Problems of Cost Evaluation of Damage to Environmental Objects

The article discusses the key issues of cost evaluation of damage to the environment. This is a problem of legislative regulation arising from the lack of clear criteria of harm materiality to environmental objects; the problem of regulation of the content of ecotoxicants in various environments; the problem of methodological support. The difficulties of determining the “initial” state of the violated environmental objects, as well as fundamental differences in approaches to the calculation of economic damage to environmental objects are also analysed. It is shown that a possible resolution for these issues is environmental forensics involving the application of specialized knowledge of natural sciences, ecology in particular, to specify the consequences of an environmental offence, causal relationship and economic damage to the environmental objects. Forensic environmental experts have integrated knowledge of natural sciences and law.

Experience of Applying Remote Sensing Earth Data in Environmental Forensics

The opportunity of remote sensing Earth data application in performing of environmental forensics is contemplated. Using examples from expert practice, the progress of soil and vegetation mantle examination on the remote sensing materials is analyzed. It is demonstrated that existing methods of data interpretation enable the non-contact reconnaissance of environmental objects on an immense territory signifcantly reducing the time and expense of the expertise. With the help of this method an expert gets an opportunity to perform backcasting of landscape changes and the features of the modern image software make both visual and automated ways of analysis possible. The latest enables subjectivity elimination from interpretation of the images which is essential in getting reasonable expert conclusions.