THE CAPACITY FOR CONCISE PLANNING AND COMPLIANCE is fundamentally related to the spirit of the National Environmental Policy Act. According to NEPA's implementing regulations, an environmental assessment (EA) is "...a concise public document...that serves to briefly provide sufficient evidence and analysis for determining whether to prepare an environmental impact statement or a finding of no significant impact..." However, across the federal agencies, EAs often exceed 100 pages and take several years to complete.This manual offers guidance on conceptual considerations and suggested primary approaches that build capacity for concise EA processes and documentation, and provides perspectives that a NEPA practitioner can use every day crafting document structure and content. This manual is oriented to an audience of NEPA practitioners whose work serves federal land management agencies, although much of the guidance in this manual also applies more broadly to development of EAs within other federal agencies.

This volume brings together, in a central text, chapters written by leading scholars working at the intersection of modeling, the natural and social sciences, and public participation. This book presents the current state of knowledge regarding the theory and practice of engaging stakeholders in environmental modeling for decision-making, and includes basic theoretical considerations, an overview of methods and tools available, and case study examples of these principles and methods in practice. Although there has been a significant increase in research and development regarding participatory modeling, a unifying text that provides an overview of the different methodologies available to scholars and a systematic review of case study applications has been largely unavailable. This edited volume seeks to address a gap in the literature and provide a primer that addresses the growing demand to adopt and apply a range of modeling methods that includes the public in environmental assessment and management. The book is divided into two main sections. The first part of the book covers basic considerations for including stakeholders in the modeling process and its intersection with the theory and practice of public participation in environmental decision-making. The second part of the book is devoted to specific applications and products of the various methods available through case study examination. This second part of the book also provides insight from several international experts currently working in the field about their approaches, types of interactions with stakeholders, models produced, and the challenges they perceived based on their practical experiences.

Environmental Policy and NEPA is a concise study of environmental policy-where we have come from, what we are facing and where we can go in the future. An outgrowth of initiatives taken by the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ), and edited by the current Associate Director, this publication studies the effectiveness and efficiency of the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Divided into three main sections, part one covers the historical background and trends of NEPA. Part two addresses current substantive and conceptual issues associated with the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process. Part three discusses future opportunities including impact on humans, effective public participation in the EIA process and the need for sustainability. This excellent reference brings together 28 contributing authors who combine their expertise to address a multitude of topics. Environmental Policy and NEPA is mandatory reading for the professional, researcher, government policymaker, activist, student or anyone looking for a complete presentation of the EIA process.

Since the signing of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on January 1, 1970, eighteen states have initiated their own programs of compre-hensive environmental review. These State Environ-mental Policy Acts (SEPA's), or "NEPA equivalents," &re generally patterned after the policies, goals, and processes established by NEPA but, at the same time, demonstrate a great deal of variability in terms of extent as well as style of implementation. They are "equivalent," however, in the sense that they all utilize a similar tool--the environmental impact statement (EIS).