Abstract:

In recent years, environmental pollution accidents occur frequently in China, which gives rise to serious environmental damage. Environmental damage identification and assessment is one of the most important environmental protection measures to cope with damage, while baseline is the key to determine the nature and extent of injuries or damages. As a crucial component of environmental damage assessment and restoration activity, baseline determination is the key technology link of scientific assessment and the important premise for a fair damage assessment, which can be used for the environmental damage identification and assessment in China. There are four widely used methods that can determine the baseline of environment or resources in developed countries: historical data, reference area data, environmental standards and models. Firstly, this paper analyzed these methods systematically, and summarized their advantages and disadvantages based on the theory and case studies. Then it discussed the specific steps of all kinds of baseline determination methods. Furthermore, we summed up knowledge on soil or soil environment, which is closely related to soil baseline determination in China, and proposed the basic principles of soil baseline determination for environmental damage identification and assessment. In conclusion, we recommended the "4 steps" operating procedure for determining soil baseline, which provides a valuable academic perspective and gives a scientific guidance for soil environmental damage identification and assessment in China.

Key words: soil pollution, environmental damage, identification and assessment, baseline, criterion