A Study on the Theory and Approach of Environmental Impact Assessment in General Land Use Planning

In this paper,the theory and approach of environmental impact assessment in general land use planning are studied from different aspects.First,starting from the content and concept of general land use planning,the necessity of environmental impact assessment in general land use planning is illustrated.On the basis of its evaluation theories and methodologies,it attempts to establish index system of environmental impact assessment in general land use planning,and point outs that current general land use planning requires public participation.

Practice and Thinking on Current Planning Environmental Impact Assessment of Transmission and Transformation Power Grid in Jiangsu Province

The planning environmental impact assessment （EIA） of transmission and transformation power grid at levels of 500 and 220 kV had been finished completely in the 13 municipalities of Jiangsu Province by the end of 2012, which played important roles in guiding and planning the following transmission and transformation projects in environmental protection. In this paper, through the detail analysis on the objective and significance of the planning EIA of transmission and transformation power grid, legal basis and planning EIA practices, some suggestions and thinking about the planning EIA of transmission and transformation power grid were put forward.

Planning Environmental Impact Assessment Orienting Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Challenges

Strategic Environmental Assessment is a frontier subject in the field of Environmental Impact Assessment. In the past two decades, especially in recent years, much more importance has been attached to Strategic Environmental Assessment. The Environmental Impact Assessment Law of the P.R. China which was promulgated provides a great opportunity for the development of Planning Environmental Impact Assessment and brings great challenges for the development of traditional Project Environmental Impact Assessment and Planning Environmental Impact Assessment at the same time. In order to promote the implementation of "The EIA Law", the inherent limitations of Project Environmental Impact Assessment must be identified sufficiently and the theory research and practice of Planning Environmental Impact Assessment should be strengthened as well. Measures should be taken currently to enforce the operation system. The authors wish to offer a few references to the progress and implementation of Planning Environmental Impact Assessment in China.

Preliminary Investigation on Tracking Evaluation of Planning Environmental Impact Assessment in Ecological Civilization Construction of Wuhan City

On the basis of experimental works of planning environmental impact assessment, works of planning environmental impact assessment such as each of the city＇s special planning and development zone planning were comprehensively promoted in Wuhan City, which effectively promoted the adjustment of Wuhan industrial structure, the rational layout of functions and the efficient utilization of resources, and laid a solid foundation for Wuhan City to be the supporting point for the rise of central China. Here, the work carried out in Wuhan was reviewed, combined with the new requirements of the current ecological civilization construction in Wuhan City, and the framework, the key technical points and the important focuses of the carrying out of the tracking evaluation of planning environmental impact assessment were proposed.

Environmental impacts assessment for hydropower development planning in China

This article briefly introduced China’s law framework and technical standards related to environmental impacts assessment(EIA) for hydropower development, and the EIA developing process for hydropower development planning. Authors summarized the working experiences about hydropower development planning EIA done in the recent years in China, discussed the considerations and methods of hydropower development planning EIA, and put forward the index system for hydropower development planning EIA initially.

Land-Use Planning Guidelines for Optimal Coastal Environmental Management

The objective of this study is to weigh and recommend environmentally-optimal regional land-use planning guidelines for coastal regions. The present malaise is assessed, as regards inefficiencies, non-suitability, non-sustainability, enhancing factors of environmental degradation, and potentially destructive consequences of current land-use alteration. Desired situations and goals are considered, and means are proposed for bridging the gap between the present malaise and a desired situation, based on five key approaches developed by the authors. Specific examples of regional approaches are presented. Guidelines and operational measures for sound regional planning the authors have employed in similar circumstances are recommended.

