Determining the significance of change in ecological assessments
- Univ. of Miami, FL (United States)
- Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)
- Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States)
The Framework for Ecological Risk Assessment (EPA, 1992) provides a process for assessing the risks to the environment from a human activity. The framework is appropriate for assessing both anticipated environmental risks (e.g., for comparing the environmental risks from alternate management policies) as well as for existing environmental problems (e.g., distinguishing alternate causes of observed conditions). A critical element in the risk assessment process calls for distinguishing environmental responses that matter from those that do not; that is, making a determination of the ecological significance of the risk. The issue of ecological significance is a ``meta-issue``, appearing first during the planning and problem formulation phase, where discussions between the risk assessor and risk manager focus on defining the goals of the assessment and determining how prevailing societal and ecological values can be reflected in the selection of the ecological endpoints. Significance re-appears in risk characterization where the focus is on interpreting the significance of change in one or more of the ecological endpoints. The discussion will include a working definition of ecological significance; a brief description of a process for integrating societal preferences and ecological values into the selection of the ecological endpoints. Five criteria: variability, magnitude, spatial scale, temporal scale, and time to reversibility, are proposed for evaluating the significance of changes in assessment endpoints. Criteria are used to construct a decision framework that is applied to a range of examples.
- OSTI ID:
- 203644
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9511137--; ISBN 1-880611-03-1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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