Cumulative effects are defined as the impact on the environment which results from the incremental impact of an action when added to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions. Thus, cumulative effects assessments attempt to identify whether an acceptable level of risk has or will be exceeded by a proposed project. Key components of a CEA include defining the acceptable level of risk threshold, identifying relevant spatial and temporal scales of assessment, and obtaining detailed GIS datasets for the chosen scale of assessment.