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Information Sources
D.3. Metals Species Sensitivity Distribution Gallery
The Metals Species Sensitivity Distribution (SSD) Gallery is a gallery of SSDs (example SSD below) and source data. SSDs model the variation in the sensitivity of different species to a stressor and are usually created using data from laboratory toxicity tests. SSDs assist in the interpretation of site data for stressor identification and risk assessment by relating them to the proportion of species expected to be affected at prescribed concentrations. Plots and source data provide a collection of generic SSDs for metal LC50s.
Where did the data come from?
The source data used to generate the models in the gallery were extracted from the Environmental Protection Agency's ECOTOX database and sorted to create SSDs with relatively consistent biology, water chemistry and duration. The metals covered include arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, selenium and zinc. See U.S. EPA (2005) for more detail on the methods used in the analysis.
What if I want to modify an SSD for use in my causal analysis?
The source data in the gallery can be entered into the CADDIS SSD generator to construct custom SSDs which place stressor concentration data from your site in context of concentration-response data you select for inclusion in an SSD. You may use your own data, data from the ECOTOX database or data from the CADDIS Metals SSD Library with the SSD generator tool.
Download and browse the gallery
To download the gallery and supporting information:
- Save Metals SSD Gallery - V1 (4.5mb, .zip) to your computer.
- Unzip the file by right clicking on the folder and selecting "extract all" to invoke the extraction wizard.
To browse the gallery and supporting information:
- Open the file titled Start Here - Metals SSD Gallery - V1.xls
- Locate the plots and source data of interest using the Browse the Metals SSD Gallery worksheet.