Environmental Science have evolved and several studies have been done to explain these changes. Scientists have conducted risks assessment studies on the environment and ecology. What is the difference between Environmental risks and Ecological risk assessment?
I think for most people it is semantic, though you can find more precise definitions as others have said. I think understanding and cross-referencing the literature from both schools-of-thought is natural and important.
I agree with Lee A. Fitzgerald that it is mostly semantics - or how people commonly use a phrase. IF I were to make a distinction it would be that ecology may be more focused on the interactions of living systems while environment includes all factors. For example, both would include pollution, but environmental risk would look at the overall effects of a pollutant while ecological risk would focus more immediately on the effects of a pollutant on the biosphere and how it affects the "ecology" of the area.
I agree and support the statement of Madam Neda Ravankhah
as she nailed it.Thanks and kind regards to all.
Yup, cross-referencing as mentioned by Lee A. Fitzgerald is important to justify the arguments aside from an individual's hands-on experiences.
Within the framework of environmental risks, the dangers arising from the interaction of economic objects and ecosystems coexisting with them are considered. Large economic objects that cross significant territories, requiring changes in landscapes during construction and affecting it during operation, significantly disrupt the existing ecosystems. The usual consequence of the appearance of such objects are the phenomena that are sometimes called "wounds of the Earth" (oil-filled lifeless land along oil pipelines, poisoned surface waters in mining areas, air pollution in large areas, etc.).
The phenomena of negative changes in the natural environment are of a global nature, due to the presence of many regions of ecological trouble.
Thus, it is obvious that it is necessary to develop a classification of environmental hazard factors, which makes it possible to identify, in a comprehensive environmental assessment of territories, the entire set of reasons that cause or may cause negative changes in the quality parameters of environmental components. The classification of environmental hazard factors allows one to proceed to the assessment of environmental risks as the likelihood of their manifestation.
Environmental risk assessment is the basis for its management and at the macro level it is usually carried out for the following purposes
support for decision-making on the environmental safety of enterprises and industrial complexes;
support for decision-making on the choice of areas of economic development based on a comparison of the impact of alternative technologies on public health and the environment;
risk communication.
When assessing risk, probability acts as a measure (indicator) of risk, convenient for comparing risks for one object or subject from different events or for different objects (subjects) in typical conditions of functioning (activity).
Assessment of damage from the manifestation of environmental hazard factors is one of the most important tools for managing environmental protection activities.
In industrial countries, the assessment of environmental damage is directly related to the disruption of the functioning of the economic system when causing harm to the environment. It is recommended to define environmental damage Uecol as the sum of damage from various types of harmful effects on environmental objects
Uecol = Ea + Ev + Ep + Eb + Eo (7)
where Ea is damage from atmospheric pollution; EV - damage from pollution of water resources; EP - damage from soil pollution; Eb - damage associated with the destruction of biological (including forest) resources; Eo - damage from contamination (damage) of the territory with debris of buildings, structures and equipment.
When considering the environmental aspects of the consequences of severe accidents or disasters, it is advisable to operate with the concepts of total, indirect and direct damage .
Direct environmental damage is caused by the negative impact on the soil, flora and fauna, water bodies, atmosphere, and its assessments are associated with a negative impact on the current generation of people.
Indirect environmental damage is of a global scale, for example, an imbalance in the climate balance, deterioration of the quality of natural resources, death and decrease in the number of animals and birds. It follows from the negative impact on the life of future generations of people.
Environmental damage is closely related to social damage. It is a person who, in the process of economic activity, determines which ecosystems and in which territory he should preserve both for himself and for descendants. The society determines the environmental policy based on the social significance of the territories with a subordinate value of the degree of their pollution. Currently, only the following principles are being implemented:
the principle of uniformity - reduction of anthropogenic loads by leveling over the territory of the country;
the principle of efficiency is to carry out priority measures where it is easier and faster to reach an acceptable level of environmental quality;
the principle of taking into account the uniqueness of natural objects disturbed by economic activity.
The currently applied methods of assessing the consequences of environmental pollution are mainly focused on the environmental impact of normally (i.e. with small deviations) functioning industrial and other facilities on nature and the population. Methods and models of the impact of accidents and related emissions of significantly larger amounts of harmful substances and more intense impacts of other factors are less developed [7]. At the same time, there is reason to believe that the consequences of major accidents may differ significantly from the consequences of not so intense, even if permanent, impacts, which does not allow to reasonably use the accumulated medical statistics and the results of environmental monitoring.
