Digital Commons Network^™

Predicting Impacts Of Chemicals From Organisms To Ecosystem Service Delivery: A Case Study Of Insecticide Impacts On A Freshwater Lake, Nika Galic, Chris J. Salice, Bjorn Birnir, Randall J.F. Bruins, Virginie Ducrot, Henriette I. Jager, Andrew Kanarek, Roberto Pastorok, Richard Rebarber, Pernille Thorbek, Valery E. Forbes

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

Assessing and managing risks of anthropogenic activities to ecological systems is necessary to ensure sustained delivery of ecosystem services for future generations. Ecological models provide a means of quantitatively linking measured risk assessment end points with protection goals, by integrating potential chemical effects with species life history, ecological interactions, environmental drivers and other potential stressors. Here we demonstrate how an ecosystem modeling approach can be used to quantify insecticide-induced impacts on ecosystem services provided by a lake from toxicity data for organism-level endpoints. We used a publicly available aquatic ecosystem model AQUATOX that integrates environmental fate of chemicals and their …