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195
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Introduction
I lead a division of highly skilled and enthusiastic environmental and social scientists as the Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Atlantic Coastal Environmental Sciences Division, part of the Center for Environmental Measurement and Modeling. I conduct and lead research in the areas of risk assessment, ecosystem services, and nutrient management.
Additional affiliations
April 1995 - present
Publications
Publications (195)
A comprehensive inventory of ecosystem services across the entire Great Lakes basin is currently lacking and is needed to make informed management decisions. A greater appreciation and understanding of ecosystem services, including both use and non-use services, may have avoided misguided resource management decisions in the past that resulted in n...
From climate change to hydraulic fracturing, and from drinking water safety to wildfires, environmental challenges are changing. The United States has made substantial environmental protection progress based on media-specific and single pollutant risk-based frameworks. However, today’s environmental problems are increasingly complex and new scienti...
Roskilde University (Denmark) hosted a November 2015 workshop, Environmental Risk—Assessing and Managing Multiple Risks in a Changing World. This Focus article presents the consensus recommendations of 30 attendees from 9 countries regarding implementation of a common currency (ecosystem services) for holistic environmental risk assessment and mana...
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 serv...
The complex, widely dispersed, and cumulative environmental challenges currently facing society require holistic, transdisciplinary approaches to resolve. The concept of ecosystem services (ES) has become more widely accepted as a framework that fosters a broader systems perspective of sustainability, and can make science more responsive to the nee...
This Problem Formulation Workshop was held to gather input about research needs, challenges, and opportunities in nutrient management from a range of stakeholders working in Three Bays, on Cape Cod, and elsewhere. The statements and information captured in this report reflect the individual expert views and opinions of the workshop attendees and th...
Ecosystem services (ES ) are the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. Investigating the environment through an ES framework has gained wide acceptance in the international scientific community and is applied by policymakers to protect biodiversity and safeguard the sustainability of ecosystems. This approach can enhance the ecological and s...
Ecosystem services (ES) are the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. Investigating the environment through an ES framework has gained wide acceptance in the international scientific community and is applied by policymakers to protect biodiversity and safeguard the sustainability of ecosystems. This approach can enhance the ecological and so...
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is piloting translational science methods to fine-tune ongoing, collaborative research for the use of innovative and non-traditional nutrient reduction interventions and watershed-scale approaches to managing nonpoint source nutrient pollution. The pilot focuses on Three Bays, Cape Cod, Massachusetts w...
Communities in the U.S. are seeking innovative and cost-effective approaches to manage nutrient loading from nonpoint sources in ways that improve environmental and societal conditions. This project focuses on providing watershed-based solutions for nonpoint source nutrient loading that can support communities across the United States and beyond. O...
Active engagement with stakeholders can improve the value of risk assessments for environmental decision making by addressing three interrelated issues: transparency, objectivity, and communication. Stakeholders should be involved in risk assessments throughout the entire process―from assessment planning and problem formulation (including selection...
The ecosystem services concept is being used to frame environmental protection goals that guide management of the risks of chemicals. Ecosystem services link changes in ecological systems to the benefits received by people. The use of ecosystem services in risk assessments and the environmental protection decisions they support calls for an underst...
A comprehensive inventory of ecosystem services across the entire Great Lakes basin is currently lacking and is needed to make informed management decisions. A greater appreciation and understanding of ecosystem services, including both use and non-use services, may have avoided misguided resource management decisions in the past that resulted in n...
The ecosystem services (ES) concept can provide a comprehensive framework for considering nature’s contributions to human well-being in risk assessment (RA) and risk management of regulated stressors. It has been asserted that incorporation of ES as assessment endpoints in RA can: 1) enhance the transparency of RA results and decisions based on the...
A popular press description of a local birding hot spot.
The ecosystem services concept provides a comprehensive framework for considering ecosystems in decision making, for valuing the services they provide, and for ensuring that society can maintain a healthy and resilient natural environment now and for future generations. A global Pellston Workshop was convened by SETAC and the Ecological Society of...
The need to protect ecosystem services provided by natural systems has been recognized previously, but ecosystem services have not been formally incorporated into ecological risk assessment practice in a general way in the United States. Ecosystem service endpoints are a conceptual and analytical step beyond conventional endpoints and are intended...
Roskilde University hosted a November 2015 workshop on “Environmental Risk – Assessing and Managing Multiple Risks in a Changing World”. Thirty attendees from 9 countries developed consensus recommendations regarding: implementation of a common currency (ecosystem services) for holistic environmental risk assessment and management; improvements to...
The ecosystem services concept provides a comprehensive framework for considering ecosystems in decision making, for valuing the services they provide, and for ensuring that society can maintain a healthy and resilient natural environment now and for future generations. A global Pellston Workshop was convened by SETAC and the Ecological Society of...
Growth of human populations and increased human activity, particularly in coastal areas, increase pressure on coastal ecosystems and the ecosystem services (ES) they provide. As a means toward being able to assess the impact of multiple stressors on ES, in the present study we propose an 8-step conceptual approach for assessing effects of chemical...
