The objectives of this research were (1) to discover associations among economic and environmental factors of highway projects considered in environmental impact statements from 1980 to 1999 produced by the North Carolina Department of Transportation, and (2) study whether this information changed through time, including whether a discernible change occurred when biodiversity regulations were introduced. Multivariate analyses tools were used for this purpose with data collected from 43 EISs. Two main relationships were found, between geographical region and environmental impacts, and between environmental impacts and economic characteristics of projects. While a relationship between geographical region and environmental impacts was expected, the relationship between environmental impacts and economic characteristics of a project was not. This relationship suggests that more environmental impacts occurred or are identified in high-income counties. However, information pertaining to farmland potentially impacted is reported inconsistently in NCDOT documents and cannot be used reliably for comparison purposes. For this reason, environmental impacts in lower-income counties may be seriously underestimated. According to the variables selected for this study, and assuming they effectively represent biodiversity treatment in EISs, logistic discrimination analyses provided some evidence that the CEQ regulation of 1993 concerning treatment of biodiversity had an effect on EISs. This effect might suggest either an improvement in data quality and/or an increase in the attention given to impacts to wetlands and to endangered species included in EISs because of demands from the regulation. Economic factors and impacts to property in EIS, and of geographic location, environmental impacts, and environmental assessment factors showed significant time trends. However, these relationships have not been affected by environmental regulation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-07152002-170729 |
| Date | 16 July 2002 |
| Creators | Carrasco, Luis Eduardo |
| Contributors | Dr. Erin Sills, Dr. Gary Blank, Dr. Fred Cubbage, Dr. Yu-Fai Leung |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07152002-170729/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds