.
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Federal agencies may have expertise in particular ecological resources and may coordinate with state and local agencies on many levels. More frequently, however, there is little coordination of information and resources that would be helpful for ecological planning associated with transportation planning.
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For many reasons, the transportation planning stage rarely involves detailed consideration of siting of transportation projects, and there is a perception that most environmental issues can be addressed when a specific project location is viewed in more detail. There is also little information concerning ecological resources available for the transportation planning process.
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In some cases, the state transportation plan or state LRTP combines various local or regional plans. For locations outside MPO jurisdiction (rural locations)
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potential environmental impacts associated with a planned project receive environmental analysis; yet, some analysis should be done earlier. Project development studies have become thorough and consider all applicable state and federal laws.
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have other planning activities that can be integrated with transportation planning. These activities include natural-resource planning, growth management, land-use planning, and economic development planning.
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. This requirement has resulted in standardized procedures during the project development phase for documentation of potential environmental impacts of federal actions by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)
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If issues and impacts are identified in the systems-planning process, the environmental impacts assessment and project development phase should provide sufficient details for resource agency signoff or the opportunity for early resolution of impact issues. FHWA recently published guidelines for better integration of transportation planning and the NEPA process (FHWA/FTA 2005)
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Hence, transportation agencies often find that they are trying to resolve resource and transportation planning issues without the needed input of plans from other agencies. This problem can lead to a long coordination process and project delays.
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These planning efforts offer an important opportunity to help support improved environmental considerations in transportation planning. TRANSPORTATION ECOLOGICAL ASSESSMENTS Because of the decentralized nature of transportation planning and project development, assessment of impacts (social, economic, and environmental)
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However, there is no standard assessment method required for evaluation of environmental concerns in transportation planning or project developments, and necessary data are not always available at this stage. TOOLS AND METHODS FOR ASSESSMENT Development of rapid assessment methods has been attempted for wetland functional analysis.
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· Does the proposed corridor cross or adjoin lands identified as important for wildlife in natural-resource management plans? · Does the proposed corridor cross or adjoin federally defined critical habitat for a federally listed species?
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BOX 6-2 Example of a GIS-Based Framework for Assessing Ecological Conditions in the Southeastern United States The southeastern ecological framework (SEF) (developed by the University of Florida in 2001)
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The Florida Department of Transportation has also developed a decision-making checklist based on geographic information system (GIS) data that could be used in a standardized assessment method (see Box 6-1)
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As the need for more strategic and broad-scale planning efforts to minimize the impacts of roads on ecological systems becomes apparent, various tools are being used to address the need. For example, quantifying the overall impact of new-road development on biodiversity and estimating the risk to biodiversity strongly depend on the availability, accuracy, reliability, and resolution of national data on the distributions of habitats, species, and development proposals (Treweek et al.
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From page 186... ...
They are also required to coordinate the plans with other state and federal agencies. A weakness in the existing system is that the information available during early planning meetings is often so inadequate and incomplete that constructive dialogue about environmental factors is put off until the project development phase, at which point it is often more difficult to reach consensus on environmentally sensitive projects.
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Furthermore, additional work is needed in developing and testing models that address transportation impacts on ecological systems. A rapid assessment method could be developed to evaluate the impacts of transportation actions on the environment and to generate mitigation strategies.
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. Finally, the lack of mandatory legal standards or requirements for many ecological features, other than air quality, water quality, and wetlands, complicates the issues of whether and how a standard assessment method should calculate impacts or set metrics to assist with mitigation choices.
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Planning and Assessment 189 FIGURE 6-1 EPA ecological framework: essential ecological attributes. Source: EPA SAB 2002.
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. Some transportation agencies have begun to use these techniques in transportation planning and project development.
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The internet is contributing substantially to sharing this information. State transportation agencies are posting planning and project development information on the web as part of their public involvement programs, providing a convenient opportunity for agencies, organizations, and the public to have input on a project.
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Any increase in activity at the state and federal level would help provide the science to make a standardized assessment method possible. POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS FOR ASSESSMENT AND PLANNING Conceptual Considerations Environmental assessments and planning activities involve some estimation of future events.
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Conceptual Framework for a Rapid Assessment Method The committee's proposed conceptual framework for a rapid assessment method systematically incorporates ecological factors into transportation decision making. Its rapid assessment approach is based on those that use basic ecological principles (Stohlgren et al.
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The committee's proposed framework calls for · Consideration of ecological factors early in transportation systems planning and throughout project development, maintenance, and operations. · Establishment of ecological goals and performance indicators along with transportation goals and performance indicators to meet ecological resource protection, restoration, and enhancement needs as well as transportation needs.
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Conduct ongoing monitoring and evaluation FIGURE 6-3 Diagram of committee's proposed framework for a rapid assessment method.
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argued that meaningful planning sets both long-term goals and desired future conditions. Thus, the link between developing assessments and building decisions is in defining the desired future condition that includes both ecological and transportation goals.
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Thus, context definition draws on the experiences of all of the stakeholders. Step 3 -- Identify and obtain information of ecological performance indicators Performance indicators for the desired future conditions are metrics that quantify the features for the desired outcome.
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Other experience with environmental assessments (Holling 1978; Walters 1986, 1997) suggests that dynamic computer models for resource-managed applications can be powerful tools at this step.
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Hence, a first step for decision making is to develop the public forum for defining the desired future condition. The decision makers can use the options generated and projections of the ecological impacts of their implementation to plan and design context-sensitive transportation solutions.
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The scale, quality, quantity, accessibility, and age of the existing data files on baseline conditions heavily influence the amount of supplemental field studies necessary to define the transportation and ecological contexts adequately. Local, state, and federal transportation agencies over the past 100 years have assembled a tremendous amount of macro-scale and microscale baseline data about the transportation system.
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that may require at least 2 years to document adequately. Ideally, high-quality ecological databases with macro-scale and micro-scale data would be readily accessible to transportation agencies to define the ecological context for ecological impact assessments.
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. The typical ecological database information that would be used in defining the ecological context of the area of potential impacts includes · Land uses, including consumptive and nonconsumptive uses · Topography · Soils · Surface waters · Groundwater · Vegetative cover · Plant species population locations, including threatened and endangered plants · Animal species population locations, including threatened and endangered animals · Important wildlife-movement corridors intersecting transportation corridors · Important plant and animal species habitats, including threatened and endangered plants and animals · Degraded plant and animal species habitats with restoration potential Models need to be in place to manipulate these data in ways that are useful to address potential ecological impacts.
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must be expanded to allow those data to be used in assessments to address scale, feedback, and mixed criteria for environmental protection. Transportation agencies can continue to expand their roles as information brokers and to foster planning forums that integrate environmental planning and assessment across agencies, NGOs, stakeholders, and the public.
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