The primary goal of this Florida Department of Environmental Protection funded project was to provide environmental managers and regulators with a process and methodology to address cumulative impacts sections in project reviews and assessments that will affect southeast Florida’s reef resources. More specifically, the project focused on investigating, compiling, and applying existing data from reef resource impacts, causative actions, mitigation, and efficacy mitigation in order to develop a useful method for NEPA review and assessments.
More specifically, the project approach was to: (1) develop a method to determine the necessary geographic and temporal scopes of the analysis commensurate with the project impacts, (2) identify past, present, and future proposed actions that pose the greatest threats to the system; (3) consider that the magnitude and extent of the effect on a resource depend on the capacity of the resource to sustain itself and remain productive; (4) address when a more detailed assessment is justified; (5) include Best Management Practices to minimize and avoid cumulative impacts; (6) implement a methodology for use in NEPA documents and other project review documents; (7) ensure that all factors associated with project effects should be evaluated during the cumulative effects analysis development, review, and approval process including recreational and economic cumulative impacts to reefs systems under consideration.
As a Project Manager, Dr. Boukerrou worked with several experts from public and private sector to develop a cumulative impact tool for the benefit of city, county, state, and federal agencies.