Advances in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment

Environmental monitoring is a tool to assess environmental conditions and trends, support policy development and its implementation, and develop information for reporting to national policymakers, international forums and the public. Monitoring and assessment of the environmental pollution is a challenging task today, particularly important for the understanding and knowledge of the sources and levels of contamination of the environment with agents that interfere with human health, quality of life or the natural function of ecosystems (living organisms and the environment in which they live), as well as unravelling the effects of individual or mixtures of pollutants, their pathways, routes of exposure, and risk factors. Over the past decade, only a few countries of Europe and Central Asia have been able to maintain existing monitoring activities. The monitoring of urban air pollution — an important human health risk — is poor in many cities of the subregion. Solid and hazardous waste monitoring is weak and industrial emissions are also not well monitored, reducing the effectiveness of policy instruments such as emissions charges and fines. Monitoring of transboundary air pollution also needs strengthening. Moreover, many European and Central Asian countries lack uniform national methodologies across different monitoring areas, and their classification systems are often incompatible with international standards.

The palette of pollutants in the environment, originating from human-made or natural sources, is exceptionally large and includes chemicals, organisms, and biological materials, and various forms of energy (ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, heat, noise, etc.). The number of pollutant factors is continuously growing, and their presence in the environment in an amount exceeding a limit that can be tolerated by one or more species of living things, or by humans, could inhibit their normal development and damage either the environment or human health.

This book covers design and development of monitoring systems, and describes methods and procedures for pollution risk assessment. In recent decades, environmental monitoring, modelling and risk assessment are established as valuable tools to identify the sources, define the extent of adverse effects and risks to ecosystems as well as support the national policy system and decision making on issues related to soil, air and water resources contamination, quality, management and conservation. Therefore, this book highlights innovative or improved environmental monitoring approaches, models and risk assessment tools that either are applied or are currently under research and development to advancing the field of sustainable assessment across different land uses i.e. urban, industrial and agricultural.