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Incorporation of Ecosystem Goods and Services into Ecological Risk Assessment
Citation:
Maurice, C., B. Duncan, S. Mazur, AND M. Russell. Incorporation of Ecosystem Goods and Services into Ecological Risk Assessment. Annual Meeting of SETAC Midwest Regional Chapter, La Crosse, Wisconsin, March 21 - 23, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
Linking the benefits of the natural environment to the health and wellbeing of people has become increasingly important. One way to better understand this human/environment linkage is to identify, evaluate and characterize benefits from nature, which we call “ecosystem goods and services” (EGS). When these goods and services directly benefit humans, we call them Final EGS (FEGS). Within the U.S. EPA Superfund and RCRA hazardous waste site cleanup processes, ecological risk assessment (ERA) is the mechanism by which threats to non-human ecological receptors are evaluated. Various efforts have considered incorporating EGS into hazardous waste site decisions (e.g., U.S. EPA 2017 which includes a broader survey of EPA EGS efforts and references) and ecological risk assessment (e.g., U.S. EPA 2016 which describes the linkage between assessment endpoints and EGS). However, it can be difficult to identify and quantify the benefits and communicate about them to decision makers and stakeholders. We believe incorporating EGS methodologies and tools into ecological risk assessment can help address this challenge. Depending on the circumstances, EGS can be incorporated into specific steps of the ecological risk assessment or throughout the process as a whole. We aim to conceptually highlight potential ways that EGS can be incorporated into ecological risk assessment.
Description:
We suggest steps in the ERA process where EGS concepts could be incorporated; increase familiarity of EGS concepts and tools among ecorisk assessors; promote development of a strategic and consistent approach to incorporating EGS into ERA; and highlight the utility and value of incorporating EGS into ERA.