UNT Libraries - 12 Matching Results
Search Results
- Considering Cumulative Effects Under the National Environmental Policy Act
- This document is intended to assist Federal agencies with analyzing cumulative effects during the NEPA process. It outlines general principles, common cumulative effects assessment methodologies, and resources for additional information and background data.
- The National Environmental Policy Act: A Study of Its Effectiveness After Twenty-five Years
- This report provides a detailed perspective on how the National Environmental Policy Act has affected federal agency decision making. The report summarizes how the Act has been implemented, how federal agency performance aligns with the intent of NEPA's framers, reactions from the public, NEPA stakeholders, and federal decision makers, and future challenges with ensuring the Act's continued effectiveness.
- Protocol with Mexico amending Convention for Protection of Migratory Birds and Game Mammals : message from the President of the United States transmitting a protocol between the government of the United States of America and the government of the United Mexican States amending the Convention for Protection of Migratory Birds and Game Mammals, signed at Mexico City on May 5, 1997
- This treaty between the United States and Mexico deals with hunting ducks and collecting duck eggs by indigenous people in North America. This treaty amends the Convention for the Protection of Migratory Birds in Canada and the United States.
- South Pacific Regional Environment Programme Agreement : message from the President of the United States transmitting agreement establishing the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme, done at Apia on June 16, 1993
- The South Pacific Regional Environment Programme is to promote cooperation in the South Pacific islands region and to provide assistance in order to protect and improve the environment and to ensure sustainable development.
- Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC) Science Plan
- Human population and associated industrial activities continue to increase rapidly, and have reached levels that put the environment under stress in many areas of the world. In addition natural fluctuations of the Earth's physical and biological systems, often occur in time frames that are not readily evident to man. Such fluctuations cause additional stress on the environment, and can result in changes that impact society in terms of diminished availability of clean water, unspoiled land and natural vegetation, minerals, fish stocks, and clean air. Human societies are making a rapidly increasing number of policy and management decisions that attempt to allow both for natural fluctuations and to limit or modify human impact. Such decisions are often ineffective, as a result of economic, political and social constraints, and inadequate understanding of the interactions between human activities and natural responses. Improved understanding of such issues is important in its own right, and will contribute to ameliorating economic, political and social constraints. Developing improved understanding of environmental change is within the realm of the natural sciences and is being addressed by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and other programmes concerned with describing and understanding the Earth System. Natural variability, occurring over a variety of time scales, dominates the health of complex marine ecosystems, regardless of fishing or other environmental pressure. We are only now beginning to compile quantitative documentation of such variability, and consequently our knowledge concerning its causes remains at the level of hypotheses. Understanding of the role of variability in the functioning of marine ecosystems is essential if we are to effectively manage global marine living resources such as fisheries during this period of tremendously increased human impact, and concurrent dependence, on these resources.
- The Kalahari Transect: Research on Global Change and Sustainable Development in Southern Africa
- The Kalahari Transect is proposed as one of IGBPs Transects (see Koch et al. 1995 [IGBP Report 36]). It is located so as to span the gradient between the arid subtropics and the moist tropics in southern Africa, a zone potentially susceptible to changes in the global precipitation pattern. Its focus is the relationships between the structure and function of ecosystems and their large-scale biophysical and human drivers (climate, atmosphere and land use). The Kalahari Transect spans a strong climatic gradient in southern Africa, from the arid south to the humid north, while remaining on a single broad soil type, the deep sands of the Kalahari basin. The vegetation ranges over the length of the transect from shrubland through savannas and woodlands to closed evergreen tropical forest, with land uses ranging from migratory wildlife systems, through pastoralism, subsistence cropping to forestry. The objectives of the Kalahari Transect activity are to: build an active network of regional and international researchers around the issue of ecosystem structure and function in savanna woodlands undergoing climatic and land use change; quantify the current and future role of southern African savanna woodlands in the global carbon, water and trace gas budgets and the degree of dependence of these budgets on climate and land use change; develop a predictive understanding of future changes in southern African savannas and woodlands on sandy soils, including their capacity to deliver forage, timber and other products. A five year project is proposed, commencing in 1997. The project revolves around four themes: vegetation structure, composition and dynamics; biogeochemistry, trace gas emissions and productivity; resource use and management and water and energy balance. These themes define the minimum set of processes necessary for understanding of the Kalahari system.