The ecosystem services (ES) concept holds much promise for environmental decision making. Even so, the concept has yet to gain full traction in the decisions and policies of environmental agencies in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Here we examine the opportunities for and implications of including ES in risk assessments and the risk mana...
The objective of this background paper is to establish the technical foundation needed to (1) enhance the societal relevance and responsiveness of ecological risk assessment (ERA) in environmental decision making by incorporating ecosystem service assessment endpoints and (2) support the revision of Generic Ecological Assessment Endpoints (GEAEs) f...
Effective and efficient environmental management requires appreciation of the importance of current and future challenges facing the environment and society. Established analytics, such as comparative and cumulative risk assessment, can help to direct policy attention and inform allocation of limited resources to reduce or prevent environmental ris...
An ecological risk assessment framework was applied to characterize aquatic risks associated with hazardous waste disposal at Naval Construction Battalion Center (NCBC) Davisville, Rhode Island. An initial screening phase (I) assessed exposure and related that exposure to toxicological endpoints for bivalves, amphipods, sea urchins, and biomarker a...
There is increasing awareness that improved environmental management can be achieved by considering more explicitly the benefits that humans receive from ecosystems. In a broad sense, the contributions of ecological systems to the health and well being of people can be considered ecosystem goods and services (hereafter ecosystem services). The ecos...
Ecosystem goods and services (hereafter ES) contribute to the welfare of people and society. People benefit when decisions affecting the environment enhance ES. In many situations, multiple options or alternatives exist for the environmental decision being made. Selection amongst these alternatives – perhaps with the objective to optimize delivery...
There is increasing awareness that improved environmental management can be achieved by considering more explicitly the benefits that humans receive from ecosystems. In a broad sense, the contributions of ecological systems to the health and well being of people can be considered ecosystem goods and services (hereafter ecosystem services). The ecos...
Current U.S. EPA ecological risk assessment (ERA) guidance defines an assessment endpoint (AE) as an explicit expression of the environmental value that is to be protected, and recommends that AEs are selected based on ecological relevance, susceptibility to known or potential stressors, and relevance to management goals. Assessment endpoints consi...
There is a growing awareness within the ecological and social science communities that environmental management decisions can be improved by considering the benefits humans receive from ecosystems. Ecological risk assessment (ERA) is a science-based process that is used to evaluate the likelihood that adverse ecological effects can result from expo...
We show that a conditional probability analysis that utilizes a stressor-response model based on a logistic regression provides a useful approach for developing candidate water quality criteria from empirical data. The critical step in this approach is transforming the response data into a binary variable using a threshold that is a desirable manag...
A major emphasis of environmental monitoring and assessment programs is to characterize the condition of natural resources. When repeated through time, ecological assessments (EA) can be used to track changes in environmental condition that reflect on the efficacy of regulatory and resource protection policies. Analysis of data obtained in an EA ca...
While simulation models are used routinely by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to estimate exposure for regulatory purposes, exposure-response modeling is largely empirical. Examples include concentration-response and dose-response relationships and species sensitivity distributions. These models are used because they are familiar and easil...
The focus of ecological risk assessment (ERA) is on assessment endpoints, explicit expressions of environmental values to be protected. Traditionally, the ecological entities identified in assessment endpoints have been components of ecosystems deemed by risk assessors to be important to ecosystem structure and function – the benthic community, for...
Hazardous site management in the US includes remediation of contaminated environmental media and restoration of injured natural resources. Site remediation decisions are informed by ecological risk assessment (ERA), while restoration and compensation decisions are informed by the natural resource damage assessment process (NRDA). The focus of ERA i...
We show that probability-based environmental resource monitoring programs, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (U.S. EPA) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program, and conditional probability analysis can serve as a basis for estimating ecological risk over broad geographic areas. Under certain conditions (including appropriat...
There is growing awareness within the ecological and social science communities that improved environmental management and protection can be achieved by considering the contributions made by nature to human well-being. This perspective in part reflects a recognition that environmental science focuses largely on structural and functional elements of...
There remains little doubt that global climate change (GCC) has begun or that there is a need to proactively plan and act to reduce its potential impacts to humans and ecosystems. Whether GCC is real or not is no longer the issue – when and how to deal with its effects at a local, regional, national and global scale are. Generally, scientists invol...
In 2008, the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board report offered numerous recommendations regarding the need for clearer science policies for ecological risk assessment with emphasis on environmental protection goals, problem formulation, and the risk assessment – risk management interface. To address these recommendations, key science policy literature...
Limitations on currently used models in ecological risk assessment have spawned demand for spatially explicit exposure models that hold promise of improving risk estimates. However, few example applications and a lack of compiled information about what is available may have affected use. These models offer a scientifically sound and technically inn...