COCKPIT-PLUS:A proposed method for rapid groundwater vulnerability-driven land use zoning in tropical cockpit karst areas

Karst groundwater is highly vulnerable to contamination,which urges better land use zoning.This paper proposes a new approach,called COCKPIT-PLUS,to minimize groundwater contamination within cockpit karst regions.The method employed four parameters:P(the existence of ponor/swallow hole),L(lineament density),U(sinking stream to an underground river),and S(distance to spring/pumping site).These parameters are essential for identifying contaminant pathways and transport from the surface to the karst groundwater/springs.COCKPIT-PLUS has been developed and validated in the Gunungsewu karst in Java,Indonesia.This research considers a cockpit as a single hydrological unit that uniquely recharges karst groundwater.We analyzed 2,811 cockpits and 81 other closed depressions to develop a land use planning map.The research used the time to first arrival(Ta),time to peak(Tp),and Q_(max/min)ratio parameters of two karst springs and two underground pumping sites for validation.Cockpits with ponors/swallow holes,sinking streams,high lineament density,and short distances to springs are vulnerable to groundwater and thus must be restricted areas for any land uses.The findings show that though the COCKPIT-PLUS uses a limited karst dataset,the proposed method seems reliable enough for a rapid land-use zoning approach in cockpit karst areas.

Assessment of impact of water diversion projects on ecological water uses in arid region

In arid regions, large-scale water diversion from rivers leads to significant changes in river flow regimes, which may have large impacts on ecological water uses of river-dependent ecosystems, such as river, lake, wetland, and riparian ecosystems. To assess the integrated impact of water diversion on ecological water uses, we proposed a hierarchy evaluation model composed of four layers representing the evaluation goal, sub-areas of the influenced region, evaluation criteria, and water diversion schemes, respectively. The evaluation criteria for different types of ecological water uses were proposed, and the analytical hierarchy process was used for the integrated assessment. For a river ecosystem, the percentage of mean annual flow was used to define the grade of environmental flow. For a lake ecosystem, water recharge to the lake to compensate the lake water losses was used to assess the ecological water use of a lake. The flooding level of the wetland and the groundwater level in the riparian plain were used to assess the wetland and riparian ecological water uses, respectively. The proposed model was applied to a basin in northern Xinjiang in northwest China, where both water diversion and inter-basin water transfer projects were planned to be carried out. Based on assessment results for the whole study area and two sub-areas, an appropriate scheme was recommended from four planning schemes. With the recommended scheme, ecological water uses of the influenced ecosystems can be maintained at an acceptable level. Meanwhile, economical water requirements can be met to a great extent.

Land Use Change and Its Impact on Values of Ecosystem Services in the West of Jilin Province

According to interpreting the LANDSAT TM/ETM images of 1986 and 2002, the spatial-temporal characteristics of land use changes were analyzed during 16 years base on GIS. In addition, the change of ecosystem services due to land use change was estimated by the method of vaulting global ecosystem services. The result shows that there were rapid increases in the area of cropland, saline-alkaline land, and dramatic decreases in grassland, water area and wetland between 1986 and 2002. The annual value of the ecosystem services was declined from 767.1 ×10s Yuan/a in 1986 to 624.1 × 10s Yuan/a in 2002, the estimated annual ecosystem service value declined by 18. 6 % （i. e. 1.6% per year） between 1986 and 2002. It indicates that there had been a sever harm to ecosystem functions and services, which results from the deterioration of ecological environment and the adjustment of land use that aim to currently economic benefit.

Comprehensive assessment method for environmental impact of railway based on geographic information system

By integrating the merits of the map overlay method and the geographic information system (GIS), a GIS based map overlay method was developed to analyze comprehensively the environmental vulnerability around railway and its impact on the environment, which is adapted for the comprehensive assessment of railway environmental impact and the optimization of railway alignments. The assessment process of the GIS based map overlay method was presented, which includes deciding the system structure and weights of assessment factors, making environmental vulnerability grade maps, and evaluating the alternative alignments comprehensively to obtain the best one. With the GIS functions of spatial analysis, such as overlay analysis and buffer analysis, and functions of handling attribute data, the GIS based map overlay method overcomes the shortcomings of the existing map overlay method and the conclusion is more reasonable. In the end, a detailed case study was illustrated to verify the efficiency of the method.

