Predicting risk from multiple stressors in watershed ecosystems
- Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC (United States)
Watersheds provide a definable geomorphological boundary where the influence of diverse human activities on land and in water are naturally combined within waters flowing through a watershed. The combined risk of multiple impacts have been essentially ignored in risk estimates in the past. Although significant effort is currently directed toward developing management plans to protect ecological resources within watersheds, success will be difficult to achieve without systematic evaluation of the individual, combined and cumulative impacts of chemical, physical and biological stressors normally impacting watershed ecosystems. Watershed level ecological risk assessment methodology, now being developed through case studies, provides a format for predicting the combined risk of diverse stressors on one system. Discussion will focus on the appropriate selection of assessment endpoints, development of three levels of conceptual models and a format for analysis plans as the basis for predicting the relative and combined risk of diverse stressors.
- OSTI ID:
- 211942
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9511137--; ISBN 1-880611-03-1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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