ecological assessment Articles

In recent years, ecological risk assessment (ERA) has emerged as an important part of environmental protection programs. The following discussion provides a brief overview of ERA issues. What is ecological risk assessment? Ecological risk assessment is the practice of determining the nature and likelihood of effects of our actions on animals, plants, and the environment. ...

Jan. 1, 2004

By Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC)

Ecosystem services are defined as the outputs of ecological processes that contribute to human welfare or have the potential to do so in the future. Those outputs include food and drinking water, clean air and water, and pollinated crops. The need to protect the services provided by natural systems has been recognized previously, but ecosystem services have not been formally incorporated into ...

Sep. 2, 2015

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The REBECCA project focuses on establishing quantitative relationships between physicochemical and hydromorphological pressures and biological indicators. One of the major applications of such relationships is to support the establishment of WFD compliant assessment and classification methods. All EU Member States are required to establish such methods for the different biological quality ...

Jan. 1, 2007

Jun. 17, 2014

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Oct. 10, 2013

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Carbon sequestration in urban ecosystems is becoming an international climate change initiative for sustainable development. Drawing upon field work undertaken in the author's native Shenyang, China, this research reports upon the natural process of carbon sequestration from the atmosphere into urban ecosystems. The risks associated within carbon sequestration in urban ecosystems are investigated ...

Jun. 10, 2013

By Inderscience Publishers

Dec. 27, 2012

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Evaluating organism exposure in the ecosystems is a difficult task and can be carried out measuring or predicting concentrations in the environment. While current regulatory approaches favour a modelling approach, they either use a static representation of the environment and of the chemical discharge or a simplified dynamic approach (e.g. dealing with pesticides). Improving the ecological ...

Apr. 22, 2013

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Changes to sources, stressors, habitats, and geographic ranges; toxicological effects; end points; and uncertainty estimation require significant changes in the implementation of ecological risk assessment (ERA). Because of the lack of analog systems and circumstances in historically studied sites, there is a likelihood of type III error. As a first step, the authors propose a decision key to ...

Nov. 12, 2012

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The present investigation is an attempt at assessing the ecological sustainability of one of the most popular technologies for pyrometallurgical copper production, namely Outokumpu's flash smelting method. The real operating installation in Umicore-Pirdop, Bulgaria has served as a model flowchart. The assessment has been made using the exergy method of thermodynamic analysis. The exergy of ...

Nov. 15, 2004

By Inderscience Publishers

Contaminated sites in the U.S. undergo remediation and restoration through regulatory programs that lead the two processes through independent but often parallel pathways with different objectives. The objective of remediation is to reduce risk to human health and the environment, whereas that of restoration is to restore injured resources and compensate the public for lost use of the services ...

Oct. 7, 2015

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The ecological responses of diatoms to pollution and nutrient enrichment, caused by domestic and municipal sewage, in the five fresh water ponds have been examined. It was observed that diatoms were completely absent in P3 and some species were also absent in P1 and P2. Similarly, diatom diversity was lower in P1 and P2 than in P4 and P5. However, diatom abundance was higher in P4. The Biological ...

Apr. 19, 2010

By Inderscience Publishers

Oxides of nitrogen and oxides of sulfur are two of six principal (or “criteria”) pollutants for which EPA has established national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS). The Clean Air Act requires EPA to periodically review the scientific basis for these standards by preparing an Integrated Science Assessment (ISA), formerly called an Air Quality Criteria Document (AQCD). The previous AQCDs for ...

Dec. 1, 2008

By US EPA - Environmental Protection Agency

Currently, there is a common perception that the discharge of contaminated groundwater to a surfacewater body does not pose an ecological risk if contaminant concentrations in surface-water samples are below analytical detection limits or at very low concentrations. The transition zone represents a unique and important ecosystem that exists between surface-water and the underlying ground-water, ...

Jul. 1, 2008

By US EPA - Environmental Protection Agency

This report provides a critical analysis of two risk assessment reports evaluating the effects of chemical contaminants in the Lower Fox River in Wisconsin.  One risk assessment was prepared by ThermoRetec Consulting Corporation (ThermoRetec) on behalf of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and dated February 24, 1999; the other risk assessment was prepared by Exponent on behalf of the ...

Jun. 28, 2000

By The Association for Environmental Health and Sciences

Species Sensitivity Distributions (SSDs) are used in Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) for extrapolation of the results of toxicity tests with single‐species to a toxicity threshold considered protective of ecosystem structure and functioning. The attention to and importance of the SSD approach has increased in scientific and regulatory communities since the 1990s. It triggered discussions and ...

May 4, 2016

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Threshold of Toxicological Concern (TTC) concept is well established for assessing human safety of food‐contact substances and has been reapplied for a variety of endpoints including carcinogenicity, teratogenicity, and reproductive toxicity. The TTC establishes an exposure level for chemicals, below which no appreciable risk to human health or the environment is expected based upon a de ...

Jun. 26, 2015

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC) creates a new legislative framework to manage, use, protect, and restore surface water and groundwater resources within river basins and transitional (Iagoons and estuaries) and coastal waters in the European Union. The WFD aims to achieve sustainable management ofwater resources, to reach good ecological qualityand preventfurtherdeterioration of ...

Jan. 1, 2006

Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) can be defined as “the process for systematically evaluating how likely it is that adverse ecological effects may occur as a result of exposure to one or more stressors” (U.S. EPA, 1998). The idea of adopting ERA as a fundamental component in the management of ecosystems has gained an increased recognition due to the fact that it is impossible to eliminate all ...

Jan. 1, 2006

Mechanistic effect models (MEMs) consider the mechanisms of how chemicals affect individuals and ecological systems such as populations and communities. There is an increasing awareness that MEMs have high potential to make risk assessment of chemicals more ecologically relevant than current standard practice. Here we discuss what kinds of MEMs are needed to improve scientific and regulatory ...

Jun. 19, 2013

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.