Identifying ecological production functions for use in ecosystem services-based environmental risk assessment of chemicals

Ecosystem services as assessment endpoints for ecological risk assessment.

Ecosystem services are defined as the outputs of ecological processes that contribute to human welfare or have the potential to do so in the future. Those outputs include food and drinking water, clean air and water, and pollinated crops. The need to protect the services provided by natural systems has been recognized previously, but ecosystem services have not been formally incorporated into e...

Advantages and challenges associated with implementing an ecosystem services approach to ecological risk assessment for chemicals.

The ecosystem services (ES) approach is gaining broad interest in regulatory and policy arenas for use in landscape management and ecological risk assessment. It has the potential to bring greater ecological relevance to the setting of environmental protection goals and to the assessment of the ecological risk posed by chemicals. A workshop, organised under the auspices of the Society of Enviro...

The role of ecological models in linking ecological risk assessment to ecosystem services in agroecosystems.

Agricultural practices are essential for sustaining the human population, but at the same time they can directly disrupt ecosystem functioning. Ecological risk assessment (ERA) aims to estimate possible adverse effects of human activities on ecosystems and their parts. Current ERA practices, however, incorporate very little ecology and base the risk estimates on the results of standard tests wi...

Environmental Exposure Modeling for Risk Assessment of Ionizable Organic Chemicals Environmental Exposure Modeling for Risk Assessment of Ionizable Organic Chemicals

Farming for Ecosystem Services: An Ecological Approach to Production Agriculture.

A balanced assessment of ecosystem services provided by agriculture requires a systems-level socioecological understanding of related management practices at local to landscape scales. The results from 25 years of observation and experimentation at the Kellogg Biological Station long-term ecological research site reveal services that could be provided by intensive row-crop ecosystems. In additi...