Programmatic Environmental Assessment for Funding Aquaculture Research and Development Projects

This Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) serves as a framework to analyze the potential impacts on the natural and human (social and economic) environment from aquaculture research and development projects funded by federal financial assistance award programs in the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and includes anticipated environmental impacts of current and future related initiatives and decisions. This PEA is a planning tool to support tiered, site-specific analyses by narrowing the spectrum of environmental impacts to focus on project-level reviews as needed. Projects will vary in terms of project or activity size, complexity, geographic location and timing. Therefore, this PEA provides a programmatic-level analysis of environmental impacts associated with the proposed action and alternatives. In addition, NOAA intends to rely on this document to assess site-specific or project-level/specific actions that are determined to be within the range of alternatives and scope of potential environmental effects, and do not have significant impacts on social and economic factors of the human environment.