Ecosystem Diagnostics
Waterborne is part of a consortium of companies and institutes who are examining the relative impact of stress factors, including chemical mixtures, to river systems by developing and using statistical and eco-epidemiological methodologies.
Prospective risk assessments of chemicals may include the use of bioavailability models, Species Sensitivity Distributions and mixture-effect modeling to estimate the proportion of species potentially affected by chemical mixtures. To test such approaches, it is imperative that datasets be obtained that contain a range of prospective risks from chemicals and other stressors which can be matched to documented biological impacts using a geographic information system.
Since species assemblages can be affected by factors other than chemicals, an eco-epidemiological analysis of chemical risks needs to take into account the myriad of potential factors that may affect biological community status. These factors include instream habitat quality, ecoregion, river size, and water chemistry. Characteristics of biological assemblage (traits) may also be helpful in diagnosing potential causation of impacts.
EcoSystem Diagnostics Presentations
The presentations below (from SETAC North America 2010 and SETAC Europe 2010) provide information on the assemblage of perhaps one of the largest datasets collected to date. The dataset covers more than 2000 georeferenced sites from the state of Ohio and includes:
- land use (agriculture, forest, urban, presence of livestock)
- soil condition (organic carbon, erosivity)
- presence of septic systems and wastewater exposure
- predicted chemical risks from nonpoint sources and point sources as well as instream metals and ammonia
- instream habitat and aquatic community status (fish and macroinvertebrates)
Diverse statistical and modeling methods were applied to the dataset including regression trees, neural-networks, weights of evidence/weighted linear regression, general linear models, and food-web modeling methods. The outcomes of the analyses provide crucial information for deriving effective river basin and chemical management plans.
SETAC North America 31st Annual Meeting • November 2010 • Portland, Oregon
Use the links below to view and download ecosystem diagnostics presentations from SETAC North America 2010. If you do not have Acrobat installed on your computer, you can download it from Adobe.
Platform Presentations 
Poster Presentations
- Towards developing validated, ecology-based diagnostic and prognostic tools to assess ecological status in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems
- The “Golden Database” and Use of Statistical and Ecological Methods to Determine Relative Causality of Impact from Emerging and Industrial Chemicals
- Development of model inputs for varied approaches to ecological diagnostic analyses of aquatic risks from multiple stressors in Ohio streams
- Natural variability and the assignment and use of Minimally Disturbed Sites (MDS) in eco-epidemiology
- The Bray-Curtis compositional dissimilarity between the observed and expected assemblages of taxa explained by exposure to multiple stress factors
- GIS-based analysis of environmental data for regional watershed risk assessment: Recent advancements in Ohio
- Key trophic interactions and sustainability assessment using a large-scale fish database and trait-based prey-predator matrices
SETAC Europe 20th Annual Meeting • May 2010 • Seville, Spain
Use the links below to view and download ecosystem diagnostics presentations from SETAC Europe 2010. If you do not have Acrobat installed on your computer, you can download it from Adobe.
You can also read about Risk Communication―the Link between Risk Assessment and Action―Poster Corner which was published in the September 30, 2010 issue of SETAC Globe.
Poster Presentations
- Development of the “golden database” and use of statistical and ecological methods to determine relative causality of impact from chemicals
- Development of spatially explicit model inputs for an eco-epidemiological analysis of chemical risks to streams for fish and aquatic invertebrates
- Data exploration of eco-epidemiological relationships for a large-scale multi-stressor database using statistical classification techniques
- Ecological impact diagnosis and naturally varying reference conditions
- Ecological effects quantified and statistically attributed to most likely causation in a multiple stress context
- Regional Spatial Analysis for Determination of Stressor-Response Relationships Based on a Comprehensive Environmental Database (Ohio, USA)
- Predicting the effects of toxic substances upon functional diversity of North‐American fish species
- Towards developing validated, ecology-based diagnostic and prognostic tools to assess ecological status in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems
- Sustainability exploration of key trophic interactions for a large-scale fish database using trait-based prey-predator matrices
Platform Presentations
Consortium Partners
Visit our partners' websites by clicking on the logos below.
Procter & Gamble Company, Cincinnati, OH
Montani Run, LLC. Kenna, WV
RIVM, Bilthoven, The Netherlands
University of Girona, Girona, Spain
