General Principles of Ecological Risk Assessment

Book excerpt: The book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the most modern concepts and tools needed to perform prospective and retrospective ecological risk assessments of environmental stressors, and will therefore be useful for students, teachers, scientists, regulators, and professionals in environmental consulting. Experimental methods and predictive theoretical approaches are described to evaluate and estimate the exposure of ecosystems to environmental stressors and to investigate their effects on different hierarchical levels of ecological organization (individuals, populations, communities, ecosystems). Specific sections are dedicated to the persistence and bioavailability of contaminants, bioaccumulation models, and the mechanisms of global pollution. Risk assessment procedures for the most relevant classes of traditional and emerging stressors, including physical agents, are described in detail in specific sections. Finally, regulatory instruments and public perception of risk are discussed.