Assessment of Environmental Impact by GPEQI Numerical Model
The most distinguishing feature of the present era is that man has become the architect of his future. The unprecedented increase in population and an even greater increase in the scale and intensity of human activities, which have occurred largely in the previous and this century, have been brought about by the growing mastery of science and its applications. This has produced prosperity, high standards of living, and expanded opportunities beyond what earlier generations could have imagined. But these developments have damaged and deteriorated the ecological systems and caused widespread destruction of the natural resources, on which human life and well-being depend. In the name of growth, fossil fuels have been burnt with abundance, chemicals harmful to the atmosphere have proliferated, poisons have been dumped on land, rivers and oceans, and natural resources such as forests have been ravaged and exploited to the extent of reducing its natural capacities for self-stabilization. As ...