Environmental problems – An overview - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 25

not possible, preventive technologies should be applied along the contaminant trans-
port pathways (e.g., forest belts, river and coastal protection belts, natural or artificial
wetlands). Management of the regional environment, including the identification of
the multiple sources, responsible emitters, chemical substances, transport routes, etc.
involves much more uncertainties compared to local scale. Technological tools, such
as mapping, remote sensing, integrated methodologies are necessary for monitoring
and risk assessment. As the adverse effects are not directly connected to the emitters,
the indeterminacy in the system is high; therefore, it is mainly based on extrapolation.
The technological tools are also limited. An entire catchment cannot be cleaned up.
For example, Lake Balaton's (Hungary) water or sediment cannot be removed and
treated.
The global environment is even more integrative, every regional risk or damage
may have a global output, i.e., the case of the ozone layer, the greenhouse effects, the
deterioration of soils world-wide, desertification, deterioration of lagoons and the sea.
Not only the tools are limited, but so also is our knowledge. We cannot differentiate
between natural and anthropogenic impacts and trends, we cannot find a direct and
unequivocal relationship between human uses of the globe and the globally occurring
climatic and environmental deterioration. Even if we find such direct relationships, the
process of risk reduction is slow and requires international collaboration and legal mea-
sures. As the individual interest of persons, groups of people or countries is overrated,
the measures aiming at the prevention of global environmental deterioration are neither
certain in their target nor efficient enough in spite of significant international efforts.
Two generic tools for environmental management at every spatial scale are legal
regulation and monitoring. Environmental regulation is developing; it is more and
more intended to integrate and be based on scientific knowledge and to be harmo-
nized internationally. Monitoring applies innovative approaches and tools such as the
integrated monitoring, using traditional physico-chemical analyses together with bio-
logical, ecological and toxicological tools, and utilizes the results of the information
and space technologies in remote sensing, mapping, and preparing forecasts.
The monitoring of ecosystem health and changes at local, regional, and global
levels is also highly necessary to enable proper decisions on preventing and conserving
activities world-wide.
A new possibility in global environmental monitoring is provided by the devel-
opment of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS, 2013) by which
global ecosystems will be mapped at a mesoscale (tens to thousands of hectares) appro-
priate for global, regional, national, and local research, management and planning
applications. GEOSS, as summarized on the website of the Group on Earth Obser-
vation (GEO, 2013), aims to empower the international community to protect itself
against natural and human-induced disasters, understand the environmental sources of
health hazards, manage energy resources, respond to climate change and its impacts,
safeguard water resources, improve weather forecasts, manage ecosystems, promote
sustainable agriculture and conserve biodiversity and is addressing the following areas
of critical importance to people and society:

- Protecting biodiversity;

- Mapping and classifying ecosystems;