You are here:
An EPA Modeling Dashboard for Ecological Assessment of Pesticides
Citation:
Harston, J., C. Holland, Y. Gu, T. Bohrmann, R. Van Meter, AND S. Purucker. An EPA Modeling Dashboard for Ecological Assessment of Pesticides. Presented at Association of Southeastern Biologists, Athens, GA, April 10 - 12, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation at the Association of Southeastern Biologists
Description:
The EPA registers pesticides for use in the US and approves imported pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Before a pesticide can be registered, the EPA must assess whether the pesticide can be used without eing harmful to humans or posing environmental risks, particularly to endangered species. To assess environmental exposures, mathematical models are used to predict pesticide concentrations in different media. We are overhauling the suite of models that the EPA uses, ranging in complexity from Fortran executables to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, to create a web service implementation that will integrate relevant chemical property, ecological exposure information, use properties, and effects data into a decision support “dashboard” that will more efficiently conduct assessments and harmonize parameterization across the fourteen models that are currently used to assess pesticides. To accomplish this, we have developed a script-based python library that reproduces algoithms underling the spreadsheet models and that can also access the underlying Fortran programs. This library will not have a user interface and will accessible from multiple decision support systems. We are exposing the library to users through the use of Python/django and Google/webapp to create a web services platform that allows cloud-based ecological pesticide models to be run over the web. We present the ecological framework used by the EPA to assess ecological risks from pesticides and illustrate the interfrace that allows the models to be run via a browser.
