Impact/Purpose:

The Office of Pesticide Programs is expanding ecological risk assessments to provide probabilistic expressions of risk to fish and wildlife populations. The objective of the wildlife research described below is to provide methods for characterizing population-level risks of toxic chemicals to aquatic life and wildlife. This will aid extrapolation among wildlife species of concern and create the scientific foundation for probabilistic risk assessment methods to protect natural populations of birds, fish and other wildlife.

Description:

Because neither stressors nor wildlife populations are distributed uniformly within the environment, the interplay between spatial and temporal heterogeneity in wildlife population structure and spatial and temporal patterns of stressors is a major factor controlling the severity of effects on wildlife populations. Thus, probabilistic models are needed that deal explicitly with the spatial distribution of population and stressors over time. This research will emphasize approaches for extrapolating toxicity data to a broader array of species, environmental media, and response endpoints (in particular, the endpoints required as input to population response models). Work will involve the continued refinement of the Interspecies Correlation Estimations (ICE) program. Several areas within the model have been identified for further development, including 1) identification and expansion of appropriate surrogate species (specifically, we will identify appropriate species to protect under-represented fish taxa); 2) increased representation of non-pesticide industrial organic and inorganic chemicals; 3) increased representation of metals (we will upgrade the metals and wildlife database for acute toxicity); 4) improvement in taxonomic classification schemes; and 5) model expansion and modification integrating novel (e.g., genomic/proteomic) endpoints.

Record Details: