Department of Environmental Science, Graduate School of the Environment and Energy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
Environ Monit Assess. 2011 Jan;172(1-4):145-56. doi: 10.1007/s10661-010-1323-9. Epub 2010 Feb 20.
Highway construction or expansion projects are among major activities of economic development especially in developing countries. However, road development consistently can lead to major damages to the environment, including habitat fragmentation and ecological instabilities and a considerable threat to fauna and flora. At this point, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in road developments is needed to address and evaluate the ecological issues in decision-making. The object of this study is to strengthen the consideration of ecological issues, i.e., biodiversity in the existing EIA tools. This paper regards a network method as a means to make informed planning decisions by the lessons from a case study. The results indicate that network method is well suited to be applied in ecological impacts assessment. However, some limitations such as complexity and time consumed make casual networks unpopular. Also, impact of traffic noise on acoustic communication (wildlife and human) was performed. It has been shown that sound level for human is much higher than admissible standards. Finally, the study expresses some mitigation measures to improve the acquisition for environmental impact assessment process.
公路建设或扩建项目是经济发展的主要活动之一，尤其是在发展中国家。然而，道路发展一直会对环境造成重大破坏，包括生境破碎化和生态不稳定性，以及对动植物的巨大威胁。在这一点上，需要进行环境影响评估（EIA）来解决和评估决策中的生态问题。本研究的目的是加强对现有 EIA 工具中生态问题的考虑，即生物多样性。本文通过案例研究的经验，将网络方法作为做出明智规划决策的一种手段。结果表明，网络方法非常适合应用于生态影响评估。然而，一些局限性，如复杂性和时间消耗，使得简单网络不受欢迎。此外，还对交通噪声对声通讯（野生动物和人类）的影响进行了研究。结果表明，人类的声级远高于可接受的标准。最后，研究提出了一些减轻措施来改善环境影响评估过程的获取。
