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Application of Habitat Evaluation Procedure with Quantifying the Eco-Corridor in the Process of Environmental Impact Assessment

In contrast to other fields, environmental protection (e.g., habitat protection) often fails to include quantitative evaluation as part of the existing environmental impact assessment (EIA) process, and therefore the EIA is often a poor forecasting tool, which makes selecting a reasonable plan of ac...

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Autores principales: Choi, Jiyoung, Lee, Sangdon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6518174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31018499
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16081437
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author Choi, Jiyoung
Lee, Sangdon
author_facet Choi, Jiyoung
Lee, Sangdon
author_sort Choi, Jiyoung
collection PubMed
description In contrast to other fields, environmental protection (e.g., habitat protection) often fails to include quantitative evaluation as part of the existing environmental impact assessment (EIA) process, and therefore the EIA is often a poor forecasting tool, which makes selecting a reasonable plan of action difficult. In this study, we used the Habitat Evaluation Procedure (HEP) to quantify the long-term effects of a road construction project on an ecosystem. The water deer (Hydropotes inermis) was selected as the species of study since it uses an optimum habitat; water deer habitat data were collected on vegetation cover, stream water density, geographic contour, land use class, and road networks. The Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) and Cumulative Habitat Unit (CHU) values for the water deer were estimated to investigate the major land cover classes, the national river systems, and vegetation cover. Results showed that the environmental impact in the road construction project area would result in a net ecological loss value of 1211 without installation of an eco-corridor, which reduced to 662 with an eco-corridor, providing a 55% increase in the net value after 50 years of the mitigation plan. Comparing the 13 proposed ecological mitigation corridors, the corridor that would result in the highest net increase (with an increase of 69.5), was corridor #4, which was regarded as the most appropriate corridor to properly connect water deer habitat. In sum, the study derived the net increase in quantitative values corresponding with different mitigation methods over time for a road construction project; this procedure can be effectively utilized in the future to select the location of ecological corridors while considering the costs of constructing them.
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spelling pubmed-65181742019-05-31 Application of Habitat Evaluation Procedure with Quantifying the Eco-Corridor in the Process of Environmental Impact Assessment Choi, Jiyoung Lee, Sangdon Int J Environ Res Public Health Article In contrast to other fields, environmental protection (e.g., habitat protection) often fails to include quantitative evaluation as part of the existing environmental impact assessment (EIA) process, and therefore the EIA is often a poor forecasting tool, which makes selecting a reasonable plan of action difficult. In this study, we used the Habitat Evaluation Procedure (HEP) to quantify the long-term effects of a road construction project on an ecosystem. The water deer (Hydropotes inermis) was selected as the species of study since it uses an optimum habitat; water deer habitat data were collected on vegetation cover, stream water density, geographic contour, land use class, and road networks. The Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) and Cumulative Habitat Unit (CHU) values for the water deer were estimated to investigate the major land cover classes, the national river systems, and vegetation cover. Results showed that the environmental impact in the road construction project area would result in a net ecological loss value of 1211 without installation of an eco-corridor, which reduced to 662 with an eco-corridor, providing a 55% increase in the net value after 50 years of the mitigation plan. Comparing the 13 proposed ecological mitigation corridors, the corridor that would result in the highest net increase (with an increase of 69.5), was corridor #4, which was regarded as the most appropriate corridor to properly connect water deer habitat. In sum, the study derived the net increase in quantitative values corresponding with different mitigation methods over time for a road construction project; this procedure can be effectively utilized in the future to select the location of ecological corridors while considering the costs of constructing them. MDPI 2019-04-23 2019-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6518174/ /pubmed/31018499 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16081437 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Choi, Jiyoung
Lee, Sangdon
Application of Habitat Evaluation Procedure with Quantifying the Eco-Corridor in the Process of Environmental Impact Assessment
title Application of Habitat Evaluation Procedure with Quantifying the Eco-Corridor in the Process of Environmental Impact Assessment
title_full Application of Habitat Evaluation Procedure with Quantifying the Eco-Corridor in the Process of Environmental Impact Assessment
title_fullStr Application of Habitat Evaluation Procedure with Quantifying the Eco-Corridor in the Process of Environmental Impact Assessment
title_full_unstemmed Application of Habitat Evaluation Procedure with Quantifying the Eco-Corridor in the Process of Environmental Impact Assessment
title_short Application of Habitat Evaluation Procedure with Quantifying the Eco-Corridor in the Process of Environmental Impact Assessment
title_sort application of habitat evaluation procedure with quantifying the eco-corridor in the process of environmental impact assessment
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6518174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31018499
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16081437
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