This report was prepared by a Technical Panel of the U.S. EPA’s Risk Assessment Forum to document an Intra-Agency Colloquium of ecological assessors. The impetus for the colloquium was a report of the Ecological Process and Effects Committee of the Science Advisory Board (SAB). That report presented the Committee’s view of the state of practice of...
Ecological risk assessments typically are organized using the processes of planning (a discussion among managers, stakeholders, and analysts to clarify ecosystem management goals and assessment scope) and problem formulation (evaluation of existing information to generate hypotheses about adverse ecological effects, select assessment endpoints, and...
A SETAC Technical Workshop titled “The Nexus Between Ecological Risk Assessment and Natural Resource Damage Assessment Under CERCLA: Understanding and Improving the Common Scientific Underpinnings,” was held 18–22 August 2008 in Gregson, Montana, USA, to examine the linkage, nexus, and overlap between ecological risk assessment (ERA) and natural re...
Background/Question/Methods The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently conducting a joint review of the existing secondary National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and sulfur (SOx). As discussed in the Clean Air Act (CAA), the purpose of a secondary NAAQS is to “protect the public welfare from any...
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a mission and regulatory mandate to protect human health and the environment. EPA’s primary role is to implement environmental laws by developing and enforcing national regulation. Cogent to the goals of this workshop, key environmental laws that EPA administers include the Clean Water Act, the Cle...
Hazardous site management in the United States includes remediation of contaminated environmental media and restoration of injured natural resources. Site remediation decisions are informed by ecological risk assessment (ERA), whereas restoration and compensation decisions are informed by the natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) process. Despi...
In June 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Assessment Forum convened a technical workshop on population-level ecological risk assessment to consider whether the current state of knowledge about this subject was sufficiently mature to develop guidance, and if so, to help to identify key actions needed to produce such guidance. Th...
The choice of levels of biological organization reflected in ecological risk assessment (ERA) is receiving increasing attention. Most ERAs conducted for chemicals by the U.S. EPA focus on organism-level attributes (e.g., survival, growth, or reproduction) as assessment endpoints as opposed to population-level attributes (e.g., abundance, age-class...
A SETAC Technical Workshop titled “The Nexus Between Ecological Risk Assessment and Natural Resource Damage Assessment Under CERCLA: Understanding and Improving the Common Scientific Underpinnings,” was held 18–22 August 2008 in Gregson, Montana, USA, to examine the linkage, nexus, and overlap between ecological risk assessment (ERA) and natural re...
The Risk Assessment Work Group focused on six charge questions related to CHABS, cyanobacteria and their toxins. The charge questions covered the following topics: Research needed to reduce uncertainty in establishing health based guidelines. Research that minimize the cost and maximize the benefits of various regulatory approaches. Exposure pathwa...
Environmental and public health policy continues to evolve in response to new and complex social, economic and environmental drivers. Globalization and centralization of commerce, evolving patterns of land use (e.g., urbanization, deforestation), and technological advances in such areas as manufacturing and development of genetically modified foods...
Risk assessment is a four–stage process used in evaluating the impact of contaminants on the well being of individuals, populations and/or the physical environment. As defined by the National Academy of Sciences (1983), the four components are as follows: hazard identification, dose– response assessment, exposure assessment and risk characterizatio...
Models support several aspects of chemical risk assessment, including characterizing exposures (existing or predicted) and predicting (or diagnosing) the effects of exposures on assessment endpoints. A decade ago, McCarty and Mackay (1993) suggested that science’s ability to model and predict the fate of chemicals was markedly improved. Similar arg...
The deliberations of the workshop made it clear that the intention, and often requirement, for protecting populations exist in the laws and regulatory processes of many jurisdictions. Further, the science supporting assessment of risks to population is rapidly developing in North America, Europe, and Asia and is already sufficient to support a dive...
Introduction, L.W. Barnthouse, W.R. Munns, Jr., and M.T. Sorensen THE MANAGEMENT-SCIENCE INTERFACE Managing Risk to Ecologic Populations, G.R. Biddinger, P. Calow, P. Delorme, G. Harris, B. Hope, B.L. Lin, M. Sorensen, and P. van den Brink Population Protection Goals, C. Menzie, N. Bettinger, A. Fritz, L. Kapustka, H. Regan, V. Moller, and H. Noel...
Persistent organic pollutants and mercury are likely to bioaccumulate in biological components of the environment, including fish and wildlife. The complex and long-term dynamics involved with bioaccumulation are often represented with models. Current scientific developments in this area include how to adequately represent diet, dermal, and gill ex...
Conducting an integrated analysis to evaluate the societal and ecological consequences of environmental management actions requires decisions about data collection, theory development, modeling and valuation. Approaching these decisions in coordinated fashion necessitates a systematic planning process to (a) examine the nature of the environmental...
We show that probability-based environmental resource monitoring programs, such as U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (U.S. EPA) Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program EMAP) can be analyzed with a conditional probability analysis (CPA) to conduct quantitative probabilistic ecological risk assessments over broad geographic areas. Under...
