ecological assessment Articles

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. 10, 2004

By Inderscience Publishers

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. 15, 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. 15, 2009

By Inderscience Publishers

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.

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

The use of pyrethroid insecticides has increased substantially throughout the world over the past few decades as the use of organophorous, carbamate, and organochlorine insecticides is being phased out. Pyrethroids are the most common class of insecticides for ultralow‐volume (ULV) aerosol applications used to manage high densities of adult mosquitoes. Pyrethroids are highly toxic to nontarget ...

Jan. 22, 2013

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hidden in some of the world’s most impenetrable forests, a network of cameras with inbuilt motion sensors are snapping animals in their tropical habitats. The photographs in this gallery were captured in forests in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They provide information on animal populations that are usually unseen by humans. With the help of local inhabitants, scientists from the TEAM ...

Nov. 6, 2014

By SciDev.Net

Rice paddies constitute a very special agrobiosystem, which for some circumstances, could be considered as a human driven wetland. The complexity of such dynamic systems is a key element for conducting ecological risk assessments, in addition, the proximity of rice paddies to areas of high ecological value must be considered. This paper presents a new conceptual model for conducting ecological ...

Jan. 27, 2006

By Springer-Verlag GmbH

The draft European Commission's Directorate General for Health and Consumer Policy (DG SANCO) document represents the state of the art in environmental risk assessment (ERA) including new trends and combining high level environmental protection and realism. Using the ecosystem services concept, it offers a promising approach to determine which impact may be tolerable, where, and when. ...

Jun. 25, 2013

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The past, present and future status of the Sediment Quality Triad (SQT) concept is reviewed. The SQT has developed since its inception; some early data interpretation methods remain useful and have been improved (e.g. normalising to reference data), others have not proven to be as useful as originally anticipated (e.g. a single index coupled with triangular graphical plots). SQT studies have ...

Jan. 26, 2004

By Inderscience Publishers

Recent developments have seen the expansion of the system of radiological protection for humans to one including protection of the environment against detrimental effects of radiation exposure although a fully developed framework for integration of human and ecological risk assessment for radionuclides is only at an early stage. In the context of integration, significant differences can be ...

Jun. 18, 2013

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A number of fuel spills, of both recent and historic origins, have occurred on World Heritage listed subantarctic Macquarie Island. Sites contaminated by mainly diesel fuels are undergoing remediation by the Australian Antarctic Division. The risks posed by these sites are being managed using a “weight of evidence” approach, for which this study provides a preliminary line of evidence for the ...

Jul. 23, 2015

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study relates tissue concentrations and toxic effects of Pb in Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) to the dietary exposure of soil‐borne Pb associated with mining and smelting. From 0 to 12% contaminated soil, by weight, was added to five experimental diets (0.12 to 382 mg Pb/kg, dry weight) and fed to the quail for six weeks. Benchmark doses associated with a 50% reduction in ALAD ...

Jun. 18, 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. 10, 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. ...

Jan. 1, 2004

By Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC)

One of the main objectives of ecological risk assessment is to evaluate the effects of toxicants on ecologically relevant biological systems such as populations or communities. However, the effects of toxicants are commonly measured on selected subindividual or individual endpoints due to their specificity against chemical stressors. Introducing these effects into population models is a ...

Jun. 17, 2013

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. 15, 2009

By Inderscience Publishers

In Nepal, the impairment status of lakes and reservoirs has generally been measured and classified based on nutrient concentrations and physico-chemical parameters, typically with no direct measurement of biological communities. In response to the recent focus on the bioassessment of lakes and reservoirs, the macroinvertebrate-based Nepal Lake Biotic Index (NLBI) has been developed. Benthic ...

Jun. 21, 2011

By Inderscience Publishers

Potential effects of atrazine on the non-target aquatic plants characteristic of lower-order Midwestern streams were previously assessed using the Comprehensive Aquatic System Model (CASMATZ). Another similar bioenergetics-based, mechanistic model, AQUATOX, was examined in this study with the objectives of (a) developing an AQUATOX model simulation that was similar to the CASMATZ model reference ...

Jun. 6, 2015

By John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The purpose of this study was to determine the degree of contamination with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in samples of soils, and corn around three different oily sludges in Zhongyuan oil field in summer. The contents of PAHs in the soil samples from high to low were the Third Wenming oil sludge (3W) > the Third Mazhai oil sludge (3M) > the Fourth Wen'er oil sludge (4W). The contents ...

Dec. 31, 2009

By Inderscience Publishers