CEHO / Services / Environmental impact

§1.2 · Services

Environmental impact and monitoring data

An impact study can only show an effect if the design allows it: a real baseline, control sites, and enough replication to tell a change apart from natural variation. I help design baseline and monitoring studies and analyse the data, so the conclusions can be checked by a regulator or a reviewer.

I work on the data and statistics side, alongside the team responsible for the assessment. I do not sign environmental impact statements myself.

What I can do

• Baseline studies: what to sample, where, how often and with how many replicates.
• Monitoring design: control and impact sites sampled before and after the intervention (BACI-type designs), so an effect can be separated from background change.
• Analysis of monitoring data: change over time and differences between sites, with the uncertainty reported.
• Biodiversity indicators: richness, diversity and community composition, and what they can and cannot tell you.
• Design review: a second look at an existing study design or report before it goes out.

How a project runs

1. A short call about the question, the data you have and when you need it.
2. A look at a sample of the data, then a written proposal with the approach, its limits and the time it will take.
3. The work itself, with the decisions written down as I go.
4. Delivery and a walk-through of the results, plus the files and code.

What you get

• A sampling or monitoring plan, with the reasoning behind it.
• Analysis results with figures and a plain-language summary.
• A methods and limitations section that a reviewer can follow.

Background

I am a marine biologist trained at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela, where I did ecological fieldwork and worked as a lecturer assistant in ecology. In Portugal I worked with ecological data as a research assistant in the ecology laboratory of the University of Aveiro (2015–2018).

Other services

• 01Statistical analysis
• 03Data management
• 04GIS