New private-public partnership for two doctoral projects

Date: 3 Dec 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

"New private-public partnership is supporting two doctoral projects to
develop a new approach to environmental impact assessment"

Beginning in autumn 2015, three unique research projects have begun to support the development of an innovative new tool to be used in environmental impact assessments (EIA). The theory behind environmental impact remains largely untested and EIA work relies heavily on unsubstantiated expertise instead of quantitative tools. In the four decades since the EIA was introduced by US NEPA legislation, the work involved in doing impact assessment has evolved in close relationship with legislation but has diverged significantly from advances in ecological theory. While in the 1970s it was not possible to measure the impact of an activity on a particular population, today through recent technical innovations, this is becoming a reality. These inter-connected research projects aim to develop and field test new approaches to study design and data collection, hydrodynamic models, and impact assessment which will permit rapid adoption of quantitative tools by the industry.

All three projects are part of the European doctoral program, MARES (Marine Ecosystem Health and Conservation, http://mares-eu.org/), administered by Ghent University.

For information about specific projects, please contact the members of the consortium through their respective web sites:

  1. Gravity Consulting (http://gravityenv.com/) is an American firm based in Fall City (WA). Gravity Consulting specializes in the acquisition and analysis of quality–defensible data for aquatic projects and the development of survey technology.
  2. The Entangled Bank Laboratory (http://www.entangled-bank-lab.org/) is a not for profit association based in France. EB Lab is an independent group of theoretical and field ecologists contributing to collaborative R&D projects in marine ecology and environmental sciences. They are particularly interested in exploring the limits of ecological theory in real-world configurations.