Covers the impact assessment process: screening and scoping, baseline characterization, impact prediction and significance evaluation, mitigation, and monitoring commitments. Addresses the statutory framework and the review process an assessment must survive.
The course is taught as professional practice. Students produce a full assessment for a real or realistic coastal proposal, working to the length, structure and evidentiary standards a submitted document would face. Documents are reviewed adversarially by other students in the role of a regulator.
Writing is assessed directly. An assessment that reaches a defensible conclusion and cannot be followed by a reader has failed at its purpose, and the course treats clarity as a technical requirement rather than a presentational one. This is the closest thing the Environmental Science program has to a capstone.