Integrated presentation of ecological risk from multiple stressors

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Ecotoxicology
• Risk Assessment

Background:

• Current environmental risk assessments (ERA) lack explicit consideration of ecological factors and multiple stressors.
• There is a need to assess chemical and ecological stressor mixtures, accounting for environmental variability and data uncertainty.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel probabilistic ERA framework addressing limitations of current methods.
• To develop a method for visualizing risk assessment outcomes using prevalence plots.
• To integrate exposure, ecology, and multiple stressors for a mechanistic ERA.

Main Methods:

• Developed a probabilistic ERA framework incorporating environmental scenarios.
• Integrated ecological modeling to assess combined stressor effects.
• Utilized prevalence plots for quantitative risk prediction and visualization.

Main Results:

• Illustrative results highlight the impact of regional environmental differences on risk.
• Demonstrated the confounding interactions between multiple stressors.
• Showcased the utility of prevalence plots for risk interpretation.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework offers a mechanistic alternative to threshold-based ERA.
• Prevalence plots provide a quantitative and visual tool for risk assessment and management.
• The framework enhances ERA relevance and realism by integrating multiple stressors and environmental variability.