• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.299-309
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• 2008

Cumulative effects can be defined as impacts on environment which results from incremental impacts of a proposed project, which covers other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions. The necessity of Cumulative Effect Assessment is that, when there are several projects near the project area, environmental effects of individual project can be larger or smaller than those of individual project without having projects nearby because of synergy, ascending and descending effects. This study was intended to help Environmental Impact Assessment practitioners identify spatial and temporal boundaries during the scoping stage. To do this, literature review of domestic and foreign legislations, guidelines, textbooks and papers related to Environmental Impact Assessment and Cumulative Effect Assessment was accomplished. This study suggests that continuous research be needed in order to identify spatial boundaries for other assessment fields and to develop methodologies for cumulative effect assessment.