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Augmenting Species Diversity in Water Quality Criteria Derivation using Interspecies Correlation Models
Citation:
Barron, M., C. Lilavois, M. Willming, J. Awkerman, AND Sandy Raimondo. Augmenting Species Diversity in Water Quality Criteria Derivation using Interspecies Correlation Models. OW Meeting on Advancing Water Quality Criteria Development, Arlington, VA, September 14 - 16, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
Abstract showing application of Web-ICE to water quality criteria development
Description:
The specific requirements for taxa diversity of the 1985 guidelines have limited the number of ambient water quality criteria (AWQC) developed for aquatic life protection. The EPA developed the Web-based Interspecies Correlation Estimation (Web-ICE) tool to allow extrapolation of acute toxicity in commonly tested species to endangered species and other taxa with limited data. ICE models are log-linear least squares regressions that estimate acute toxicity (LC50/LD50) to an untested species, genus, or family (predicted taxon) from known toxicity of a single surrogate species. Approximately 2400 ICE models have currently been developed and validated. Models are available for aquatic animals, algae, and terrestrial wildlife using the online Web-ICE tool (http://epa.gov/ceampubl/fchain/webice/), which also includes modules for endangered species extrapolation and generation of species sensitivity distributions (SSDs). Web-ICE toxicity estimates and SSD-based hazard concentrations have been demonstrated to have high accuracy for closely related taxa (within same order). Published and ongoing research shows that ICE model toxicity extrapolation can be used to increase taxa diversity in SSDs necessary for the development of AWQC with reasonable uncertainty.