cumulative impacts

The impacts (positive or negative, direct and indirect, long-term and short-term impacts) arising from a range of activities throughout an area or region, where each individual effect may not be significant if taken in isolation. Such impacts can arise from the growing volume of traffic, the combined effect of a number of agriculture measures leading to more intensive production and use of chemicals, etc. Cumulative impacts include a time dimension, since they should calculate the impact on environmental resources resulting from changes brought about by past, present and reasonably foreseeable future actions.