8 - Follow-up and Monitoring Flashcards
What is a Follow-up Program?
It involves determining whether a project has had or is continuing to have environmental effects.
A follow-up program verifies the ____________ of the effects assessment and evaluates the effectiveness effects.
accuracy
What are the two types of Monitoring?
- Compliance Monitoring
- Monitoring for Management
Define Monitoring:
Identifying the nature and cause of change and tracking in VCs or indicators over time.
Define Auditing:
Assessment of observations against predetermined objectives or criteria (generally focused on comparing monitoring results against specific standards or expectations)
Provide an example of Auditing:
Example: Post-evaluation - collection an appraisal of information about a project’s impacts and making decisions for remedial actions and communication the results.
What are the five types of Audits?
- Draft EIS Audit
- Decision-based Audit
- Project Impacts Audit
- Performance Audit
- Predictive Technique Audit
_________________Audit: Review of EIS relative to its terms of reference.
Draft EIS
_________________ Audit: Review of the role and effectiveness of the EIS based on whether the project is allowed to proceed and on what conditions.
Decision-based
_________________ Audit: Review of whether the predicted impacts were the actual impacts.
Project Impacts
______________ Audit: examination of the proponent’s environmental management performance and ability to respond to environmental incidents.
Performance
____________________ Audit: Comparison between actual and predicts effects of the project.
Predictive Technique
Define Compliance Monitoring:
Monitoring a project’s compliance with regulations, mitigation commitments, agreements or legislation.
What is the main purpose of Compliance Monitoring to prove?
Did the proponent do what it said it would do in the EIS?
What are the three types of Compliance Monitoring?
- Agreement Monitoring
- Implementation Monitoring
- Regulatory Permit Monitoring
What does Implementation Monitoring do?
Checking to ensure operation procedures are being followed.
Provide an example of implementation monitoring?
Example: Is the proponent following an environmental management plan standards?
What does Regulatory Permit Monitoring do?
Tracking of conditions relative to a permit or regulation.
Provide an example of Regulatory Permit Monitoring:
Water quality monitoring relative to CCME standards.
What does Agreement Monitoring do?
Tracking commitments made in an agreements framework.
Provide an example of Agreement Monitoring:
Is the proponent achieving local employment targets?
The Canadian Nuclear Laboratory (CNL) is an example of what kind of monitoring?
Compliance Monitoring
What were some of the compliance requirements discussed in the CNL Compliance Monitoring?
- All licensed activities continued to be carried out safely and securely
- No worker at the facility received a dose in excess of any of the respective radiation dose limits for radiation workers, as defined in the Radiation Protection (RP) regulations;
- No member of the public received a radiation dose that exceeded the regulatory limit;
What are the three types of Monitoring for Management?
- Ambient Environmental Quality Monitoring
- Effectiveness Monitoring
- Cumulative Effects Monitoring
What does Ambient Environmental Quality Monitoring focus on?
Biophysical Environment
Where does Ambient Environmental Quality Monitoring normally occur?
At the project site and control site
What does Effectiveness Monitoring aim to do?
Is mitigation doing what it’s supposed to, holding impacts to acceptable levels
When is Effectiveness Monitoring most important?
When new technologies are implemented.
What does Cumulative Effects Monitoring consider?
Accumulated state or indicators of stress within a region
True or False: Cumulative Effects Monitoring goes beyond a single project.
True
What kind of Monitoring is Effectiveness Monitoring?
Monitoring for Management
Define Monitoring for Understanding:
Understand the relationships between human actions and environmental and social systems, serves as a learning function.
What is the ‘Grassland National Park - Reintroduction of Bison’ an example of?
Monitoring for Understanding
What two factors were assessed in the Grassland National Park - Bison Reintroduction?
- Grazing as an important ecosystem function
- Grassland grazing experiment
What was the follow-up for the Grassland National Park designed to do?
- Ensure mitigation identified in EA was implemented
- Compliance monitoring
- Effects monitoring to track and evaluate changes to biophysical, social and economic variables.
- Development of effectiveness indicators, targets and thresholds.
What was the Community Vitality Monitoring Partnership in Saskatchewan?
A different framework for monitoring arising from a Joint Federal Provincial Panel on Uranium Mining in Northern Saskatchewan. Through studies, monitors impacts to community vitality
What five things do you consider when defining follow-up and monitoring?
- Verifying predictions
- Effectiveness of mitigation
- Compliance
- Adaptive management
- Support of Environmental Management Plans
What seven factors make Follow-up and Monitoring effective?
- Objectives
- Targeted approach to data collection
- Hypothesis-based / Threshold-based Approaches
- Effects-based monitoring
- Control sites
- Continuity in data collection
- Data sharing
How do targeted approaches to data collection make follow-up and monitoring effective?
You cannot monitor everything. Focus on indicators that more useful for understanding, or at least correlating, stressor-response relationships.
What is an example of a Targeted Approach to Data Collection:
Early warning indicators - warning indicators serve to indicate stress on a particular VC before an adverse effect occurs.
What is a Hypothesis-based Approach?
Identify testable hypotheses whereby made against a null hypothesis (statistical inference where a factor is tested against a hypothesis of no effect or no relationship);
What is a Threshold-based Approach?
Against thresholds or benchmarks
What are the two types of Effects0based Monitoring?
- Stress-based Monitoring
- Effects-based Monitoring
What does stress-based monitoring do?
Monitoring a project action or stress.
Provide an Example of Stress-based Monitoring:
Such as concentration and volume of water discharged from a mining operation.
What is Effects-based Monitoring?
Monitoring the conditions or performance of the receiving environment, based on the premise that measuring change in environmental indicators or early warning indicators or potentially affects VCs, is the most relevant indicator of change.
How are Control Sites effective to monitoring and follow-up?
Helps to differentiate between project impact and natural or other changes.
How does Continuity in Data Collection make monitoring and follow-up effective?
- Consistent data collection and handling procedures to monitoring data are transferrable and comparable.
What are three benefits of Community Engagement in Follow-up and Monitoring?
- Active engagement of communities can lead to increased capacity and understanding at the local level.
- Improved industry-community relationships
- Enhanced project legitimacy.
True or False: There is no single set of techniques or methods of monitoring.
True