Economic assessments of environmental impacts must be approached critically. Thus, in places that have been inhabited for a long time, with intensive economic activity, there is no reason to believe that the activity preceding the accident did not change the natural environment, therefore it is not always advisable to restore the state that existed before the accident. The standards of payment for emissions used in assessing environmental damage represent to a greater extent the rates of some specific tax on some aspects of the economic activity of enterprises and do not provide compensation for the actual damage. Moreover, the payment for the placement of harmful substances in the natural environment does not pursue the goal of compensation for damage, but is used for environmental protection measures.
Economic assessments of environmental impacts imply some kind of projection of the actual environmental damage to economic and social conditions and relationships. Full environmental damage, defined as a change in the entire set of elements of the natural environment in the affected area, both at the time of the accident and taking into account long-term consequences, is not considered.
The damage from pollution of the main components of the natural environment (air, water, soil, flora and fauna) can be estimated based on the cost of partial or complete restoration (not always advisable). With regard to the air environment, the costs of recovery are not considered for it, since the recovery process itself (diffusion of gas in the atmosphere) occurs naturally.
The degree of damage to human health and methods for its assessment differ depending on the duration and levels of negative impacts. With constant or long-term weak-intensity negative factors (increased concentrations of harmful substances in the air, low doses of radiation, etc.), adverse effects are observed in the human body that affect its health. For a quantitative assessment of the damage from low-intensity factors, the dose-effect relationship models are used. With short-term damaging factors of significant intensity, usually occurring at random times in the form of dangerous events, damage to a person occurs in the event of exceeding the exposure levels of some limiting (threshold) values. For quantitative assessments, the factor model "acting load - critical load" (or "bearing capacity") is used.
The consequences for a person from negative influences of any kind are expressed by a binary variable w:
w = w0 = 0 if u ≤ ucr, (8)
w = w1 = 1 if u> uкр, (9)
where and is the load acting on a person; calves - the carrying capacity of a particular person.
The load-bearing capacity depends on the differential characteristics of negative influences, in particular, the duration of action (exposure). For the totality of individuals, it has a significant scatter (i.e., it is a random variable), which is usually not taken into account in forecasting problems.
The risk to human health can be determined using the load-bearing capacity model in terms of the death rate:
λ = λ0P (u> ucr); (ten)
where λ0 and λ are the frequencies of negative and damaging effects, respectively; u is a random value of the levels of negative influences, P (u> uкр) is the conditional probability of death, i.e. damaging effect, the condition of which is the excess of the acting load critical for a person.
Then the mathematical expectations of the number of damaging effects per year
α (Δt) = λ × Δt = λ0 × Δt × P (u> ucr). (eleven)
For rare events, the individual probability of death is calculated as the probability of at least one damaging effect per year:
Q (Δt) ≈ a (Δt) = λ × Δt, (12)
those. risk is expressed in terms of the frequency of damaging effects.
Direct environmental damage is associated with damage to the natural environment. Let us point out the features of the assessment of damage caused by continuous emissions of pollutants into the environment. In accordance with the requirements of the existing methodological recommendations for the administration of payments for the negative impact on the environment of emissions, various standards for payments for these harmful emissions are established for industrial enterprises in the billing period - within the limits established for them and above them.
where t and T are the year of the planning period and its total duration; St, StL - the cost of reducing the toxicity of harmful emissions in the current year and the reduced limit of such emissions, set taking into account the type of pollutants, their permissible volume and maximum permissible concentrations in the air or water, respectively.
If the volume of maximum permissible emissions is exceeded, the corresponding costs of enterprises S2 are calculated using the formula:
S2 = Sjt / dMjt, (14)
where Sjt is the enterprise's costs required to achieve the established emission limit; dMjt - the planned reduced volume of harmful emissions established by the enterprise in the current.
Consequential damage includes losses incurred outside the area of direct impact . Negative social effects, which are difficult to assess in terms of value, can also be attributed to indirect damage.
As an assessment of indirect damage, expert assessments in shares of direct damage can be used without its detailing and analysis for individual components. In a detailed analysis, it is advisable to analyze the damage in relation to individual groups of objects, the indirect damage from damage to which has a number of common features.
A logical continuation of risk assessment is its level management, which is aimed at substantiating the best (optimal) solutions in this situation to minimize it, as well as to dynamically control (monitor) exposures and risks, assess the effectiveness and adjust health measures. Risk management is based on a set of political, social and economic assessments of risk values, comparative characteristics of possible damage to the environment and public health, possible costs of implementing various options for management decisions to reduce risk and benefits that will be obtained as a result of the implementation of measures (for example, prevented cases of diseases, etc.).
Regards, Pushkin Sergey Viktorovich
Please look at this useful article:
http://www.popstoolkit.com/riskassessment/eco/comparison.aspx
An ecological risk assessment is a process for evaluating how likely it is that the environment may be impacted as a result of exposure to one or more environmental stressors such as chemicals, land change, disease, invasive species and climate change. While Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) is a scientific process that identifies and evaluates the likelihood of a business to threaten the environment, in particular to living organisms, natural habitats, and ecosystems.
