Environmental auditing: Theory and applications

The environmental audit has become a regular part of corporate environmental management in Canada and is also gaining recognition in the public sector. A 1991 survey of 75 private sector companies across Canada revealed that 76% (57/75) had established environmental auditing programs. A similar survey of 19 federal, provincial, and municipal government departments revealed that 11% (2/19) had established such programs. The information gained from environmental audits can be used to facilitate and enhance environmental management from the single facility level to the national and international levels. This paper is divided into two sections: section one examines environmental audits at the facility/company level and discusses environmental audit characteristics, trends, and driving forces not commonly found in the available literature. Important conclusions are: that wherever possible, an action plan to correct the identified problems should be an integral part of an audit, and therefore there should be a close working relationship between auditors, managers, and employees, and that the first audits will generally be more difficult, time consuming, and expensive than subsequent audits. Section two looks at environmental audits in the broader context and discusses the relationship between environmental audits and three other environmental information gathering/analysis tools: environmental impact assessments, state of the environment reports, and new systems of national accounts. The argument is made that the information collected by environmental audits and environmental impact assessments at the facility/company level can be used as the bases for regional and national state of the environment reports and new systems of national accounts.     

Emissions of N2O and CH4 during the Composting of Liquid Swine Manure

Composted organic wastes have been shown to reduce emissions of N2O and CH4, but little is known about the release of these gases during the composting process. This research examined the emissions of N2O and CH4 during the composting of liquid swine manure and wheat straw at two operations, one with forced aeration and the other without. The lack of aeration increased CH4 emissions to 24 times that of composting with aeration, but had no significant effect on N2O production. When total N2O and CH4 emissions from composting were compared with liquid swine manure emissions, aerated composting was found to reduce emissions to as low as 30% of those from liquid manure storage, while non-aerated composting elevated emissions up to an estimated 330% of liquid manure storage.     

Development of a Standardised Approach to River Habitat Assessment in Australia

Despite the demonstrated utility of the Australian River Assessment Scheme (AUSRIVAS) to provide national-scale information on the biological condition of rivers, there is no commensurate scheme that can provide standardised information on physical habitat. Existing habitat assessment methods are not suitable for implementation on a national scale, so we present a new habitat assessment protocol that incorporates favorable elements of existing methods. Habitat Predictive Modelling forms the basis for the protocol because it can predict the occurrence of local-scale features from large-scale data, uses the reference condition concept, can be modified to incorporate a range of biologically and geomorphologically relevant variables, and employs a rapid survey approach. However, the protocol has been augmented with geomorphological variables and incorporates principles of hierarchy and geomorphological river zonation. There are four sequential components to the implementation of the protocol: reference site selection, data collection, predictive model construction and assessment of test sites using the predictive models. Once implemented, the habitat assessment protocol will provide a standardised tool for the assessment of river habitat condition at a variety of governance levels.     

Monitoring of Biodiversity Indicators in Boreal Forests: a Need for Improved Focus

The general principles of scale and coarse and fine filters have been widely accepted, but management agencies and industry are still grappling with the question of what to monitor to detect changes in forest biodiversity following forest management. Part of this problem can be attributed to the lack of focused questions for monitoring including absence of null models and predicted effects, a certain level of disconnect between research and management, and recognition that monitoring can be designed as a research question. Considerable research from the past decade has not been adequately synthesized to answer important questions, such as which species or forest attributes might be the best indicators of change. A disproportionate research emphasis has been placed on community ecology, and mostly on a few groups of organisms including arthropods, amphibians, migratory songbirds, and small mammals, while other species, including soil organisms, lichens, bats, raptors, some carnivores, and larger mammals remain less well-known. In most studies of community ecology, the question of what is the importance, if any, of the regularly observed subtle changes in community structures, and causes of observed changes is usually not answered. Hence, our ability to deal with questions of persistence is limited, and demographic research on regionally--defined key species (such as species linked to processes, species whose persistence may be affected, species with large home ranges, species already selected as indicators, and rare and threatened species) is urgently needed. Monitoring programs need to be designed to enable managers to respond to unexpected changes caused by forest management. To do this, management agencies need to articulate null models for monitoring that predict effects, focus fine--scale monitoring on key species (defined by local and regional research) in key habitats (rare, declining, important) across landscapes, and have a protocol in place to adapt management strategies to changes observed. Finally, agencies must have some way to determine and define when a significant change has occurred and to predict the persistence of species; this too should flow from a well--designed null model.     

Dichloromethane Marine Risk Assessment with Special Reference to the Osparcom Region: North Sea

This risk assessment on dichloromethane was carried out specifically for the marine environment, following methodology given in the EU risk assessment Regulation (1488/94) and Guidance Document of the EU New and Existing Substances Regulation (TGD, 1997). The study consists of collection and evaluation of data on effects and environmental concentrations from analytical monitoring programs in large rivers and estuaries in the North Sea area. The risk is indicated by the ratio of 'predicted environmental concentrations' (PEC) to 'predicted no-effect concentrations' (PNEC) for the marine aquatic environment. In total, 23 studies for fish, 17 studies for invertebrates and 6 studies for algae were evaluated. Both acute and chronic toxicity studies were taken into account and appropriate assessment factors used to define a PNEC value of 830 microg/l. Most of the available monitoring data apply to rivers and estuaries and were used to calculate PECs. The most recent data (1983--1995) support a typical PEC for dichloromethane lower than 0.2 microg/l and a worst case PEC of 13.6 microg/l. Dichloromethane is not a 'toxic, persistent and liable to bioaccumulate' substance sensu the Oslo and Paris Conventions for the Prevention of Marine Pollution (OSPAR-DYNAMEC). The calculated PEC/PNEC ratios give margins of 60 to 4000 between the PNEC and PEC, dilution within the sea would further increase these margins. It can be concluded that the present use of dichloromethane does not present a risk to the marine aquatic environment.     

