Introduction

Our life is dependent on the environment and yet we constantly disrupt it. As a comprehensive strategy, landscape is a medium in which our decision-making is reflected - in which we can read backwards whether our decisions were right or wrong. The visual aspect of the landscape is determined by its structure, which is the result of many natural and anthropogenic processes. The degree of cultivation or disruption of the landscape depends only on the balance of these two synergistic processes. Finding the optimum level of human activities in the area is a question of consensual approach that requires a multidisciplinary view respecting wider territory relationships and a timely assessment of potential risks eliminating the irreversibility of qualitative and quantitative environmental changes.

This principle is fulfilled, among other things, with the nature of the environmental impact assessment process, which seeks an acceptable level of interventions in the landscape with regard to the socio-economic development of the society and the protection of the environment.

The presented teaching text brings a summary of the current theoretical and applied knowledge in the field of environmental and public health impact assessment. The backbone of the text is Act No. 100/2001 Sb., on the Environmental Impact Assessment and on Amending Some Related Acts (hereinafter referred to as the “EIA Act”), which regulates both project and strategic levels of assessment.