ABSTRACT
The planning, public input, and compliance with regulations, as discussed in the preceding four chapters, are all critical to the acceptance, implementation, and overall success of an environmental impact analysis. However, all of these activities will bear no fruit without actually conducting an objective, technically sound, and well documented analysis of the impacts. The analysis is the detailed and hard work component of the process and is analogous to conducting the experiments to test the hypothesis as part of the scientific method. The analysis applies physical, biological, and social sciences as well as engineering, and land use planning. These tools are used in combination with the experience of the environmental assessment team to understand the implications to each environmental resource of concern for each of the alternatives, thus helping to predict the impacts. This understanding and predictions of impacts are the critical environmental input to decision makers as they select and implement the proposed action.