A REVIEW OF APPLICATION ISSUES OF THE METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT-MAIN WATER FORECASTING SYSTEM1

ABSTRACT: This paper reviews the processes that occurred during an application of the Metropolitan Water District (MWD)-MAIN water use forecasting system for the City of Salinas, California. The review includes an analysis of sources of available data, methods for estimating input data, calibration, and verification of the MWD-MAIN System, and an evaluation of the reliability of system output. We found that inexperienced users can have difficulty understanding the level of skill, knowledge, and amount of data that are required to produce reliable forecasts. Some of the issues associated with application of the MWD-MAIN System include the following:

• ? All input data needed for accurate forecasts simply are not available for many cities and towns.
• ? The data requirements are more extensive than many users anticipate.
• ? Substantial requirements for manipulation of input data produces opportunity for error that creates major time demands in troubleshooting.
• ? Calibration and verification for specific uses can be substantially more difficult than is readily apparent from the guidance manual.
• ? Independent validity checks need to be done to validate system output.
• ? If specified calibrating procedures do not produce reasonable results, reestimating slope coefficients is an option, but this requires resources and expertise that can easily exceed the limits of most users.

These are problems typical of most complex models. Reviews such as this can help users to appreciate the level of data required, and to use the MWD-MAIN System in a more effective and efficient manner.     

The influence of irradiance on the biochemical composition of three phytoplankton species and their nutritional value for larvae of the Pacific Oyster (Crassostrea gigas)

Three species of phytoplankton grown at high (HL) or low light (LL) were fed as saturating rations to laboratory-reared larval Crassostrea gigas. Larval C. gigas fed diets of HL grown Chaetoceros gracilis and HL grown Isochrysis aff. galbana grew faster than those fed LL grown cells of the same phytoplankton species. Faster growth of C. gigas larvae was consistently associated with increases in the percent composition of short chain saturated fatty acids (FA) 14:0+16:0 in the HL grown cells. There were no consistent and significant differences between HL and LL grown phytoplankton cells in their content of carbon, nitrogen, protein, lipid or carbohydrate. Intraspecific increases in percent composition of essential fatty acids (EFAs), 20:53 and 22:63, in the phytoplankton were not associated with improvements in the growth or survival of the oyster larvae. Oyster larvae fed diets of Phaeodactylum tricornutum with a relatively high proportion of EFAs grew more slowly than those fed C. gracilis. In this experiment the proportion of dietary EFA 20:53 was negatively correlated with oyster growth rates. The faster growing oyster larvae contained relatively more of the FAs 14:0+16:0 which may be useful as measures of larval oyster condition. After a diet of one phytoplankton species for ca. 10 d, oyster larvae acquired distinctive FA profiles resembling that of their phytoplankton prey.     

Book reviews

The Economics of Art and Culture: An American Perspective

James Heilbrun & Charles M. Gray

New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993, 378 pp., £14.95 pb

Building Cities that Work

Edmund Fowler

Montreal & Kingston, McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1992, 315 pp.

Interactive Decision Making: The Graph Model for Conflict Resolution

Liping Fang, Keith W. Hipel & D. Marc Kilgour

New York, Wiley, 1993, 221 pp., £49.50

The Politics of Nature: Explorations in Green Political Theory

Andrew Dobson & Paul Lucardie (Eds)

London, Routledge, 1993, 240 pp. + xv, £37.50

Urban Transport in Asia: An Operational Agenda for the 1990s, World Bank

Technical Paper No. 224

Peter Midgley

Washington, DC, The World Bank, 1994, 98 pp.

Landscape Ecology: Theory and Application, 2nd edition

Zev Naveh & Arthur Lieberman

New York, Springer‐Verlag, £34.50     

A decade of recreation ratings for six silviculture treatments in Western Oregon

Managed forests are increasingly being used for recreation. As a result, foresters may be expected to tailor silvicultural treatments to accommodate specific recreation preferences. To better understand changes in hiking and camping quality in the years following a harvest, six sites on the Oregon State University's research forest were evaluated annually for 11 years. Multiple comparison and regression analyses were used to describe the data. Results show that recreation ratings generally improved over time; recreation ratings were related to but different from scenic ratings; and there were differences among recreation activities. Although several studies have previously examined recreation quality after harvest, we know of no other study that has tracked the ratings of individual harvest units through the early stages of stand regeneration.     

CULTURAL EVOLUTION AND WATER MANAGEMENT IN THE SALINAS RIVER VALLEY1

ABSTRACT: This article reports the findings of a case study of a major California water management district's effort to change its management approach. The following key findings and factors have influenced the Salinas basin management plan (BMP) and its progress: (1) the Salinas Valley is an economy dominated by highly sophisticated irrigated agriculture dependent on ground water; (2) a persistent pattern of agricultural overdraft of ground water has hurt growers primarily in the north end of the valley via induced saline intrusion of irrigation wells; (3) a complex set of water institutions, property and water rights, and land lease practices offer little incentive for good stewardship of land and water; and (4) the BMP approach initially may have intensified tension among growers and between growers and other water user groups. Water rules and practices in the Salinas Valley and Monterey County have evolved through a long historical process of adaptations. Therefore, any significant changes in local water use practices need to be understood in terms of cultural change, that is, changes in deeply held values, beliefs, and assumptions. We believe the BMP and the MCWRA are succeeding when evaluated from this evolutionary perspective. The fact that both still exist relatively intact testifies that they are working, albeit slowly.