Environmental Assessment (EA): A smaller, shorter document than an En-vironmental Impact Statement (EIS); prepared by a federal agency when there is uncertainty about whether or not there will be a significant environmental impact due to a proposed action. If the agency finds no significant impact, it may move forward with the proposed action. If significant impacts are likely, then a full EIS is required. EAs do not need to be circulated but they must be made available to the public through notices of availability in local, state, or regional clearinghouses, newspapers and other means.
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS): NEPA requires Federal agencies to prepare to prepare an EIS for major Federal actions that significantly affect the quality of the environment. An EIS is a full disclosure document that details the process through which a project was developed, includes consideration of a range of reasonable alternatives, analyzes the potential impacts resulting from the alternatives, and demonstrates compliance with other applicable environ-mental laws and executive orders. The EIS process in completed in the follow-ing ordered steps: Notice of Intent (NOI), draft EIS, final EIS, and record of decision (ROD).
Categorical Exclusion (CE): “Actions which meet the definition contained in 40 CFR 1508.4, and, based on past experience with similar actions, do not in-volve significant environmental impacts. They are actions which: do not induce significant impacts to planned growth or land use for the area, do not require the relocation of significant numbers of people; do not have a significant impact on any natural, cultural, recreational, historic or other resource; do not involve significant air, noise, or water quality impacts; do not have significant impacts on travel patterns; and do not otherwise, either individually or cumu-latively, have any significant environmental impacts.” 23 CFR 771.117(a) Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS): An environmental impact statement that addresses a proposal to implement a specific policy, to adopt a plan for a group of related actions, or to implement a specific statutory program.
resource conditions; 2) the information associated with soil survey reports can help prioritize treatment areas (e.g., treatments on shallow versus deep soils); and 3) it will assist in building the effects analysis.
The NRCS Soil Survey website can be a valuable resource to check the status of soil survey work for individual project areas and the availabil-ity of publications.
A recent assessment conducted for the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) CFLRP project on the Coconino and South Kaibab national forests is an example of using a soil survey to create a base layer. After a thorough analysis, my colleagues and I determined that out of the 160 Terrestrial Ecosystem Mapping Units (TESU) on more than 900,000 acres, 50 individual strata accounted for most of the variability found within the individual TESU (Brewer et al. 2012).
Within the 50 individual strata, we found that 22 strata, encompass-ing 579,635 acres or 60% of the project area, represented soils that have high production potentials, low restrictions for management activities, and moderate to high reforestation/revegetation suitabil-ity. Conversely, the remaining 40%, or 346,065 acres, have generally severe limitations with respects to timber harvest and reforestation/re-vegetation suitability. Analyses such as this enables the planners to not only discuss existing resource at the landscape scale but allows them to begin framing the pre-NEPA analysis since the combination of TESU found within each specific stratum will respond in a relatively similar fashion to management actions. The stratification system also reduces the time spent describing existing conditions and other components of the analysis because planners only need to work with 50 strata and not 160 individual TESU.
Table 1 and Table 2 are examples of how the data can be structured. In Table 1, each strata and sub-strata are identified in terms of:
f percent slope
f TESU unit number(s) in overall area
f total number of acres
f final strata combination number(s)
f total acres of TESU in project area
f climatic class (High Sun Mild [HSM], High Sun Cold [HSC], Low Sun Mild [LSM], and Low Sun Cold [LSC])
f potential plant community (PPC)
f habitat types
f erosion hazard
f natural tree regeneration potential
f level of plant competition, especially the likelihood of invasive plant establishment
f site index
f timber harvest limitations
f potential and maximum herbage/forage production.
Table 1 indicates which individual TESU were combined in the stratification process with interpretations relative to such items as erosion hazard, site index, and forage responses.
Table 2 builds on the information found in Table 1. The indicators for each strata and sub-strata include:
f percent slope
f total number of acres
f final strata combination number(s)
f number of acres in strata or sub-strata
f soil taxonomic classification
f climatic class
f existing plant cover (dominant species types, e.g., Popr/Fear, Fear/
Mumo)
f sheet-and-rill erosion levels (potential, tolerable, current, and natural)
f percent current surface cover (rock, vegetation, litter, bare soil)
f percent vegetation cover levels (potential, tolerable, current, and natural)
f soil condition (saturated, unsaturated)
f acres of unsaturated soil condition.
Former ERI Outreach Coordinator Charlie Denton leads an ERI field event explaining stand structure, historic range of variability, and proposed thinning strategies. Members of the field trip, including USFS staff, examine a tree stump to determine how old the tree was at the time it was cut. Photo courtesy of ERI
Two important aspect of this analysis are: 1) site-specificity is being built into the analysis, although at this stage it will not meet the stan-dards required for NEPA documentation because it is still too general; 2) important watershed, range, and silviculture attributes that might be used in describing existing conditions are identified; and 3) units of measure to disclose environmental effects are being recognized and documented.