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ECOLOGICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY: A MEANS TO SAFEGUARD SERVICES OF NATURE THAT SUSTAIN HUMAN WELFARE
Citation:
Cormier, S M., G Suter, AND S B. Norton. ECOLOGICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY: A MEANS TO SAFEGUARD SERVICES OF NATURE THAT SUSTAIN HUMAN WELFARE. Presented at NATO Workshop of Ecotoxicology, Ecological Risk Assessment and Multiple Stressors, Poros, Greece, October 12-15, 2004.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of this research project is to provide methods, tools and guidance to Regions, States and Tribes to support the TMDL program. This research will investigate new measurement methods and models to link stressors to biological responses and will use existing data and knowledge to develop strategies to determine the causes of biological impairment in rivers and streams. Research will be performed across multiple spatial scales, site, subwatershed, watershed, basin, ecoregion and regional/state.
Description:
The services provided by nature are required to sustain human life and enhance its quality. Hence, environmental security must come from protecting those services. Ecological risk assessment can predict and estimate effects of proposed actions, but it is insufficient alone for two reasons. First, it can fail because of inadequate application, unforeseen stressors, or unpredictable effects. Second, in many cases the ability of nature to provide services that sustain life is already impaired, resulting in reduced human welfare. For these reasons, environmental security requires the development of ecological epidemiology, a science that will identify impaired services of nature and determine the causes of impairment so that remediation and restoration can occur. A method for causal analysis, developed to identify causes of impairment in aquatic ecosystems, may provide a template that can be adapted to identify the causes of diminished services of nature and the resulting reductions in human welfare. Some of the challenges for adapting the existing method include explicitly defining natural services required to sustain human life, appropriately matching the scale of the analysis to the ecological processes that deliver those services, and possibly customizing the logical considerations used in causal analysis. Advancing the science of ecological epidemiology holds the promise of helping scientists frame and guide rational debate, providing a sound basis from which to launch risk assessment and risk management scenarios, and ultimately informing environmental decision-making that affects human welfare, development and environmental security within acceptable risks.