Ecological Impact Assessment Essay

Chapter-1

Introduction

Pakistan is agriculture supported economy, development of cultivation areas through the construction and expansion of irrigation communications; also produce negative effects in the form of negative environmental impacts such as loss of biodiversity habitats, loss of productive lands due to water-logging, and salinity.

The influences of human actions on ecosystems have increased rapidly in the few decades. Existing unsustainable irrigation and other developments practices have become one of the major causes of direct and indirect land degradation and are a major threat to the wetlands and biodiversity (U Alam, P Sahota, and P Jeffery 2007).1-1

Biodiversity is the diversity of plant and animal life in the world or in a particular environment since an ecosystem is composite

Identifying the impact significance and magnitude in the ecological assessment is crucial for effective decision-making (Treweek, 1999). An EIA equips as the fundamental component of the planning process, identification of impacts and their mitigations. The basic objective of the conducting Ecological Impact Assessment (EcIA) to identify the ecological pressure on Health of Nara Canal Ecosystem and associated wetlands. And to gather systematic data of Fisheries, Water Quality, Wildlife, Plants and other biota.

No specific methodology accepted as a standard for performing ecological evaluation (Roome, 1984) 9. During the study Ecological Impacts Assessment was assessed by the two basic principles methods being used for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) i.e. Matrix and Checklist Methods. The checklists are wide-ranging environmental affects inventory with an impact indicator. Almost all EIA methods checklist are used as basic tool. In the matrix method impacts assessed employing a list of important indicators with a list of human or project action (Lohani, 1977)