ecological assessment Articles

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. 1, 2015

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Historical and continuing US Department of Energy (USDOE) operations have not only contaminated the environment but have altered the landscape as well as habitat quality and quantity. The changes in the landscape that have occurred within USDOE facilities may be as important as assessing the effects resulting from the release of chemical contaminants into the environment. We examined several ...

Feb. 9, 2004

By Inderscience Publishers

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. ...

Dec. 31, 2003

By Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC)

Screening-level ecological risk assessments are commonly conducted to identify those contaminants and receptors on which to focus future phases or tiers of the ecological risk assessment process. Most screening assessments are performed using a suite of individual species subjected to intensive evaluation of exposure (endpoint species) and selected for their appropriateness for serving as ...

Sep. 14, 2009

By Inderscience Publishers

The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) is a Department of Energy (DOE) facility. To assess the impact of the site activities and releases on ecological receptors, the INEEL implemented a phased approach for conducting ecological risk assessments (ERAS). This approach applies an iterative, 'tiered' process, in which conservative preliminary assessments support ...

Sep. 14, 2009

By Inderscience Publishers

Environmental benchmarks are widely used in Canadian environmental assessment as a standard against which to monitor air or water quality in response to human activities in the environment. Recent work in Canada has developed the concept of ecological benchmarks as a complement to environmental benchmarks. However, implementation of ecological benchmarks may be challenging. This paper presents an ...

Dec. 31, 2004

By Springer

Ecological risk assessment as currently practiced has hindered consideration of ecosystem services endpoints and restoration goals in the environmental management process. Practitioners have created barriers between procedures to clean up contaminated areas and efforts to restore ecosystem functions. In this article, we examine linkages between contaminant risk assessment approaches and ...

Sep. 14, 2015

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) has implemented a phased approach to ecological risk assessment (ERA). The first step in this process is a screening-level ERA at each facility. Basic to this approach was the development of ecologically based screening levels (EBSLs), defined as concentrations of chemicals in soil (or other media) that are not expected to ...

Sep. 14, 2009

By Inderscience Publishers

Ecological risk assessments (ERAs) are not used as well as they could be in risk management. Part of the problem is that they often lack ecological relevance; that is, they fail to grasp necessary ecological complexities. Adding realism and complexity can be difficult and costly. We argue that predictive systems models (PSMs) can provide a way of capturing complexity and ecological relevance ...

Apr. 22, 2013

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ecological risks are inherently spatial, and the consideration of scale is critical to all aspects of the ecological risk assessment process. Analysis of alterations in land use and habitat quality and quantity in relation to historical, continuing, and future US Department of Energy (USDOE) operations may be as important as assessing impacts resulting from the release of chemical contaminants ...

Feb. 9, 2004

By Inderscience Publishers

This paper presents a framework to diagnose and predict the effects of chemicals, integrating two promising tools to incorporate more ecology into ecological risk assessment, viz. traits‐based approaches and ecological modelling. Traits‐based approaches are increasingly used to derive correlations between the occurrence of species traits and chemical exposure from biological and chemical ...

Apr. 28, 2013

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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. 27, 2000

By The Association for Environmental Health and Sciences

EMAP (Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program) was initiated by EPA to estimate the status and trends of the nation's ecological resources and examine associations between ecological condition and natural and anthropogenic influences. The surface water component of EMAP is based on the premise that the condition of stream biota can be addressed by examining biological and ecological ...

Nov. 30, 2007

By US EPA - Environmental Protection Agency

Factors used in environmental remedial decision making concerning ecological risk are not well understood or necessarily consistent. Recent Records of Decision (RODs) for Army CERCLA sites were reviewed to select case studies where remedial management occurred in response to ecological risks. Thirty‐four Army RODs were evaluated representing decisions promulgated between 1996 and 2004. Five were ...

Jan. 5, 2012

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper addresses two related conceptual and practical challenges in assessing sustainability. The first involves the social context, specifically the criteria and procedures to be used. The second involves the spatial context, specifically the problem of assessing sustainability when there are multiple and overlapping "communities" with multiple economic and ecological scales. With ...

Jan. 25, 2004

By Inderscience Publishers

Current regulatory practice for chemical risk assessment suffers from the lack of realism in conventional frameworks. Despite significant advances in exposure and ecological effect modelling, the implementation of novel approaches as high tier options for prospective regulatory risk assessment remains limited, particularly among general chemicals such as down‐the‐drain ingredients. While ...

Jun. 3, 2016

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Client: Environment Agency Location: Southern England (Solent) Services: Controlled water and ecological risk assessment, data review and interpretation Issues: Potential impact of Waste Management Licensed sites on ecologically sensitive sites. Potential risk to groundwater, surface water and dependant ecosystems. ...

Oct. 6, 2011

By ESI Consulting Ltd

Client: Environment Agency Location: Southern England (Solent) Services: Controlled water and ecological risk assessment, data review and interpretation Issues: Potential impact of Waste Management Licensed sites on ecologically sensitive sites. Potential risk to groundwater, surface water and dependant ecosystems. ...

Oct. 6, 2011

By ESI Consulting Ltd

Estuaries within Cornwall, UK have been accepting metal-rich tailings and water from mining for hundreds of years. Over time, saltmarsh ecosystems have developed on metal-rich sediments.  Previous work at CSM has indicated that the floristic composition of these saltmarshes varies from characteristic British assemblages. Our hypothesis is metal-sensitive species are unable to colonise, ...

Jun. 16, 2001

By Impact Ecology

Countries in the Middle East and North Africa region house a variety of ecosystems from the dense pine woodland of the Algerian coast to the extremely sparsely  vegetated desert of Oman. Although cataloguing of flora and fauna in certain areas has been meticulously detailed, standard techniques for rapid assessment across the variety of habitats has not yet been established. Such techniques ...

Dec. 18, 2008

By Impact Ecology