Office of Research and Development Publications

<< Previous

Next >>

Physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models estimate chemical concentration changes in different body organs using a system of equations representing relevant biological processes and physicochemical properties. PBPK models are key to relating biochemical responses measur...

Biodiversity is crucial for the functioning of ecosystems and the products and services from which we transform natural assets of the Earth for human survival, security, and well-being. The ability to assess, report, map, and forecast the life support functions of ecosystems is a...

Aquatic species (e.g., fish) can be negatively impacted by exposure to mixtures of environmental contaminants. It is becoming increasingly common either to investigate the biological impacts of exposure to these complex mixtures on these species (e.g., with metabolomics) or to mo...

Industrial, business and government communities have begun to shift from economic stand-alone focus to inclusion of sustainability in the decision-making process. This shift is due to the adverse environmental impact and unsustainable development caused by human activities, inclu...

Exposure to mixtures is frequent, but biologic pathways such as metabolic inhibition, are poorly understood. CHCl3 and TCE are model volatiles frequently co-occurring; combined exposure results in less than additive hepatotoxicity. Here, we explore the underlying metabolic inte...

Background Air pollution risk assessments often employ effect coefficients from epidemiologic studies to quantify the public health impact of changes in air quality. Partly due to data and methodological limitations, epidemiologic studies have traditionally characterized the heal...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires development of a Quality Assurance (QA) Project Plan (QAPP) to document the type and quality of data and model information used for making environmental decisions. This applies to PBPK models, which are mathematical descript...

Increased nutrient fluxes from the Mississippi River Basin (MRB) have been linked to increased occurrences of seasonal hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico (GOM) (The NSTC, 2000; USEPA, 2014; Alexander et al., 2008; Rabalais et al., 2001). Studies additionally show that more t...

In recent years, environmental consciousness has been growing and has become critical in the decision-making process in the chemical industry. This raised awareness has led to the incorporation of the concept of sustainability and sustainable development into process design and o...

Numerous studies have established that impacts from mounting population and climatic pressures are decreasing the capacity of coastal watersheds and estuaries to provide services essential to human health and well-being &ndash; clean drinking water, flood protection, habitat for ...

The Model for Prediction Across Scales &ndash; Atmosphere (MPAS-A) is the meteorological foundation for a next generation global air quality modeling system currently being developed at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). In recent years, meteorological fields for r...

There is always a challenge of obtaining the &ldquo;best&rdquo; data to inform environmental models. Here we present different types of available precipitation datasets while detailing temporal and spatial resolution, potential errors in the dataset, and optimal performance scena...

Coastal hazards and the associated community exposure risks can develop when practitioners make decisions that optimize goals in isolation, without adequately considering cross-sector impacts, or without integrating stakeholder perspectives into the decision-making process. Due t...

Despite its importance to transportation safety and ecosystem health related to pollutant and nutrient deposition, the simulation of fog lags the simulation of other meteorological phenomena due in large part to its complexity and limitations of model resolution. Accordingly, th...

Environmental surface waters often contain a variety of chemical contaminants from different sources including wastewater treatment plants, concentrated animal feeding operations, agricultural runoff and other human-related activities. Exposure to these contaminants may pose a th...

Green infrastructure (GI) represents a broad set of stormwater control measures practices that can be flexibly implemented to increase sewershed retention capacity, and can thereby improve on the management of water quantity and quality. Although much GI presents as formal engine...

As emissions reductions are desired in end-use sectors –commercial/residential technologies and light- and heavy-duty vehicles – the corresponding changes in fuel use and technologies can lead to shifts in the upstream production processes. These “upstream” emissions can be assoc...

The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework represents an ideal tool for integrating diverse data relating chemical exposures to adverse outcomes. Glucocorticoid signaling is tightly controlled and numerous adverse health outcomes have been associated with either elevation or sup...

From determining what to have for lunch to deciding where to invest our resources, we, as individuals and societies, are constantly involved in multi-criteria assessment. Using sustainability assessment as a case study, in this talk I will demonstrate the ubiquity of multi-crite...

Exposure to environmental contaminants can lead to adverse outcomes in humans as well as important non-human species. However, evaluating risk across multiple species in a contaminated environment can be challenging due to differences in relevant exposure pathways, behavior, phy...

The Nooksack-Fraser transboundary area is home to communities with a strong base in farming, fisheries and outdoor recreation. A goal of the Nooksack-Fraser Transboundary Nitrogen (NFT-N) project is to determine the sources and fates of N in the watershed using data on energy us...

Indicators of a stream&rsquo;s ability to remove nutrients provide insights on watershed integrity and stream habitat characteristics that are needed to help managers to restore stream ecosystem services. We used the Tracer Additon Spiraling Characterization Curve (TASCC) to mea...

Indicators of a stream&rsquo;s ability to remove nutrients provide insights on watershed integrity and managers&rsquo; ability to restore ecosystem services based on specific characteristics of stream habitat. We used the Tracer Additon Spiraling Characterization Curve (TASCC) t...

This is the presentation for the invited lecture at Rutgers University. The lecture will be part of online course titled "Sustainability Decision Tools" in Spring 2018.

Researchers who perform air quality modeling studies usually do so on a regional scale. Typically, the boundary conditions are generated by another model which might have a different chemical mechanism, spatial resolution, and/or map projection. Hence, a necessary conversion/inte...