- Predicting Global Change Impacts on Mountain Hydrology and Ecology: Integrated Catchment Hydrology/Altitudinal Gradient Studies: A workshop report
- Documentation resulting from an international workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal, 30 March - 2 April 1996. The following themes were addressed by the working groups: 1. "Role of ecology and hydrology for the sustainable development in mountain regions" (the "human dimensions"). 2. "Coupled ecological and hydrological studies along altitudinal gradients in mountain regions", with a sub-group dealing with the "Assessment of the spatial distribution pattern of basic water balance components." 3. "Impacts of global change on the ecology and hydrology in mountain regions", with a sub-group on the "Identification of global change impacts on hydrology and ecology in high mountain areas."
- The Terrestrial Biosphere and Global Change: Implications for Natural and Managed Ecosystems
- From the perspective of terrestrial ecosystems, the most important component of global change over the next three or four decades will likely be land-use/cover change. It is driven largely by the need to feed the expanding human population, expected to increase by almost one billion (109) people per decade for the next three decades at least. Much of this increase will occur in developing countries in the low-latitude regions of the world. To meet the associated food demand, crop yields will need to increase, consistently, by over 2% every year through this period. Despite advances in technology, increasing food production must lead to intensification of agriculture in areas which are already cropped, and conversion of forests and grasslands into cropping systems. Much of the latter will occur in semi-arid regions and on lands which are marginally suitable for cultivation, increasing the risk of soil erosion, accelerated water use, and further land degradation.
- Ocean Biogeochemistry and Global Change
- From the perspective of terrestrial ecosystems, the most important component of global change over the next three or four decades will likely be land-use/cover change. It is driven largely by the need to feed the expanding human population, expected to increase by almost one billion (109) people per decade for the next three decades at least. Much of this increase will occur in developing countries in the low-latitude regions of the world. To meet the associated food demand, crop yields will need to increase, consistently, by over 2% every year through this period. Despite advances in technology, increasing food production must lead to intensification of agriculture in areas which are already cropped, and conversion of forests and grasslands into cropping systems. Much of the latter will occur in semi-arid regions and on lands which are marginally suitable for cultivation, increasing the risk of soil erosion, accelerated water use, and further land degradation.
- Law of the People's Republic of China on Conserving Energy
- This Law is formulated in order to promote energy conservation by all sectors of society, increase energy efficiency to benefit economic development, protect the environment, ensure national economic and social development, and meet the people's needs in everyday life.
- Report of the Thirteenth Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
- The Panel approved various draft reports including the draft report of the 12th session. The Panel noted the draft decision paper (introduced by Dr. Watson) on the TAR, and after extensive discussions and amendments, the panel approved the decision line by line. The panel deferred the decision on the adoption procedure for the the report underlying the summary for policymakers of the synthesis report.
- Federal Register Volume 62, No. 78, Pages 19884 to 19887, April 23, 1997
- The United States Federal Register is the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents. This specific Executive Order (E.O.) 13045 - Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks - was issued by President William J. Clinton in 1997. The order applies to economically significant rules under E.O. 12866 that concern an environmental health or safety risk that EPA has reason to believe may disproportionately affect children. Environmental health risks or safety risks refer to risks to health or to safety that are attributable to products or substances that the child is likely to come in contact with or ingest (such as the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink or use for recreation, the soil we live on, and the products we use or are exposed to). When promulgating a rule of this description, EPA must evaluate the effects of the planned regulation on children and explain why the regulation is preferable to potentially effective and reasonably feasible alternatives.