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Abstract
Federal and state legislation, such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the California Environmental Quality Act, require that responsible agency staff consider the cumulative impacts of proposed activities before permits are issued for certain kinds of public or private projects. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ 1997) defined a cumulative impact as "...the impact on the environment which results from the incremental impact of the action when added to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions regardless of what agency (federal or non-federal) or person undertakes such other actions. Cumulative impacts can result from individually minor but collectively significant actions taking place over a period of time" (40 CFR 1508.7). "Cumulative watershed impacts" are cumulative impacts that involve the generation or transport of water through a watershed and so include impacts arising from changes in hydrology, erosion, in-stream woody debris, channel form, and water quality. Evaluations of impacts on freshwater biota, flooding, and sedimentation thus require analysis of cumulative watershed impacts.
Parent Publication
Citation
Reid, Leslie M. 2004. Turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones in the analysis of cumulative impacts. In: Murphy, Dennis D. and Stine, Peter A., editors. Proceedings of the Sierra Nevada Science Symposium. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-193. Albany, CA: Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture: 159-164
