Ecological Risk Assessment

Pandion staff have prepared ecological risk assessments for a wide range of environmental problems, including the effects of pesticides and other contaminants on birds, effects of boat traffic on manatee survival, and effects of wind turbines on migrating raptors and songbirds.

Pandion has also designed and conducted training programs in ecological risk assessment for state, federal, and international decision makers. Pandion staff are professionally active in the field of ecological risk assessment including serving on the National Wind Coordinating Committee (NWCC) Wildlife Workgroup Risk Assessment Subgroup and as co-editor in chief of the international journal titled, Environmental Bioindicators.

Pandion has used standard ecological risk assessment methods including fate and transport models, effects models, and integrated exposure and effect models but also has incorporated GIS methods in ecological risk assessments. Pandion’s Landscape Ecology GIS Toolbox (LEGIST) can be used for ecological risk assessments to characterize and spatially quantify exposure conditions of natural resources and the spatial extent of of the predicted ecological effects.

About Ecological Risk Assessment
Ecological risk assessment as a decision-making process has been used in industry and government since the 1980s. Specifically, ecological risk assessment evaluates the likelihood that adverse ecological effects may occur or are occurring as a result of exposure of ecological systems to one or more stressors. It is a process for organizing and analyzing data, information, assumptions, and uncertainties to evaluate the likelihood of adverse ecological effects (Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment, Published on May 14, 1998, Federal Register 63(93):26846-26924)

Ecological risk assessment differs from other environmental assessment processes by providing critical information for environmental decision-making and by giving risk managers a logical approach for considering available scientific information along with the other factors they need to consider (e.g., social, legal, political, or economic) in selecting a course of action. Ecological risk assessment is generally comprised of six basic steps: 1) Problem Formulation, 2) Ecological Effect, 3) Characterization, 4) Exposure Characterization, 5) Risk Characterization, and 6) Risk Management.