Practice and Thinking of Plan Environmental Impact Assessment of Power Transmission and Transformation Grid in Nanjing

At present,the plan environmental impact assessment of power transmission and transformation grid is relatively mature. How to further improve the quality of plan environmental impact assessment of power grid during the "14^(th) Five-Year Plan" period is very important. In this paper,the plan environmental impact assessment of power grid in the Development Plan for Power Grid in Nanjing during the "13^(th) Five-Year Plan" Period is studied to further discuss the ideas,evaluation system and content framework of plan environmental impact assessment of power grid.

Substituted plan analysis in the environmental impact assessment of Yongchuan wastewater treatment project

Substituted plan in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) mainly means the treatment technology and the substituted site of plant, and it also includes the many kinds of environment protection measures. This paper will make detailed analysis on the treatment technology, the substituted site of plant, the purpose of discharged water and the dispose of sludge in the Yongchuan wastewater treatment project.

Cloud Data and Computing Services Allow Regional Environmental Assessment:A Case Study of Macquarie-Castlereagh Basin, Australia

Large amounts of data at various temporal and spatial scales require terabyte(TB) level storage and computation, both of which are not easy for researchers to access. Cloud data and computing services provide another solution to store, process, share and explore environmental data with low costs, stronger computation capacity and easy access. The purpose of this paper is to examine the benefits and challenges of using freely available satellite data products from Australian Geoscience DataCube and Google Earth Engine(GEE) online data with time series for integrative environmental analysis of the Macquarie-Castlereagh Basin in the last 15 years as a case study. Results revealed that the cloud platform simplifies the procedure of traditional catalog data processing and analysis. The integrated analysis based on the cloud computing and traditional methods represents a great potential as a low-cost, efficient and user-friendly method for global and regional environmental study. The user can save considerable time and cost on data integration. The research shows that there is an excellent promise in performing regional environmental analysis by using a cloud platform. The incoming challenge of the cloud platform is that not all kinds of data are available on the cloud platform. How data are integrated into a single platform while protecting or recognizing the data property, or how one portal can be used to explore data archived on different platforms represent considerable challenges.

Analyses of environmental impacts of underground coal mining in an arid region using remote sensing and GIS

The influences of coal mining in an arid environment on vegetation coverage, land-use change, desertification, soil and water loss were discussed. A series of available TM/ETM＋ images with no cloud cover from July/August in different years （1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005） were used to analyze the change in various land environmental factors over time. The results show that while mining activity initially had a marked adverse impact on the environment, mine rehabilitation measures have also subsequently played a great role in improving vegetation cover and controlling land desertification and loss of water and soil. The effect of coal mining on vegetation cover is dependent upon the soil type and natural indigenous flora. Results of this investigation imply that mining activity has a greater effect on the vegetation of loess areas than at sandy sites. Although local vegetation coverage was improved by planting in the mining area, the total area of land affected by desertification still in- creased from 26.81% in 1990 when large-scale mine construction was introduced, to 46.79% in 1995. With continuous efforts at rehabilitation, the vegetation cover in the Shendong coal mining area was increasing, and loss of water and soil were effec- tively controlled since 1995. Subsequently, the total area of extreme desertification decreased to 23.24% in 2000 and further to 18.68% in 2005. The total area affected by severe loss of water and soil also decreased since the early 1990＇s （70.61% in 1990, 71.43% in 1995）, to 43.64% in 2000 and 34.93% in 2005, respectively.

