Applies primarily to the use of nonrenewable resources, such as minerals, or cultural resources, or to those factors that are renewable only over long-time spans, such as soil productivity Irreversible also includes loss of future options
relates to a situation in which you can not return to the original state or form; for example, if you burn paper, you can not get the original paper back again--an irreversible change has taken place
Incapable of being reversed A natural process or operation (migration pattern, landscape, fish and wildlife habitat, etc ) which would never occur again because of the implementation of a project action
Impacts are considered to be irreversible if a chemical, biological, or physical process began that could not be stopped As a result, the resource or its productivity or utility would be lost forever
If a change is irreversible, things cannot be changed back to the way they were before. She could suffer irreversible brain damage if she is not treated within seven days + irreversibly ir·re·vers·ibly Television has irreversibly changed our perception of the Royal Family
A character type in which numerically increasing changes are allowed and counted as for ordered characters, while decreasing changes are not allowed (i e counted as an infinite number of steps); thus, multiple reverse changes (= losses) are not allowed By definition, an irreversible character is polarised in advance, making the use of an outgroup redundant This character-type is very rarely used, as the assumption of irreversibility is very difficult to justify for any type of data, morphological or molecular It was proposed by E O Wilson (1965, Systematic Zoology 14: 214-220), with examples of its application (cf ordered, unordered, Dollo)
A category of impacts mentioned in statements of environmental impacts that applies to non-renewable resources, such as minerals and archaeological sites Irreversible effects can also refer to effects of actions that can be renewed only after a very long period of time, such as the loss of soil productivity due to road building