The ecological impact assessment of a proposed road development (the Slovak approach)

The construction of roads is one of the most widespread forms of natural landscape modification. Over the last 20 years, dozens of road constructions have been assessed in Slovakia, which makes it possible to talk about methodological positives and negatives. A special feature of Slovakia is that many planned or renovated roads are located in-protected areas or are in contact with them (including Natura 2000 sites). Therefore, it is important to understand the scope of the roads' ecological impacts and find ways for their appropriate evaluation and incorporation into the Environmental Impact Assessment process. For this reason, the Ecological Impact Assessment methodology can be used as a basis for our research, which consists of three stages. In the first stage (scoping), a buffer circumventing the proposed road is created to determine the area for impact prediction and evaluation. Subsequently, the landscape structure and baseline landscape conditions are discussed, a map of current landscape structure is created and the current ecological status of the affected area is calculated. In the second stage (the evaluation of ecological resources), important ecological parts of the landscape are delineated. This step is based on the importance of previous information and its vulnerability, and leads to the mapping of the road ecological impact zone. In the third stage (impact assessment), important ecological parts are spatially correlated with the proposed road construction. Finally, the significance of ecological impacts of the activity is evaluated by applying specific criteria (duration, reversibility, magnitude, size and road ecological impact zone significance). A scale is proposed for each criterion to evaluate the total significance of impacts. In this way, detailed significant ecological impacts can be found which will help lead to proposed correct mitigation measures and a post-project analysis. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.