The AQUATOX model is a general ecological risk assessment model that represents the combined environmental fate and effects of conventional pollutants, such as nutrients and sediments, and toxic chemicals in aquatic ecosystems. It considers several trophic levels, including attached and planktonic algae and submerged aquatic vegetation, invertebrates, and forage, bottom-feeding, and game fish; it also represents associated organic toxicants. It can be implemented as a simple model (indeed, it has been used to simulate an abiotic flask) or as a truly complex food-web model. Often it is desirable to model a food web rather than a food chain, for example to examine the possibility of less tolerant organisms being replaced by more tolerant organisms as environmental perturbations occur. Food web models provide a means for validation because they mechanistically describe the bioaccumulation process and ascribe causality to observed relationships between biota and sediment or water. The best way to accurately assess bioaccumulation is to use more complex models, but only if the data needs of the models can be met and there is sufficient time.

"September 2000." Includes bibliographical references.

v. 1. User's manual. v. 2. Technical documentation. v. 3. Model validation reports.