A state-impact-state methodology for assessing environmental impact in land use planning

• A State-Impact-State model for Land Use Planning Environmental Assessment (LUPEA).
• Matter-element (ME) and Extenics methods were embedded in the LUPEA.
• The model was applied to the LUPEA of Zoucheng County.
• The assessment shows improving environment quality since 2000 in Zoucheng County.
• The method provides a useful tool for the LUPEA in the county level.

The implementation of land use planning (LUP) has a large impact on environmental quality. There lacks a widely accepted and consolidated approach to assess the LUP environmental impact using Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). In this paper, we developed a state-impact-state (SIS) model employed in the LUP environmental impact assessment (LUPEA). With the usage of Matter-element (ME) and Extenics method, the methodology based on the SIS model was established and applied in the LUPEA of Zoucheng County, China. The results show that: (1) this methodology provides an intuitive and easy understanding logical model for both the theoretical analysis and application of LUPEA; (2) the spatial multi-temporal assessment from base year, near-future year to planning target year suggests the positive impact on the environmental quality in the whole County despite certain environmental degradation in some towns; (3) besides the spatial assessment, other achievements including the environmental elements influenced by land use and their weights, the identification of key indicators in LUPEA, and the appropriate environmental mitigation measures were obtained; and (4) this methodology can be used to achieve multi-temporal assessment of LUP environmental impact of County or Town level in other areas.