Visualizing Relationships between Drivers of Environmental Change and Pressures on Land-Based Ecosystems

The pursuit of human needs and demands is placing more pressure on land resources than ever before. The challenge of feeding 7 billion people is increasingly competing with rising demands for materials and biofuels. Deforestation and land degradation are among the pressing outcomes of these trends. Drivers of environmental change—including population growth, economic activity, consumption, urbanization, trade, conflict, and governance—clearly play a role in aggravating or mitigating these pressures on land. Despite advances in understanding causality in complex systems, navigating the interactions between these drivers remains a major challenge. This paper analyzes and visualizes the relationships between multiple, interacting drivers of environmental change and specific pressures on land-based ecosystems. Drawing on experience from the development of the Drivers and Land chapters of the UN Environment Programme’s Fifth Global Environment Outlook report (GEO-5), we use a series of Kiviat diagrams to illustrate the relative influence of key drivers on selected pressures on land. When individual diagrams are overlaid, patterns of influence emerge that can provide insight into where policy responses might best be targeted. We propose that, subject to some limitations, the Kiviat exercise can provide an accessible and potentially valuable “knowledge-intermediary” tool to help link science-based information to policy action.

THE APPLICATION OF GIS IN URBAN PLANNING:ENVIRONMENTAL ZONING STUDY IN THE OLD CITY OF WENZHOU,CHINA

Due to rapid growth of population, urbanization and industrialization, in many cites of the developing world, there is severe contradiction between urban land supply and land demand which resulted in many urban land use conflicting situations and urban environment degrading. This paper is mainly focused on this problem, demonstrating the feasibility and efficiency of environmental study by integrating GIS and environmetal zoning method. Two neighbourhoods of the old city of Wenzhou were chosen as the study area. With the aid of GIS software PC Arc/info as dBate IV, an urhan environmental impact assessment study was carried out based on the data available such as land use map and detailed attribute data of each land planning unit. The main factors taken into consideration include: the type of activity causing environmental stress, the type and strength of environmental impact and the type of receptive area that could be affected.

Study Progress and Trends of Strategic Environmental Assessment in China

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in China has developed rapidly since it was introduced into China in the 1990s. Chinese government promulgated the Environmental Impact Assessment Law of China (hereinafter referred to as the EIA Law) in 2002. In this law, it is stipulated clearly that regional and sector plans should be assessed. Through investigating materials and analyzing literatures, this article analyses the practical and academic study achievements of SEA in China that have been achieved since the EIA Law was implemented, probes into the current situation of the main level of SEA in China-plan EIA, then summarizes the development characteristics, and eventually, puts forward the development trends of SEA in China. The research conclusions can offer the foundations for comprehending systematically the progress of SEA in China.

Ecological and Environmental Protection Requirements in China s Regional Coordinated Development Strategy in the New Era

Starting from the historical evolution of China s regional coordinated development policy and practice,three stages of"enlightenment stage","development stage"and"maturity stage",as well as the connotation,characteristics and content of implementing regional coordinated development strategy were analyzed.On this basis,from different aspects of industrial distribution,pollutant characteristics and regional environmental protection policy,the existing ecological and environmental protection problems in China s regional coordinated development in the new era were analyzed,and some suggestions for the next step were put forward.It is necessary to follow the"four ones"concept from the overall point of view,implement"three lines and one list"from the perspective of the width of the access red line,strengthen"joint prevention and control"from the perspective of the depth of regional regulation,deepen the"planning environmental impact assessment"from the perspective of the breadth of industrial distribution,and promote the"green-way model"from the perspective of ecological low carbon.

Economic development and its impact on the environment in east coastal zone of China

This paper discusses briefly the elementary characteristics of the east China economic developing zone, and analyses the condition of urban atmospheric pollution, water pollution and ecological damage in this zone at present. It was brought forward that we must pay great attention to the environmental factors, and make the environmental impact assessment and environmental planning in the process of economic development in this zone.

Scientific Development of Power Sector Led by Plan EIA in a New Environmental Protection Situation

Environmental problems like haze have brought great pressure to current environmental protection management. On the one hand, plan EIA should be promoted further in all industries; on the other hand, the current achievements and methods of plan EIA should be summarized and innovated. And the EIA supervision and project access can be improved further through the coordination between plan EIA and project EIA. In this study, from the three levels of plan EIA policy framework, five problems of plan EIA in power sector were analyzed according to the current situation of plan EIA in power sector. Based on the present achievements, five macroscopic suggestions were proposed from the view of innovation accord- ing to the new environmental protection situation and requirements at present.