Environmental risk assessment refers to a method of estimating the health risks associated with exposure to various levels of environmental hazards.
Ecological Risk Assessment involves the assessment of the risks posed by the presence of substances released to the environment by man, in theory, on all living organisms in the variety of ecosystems which make up the environment.
La réponse de Anmar Aldewachi me semble plus complète et répond spécifiquement à ces deux concepts
I agree with what was said: environmental risk assessment can be understood as broader and encompassing ecological risk assessment. Still, I think it is a semantic issue. At the level of territorial policies, for example, it is more common to speak of environmental risk assessment.
Environmental assessment is at a broader level while ecological assessment deal with the relationship of living organisms and the environment in which they live......
The Fitzgerald's answer, which is mainly semantic, is important and fundamental for the differentiation of both assessments, but Neda's answer is explanatory and justifies the same. Congratulations to both researchers and we have won all of us who have become aware of these differentiated knowledge.
Concuerdo con que es principalmente semántica, pero a la vez. Debo decir que la diferenciación que hace el Dr. Anmar, es una precisión, interesante.
Podemos dizer que são dois conceitos que interagem mas que apresentam particularidades. As normas do LEED, AQUA que são as duas certificações ambientais mais usadas no Brasil, França e EUA tem pontuações e princípios muito claro com relação a questão da Redução de consumo de energia e custos de manutenção . A questão da Sustentabilidade entra num outro campo que está mais ligado a Planta Limpa e as processos produtivos e posso citar como exemplo a Extração de Pedras ornamentais que segue a questão do Licenciamento ambiental visando a produção.
Environmental risks refer to the possibility of damage or catastrophe in the environment due to a natural phenomenon or human action, while ecological risk refers to the loss of the capacity of the environment to meet social needs , of the biodiversity and environmental of the earth.
The environment as we know it is considered as anything or everything exterior to humans. It has no direct relationship with ecology as captioned, rather ecosystems are meant to offer to humans a number of ecosystem services and in the process changes in the structure and functions of the environment occurs. In trying to derive from the numerous benefits offered by the ecosystem, humans encounter risks. The sharp difference between Environmental and Ecological Risk Assessments therefore is in the wider focus the environment has over ecosystems in analyzing spatial phenomena. while the environment is limitless, the ecosystems have defined entropy.
En el pensamiento del Buen Vivir el ambiente es toda la relación que tienen los diversos elementos que le dan vida a la tierra. Por lo tanto no es una concepción antropocéntrica. De allí se desprende entonces que la diferencia entre lo ecológico y lo ambiental es bien grande. Lo ecológico habla de la interrelación entre los seres vivos y el medio que los rodea. Lo ambiental habla de todo lo que se interrelaciona: la montaña con los animales, las plantas, los seres humanos. Por lo tanto el riesgo ecológico tiene que ver con la observación de aquello que puede atentar contra la vida. Por ejemplo: los proyectos mineros en el páramo de Santurban en Colombia. Esto pone en peligro la producción de agua que afectará a millones de personas, ademas del medio ecológico, pues esa minería llevará deforestación y desertificación, lo cual tendrá un efecto en la vida silvestre del páramo.
Neste momento está acontecendo algo que estava sob controle no Brasil no que tange o desmatamento e as queimadas. Este ano em função da retirada da fiscalização Ambiental e as ações coordenadas como a Polícia Federal, explodiram as queimadas na Amazônia Legal. Existe uma forte pressão para expandir agricultura em alta escala. Ocorreu um fato que mostra a total negligência e abandono. A Região da Amazônia legal é totalmente inadequada para a produção agrícola em grande escala. Está mais que comprovado que não existe um solo agriculturável. As atividades na Amazônia tem de ter muito controle para as atividades produtivas. Fizeram um Dia do Fogo, no Alto tocantis varios fazendeiros e empresários organizaram um Dia do Fogo. Neste dia ocorreu uma das maiores queimadas na Amazônia que produziu uma Nuvem Negra que veio para o Sudeste e tornou o Céu Escuro. A grande questão do Risco Ambiental está na perda da Tríade Fiscalização-Legislação-Punição. A Perda desta tríade faz com que aumento os Riscos Ambientais. O Risco Ambiental é resultado do Risco da Incapacidade do Estado Punir os Destruidores conscientes do Ambiente.
Environmental Risk Assessment is a process for estimating the likelihood or probability of an adverse outcome or event due to pressures or changes in environmental conditions resulting from human activities. In other words, the Ecological Risk Assessment involves the assessment of the risks posed by the presence of substances released to the environment by man.
- Badges
- Science method
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Ecology