Development of ecological archetypes and models for use in chemical risk assessment

F. De Laender & S. van den Berg

The tasks of the project are:
·       To extract representative ecological archetypes from field data that are on the one hand as simple as possible and on the other hand instrumental for the detection of baseline/reference ecosystem status and different levels of pollution and habitat type in various geographical regions. These archetypes should include the factors influencing the type of species assemblage (climate, river morphology and habitat types, water quality, etc.) at a global scale.
·       To develop the first series of trait-based ecosystem models for use in risk assessment in order to link taxon-specific toxicity data to sensitivity, vulnerability and functionality. Given the fate of most HPC products, these models will include the benthic compartment.
·       To link water and sediment exposure archetypes of typical HPC chemicals to ecosystem models to predict effects of treated and untreated sewage output on the ecological archetypes and to perform higher tier environmental risk assessments of chemicals. These model analyses should include the effects of sewage ingredients other than HCP on the species and trait assemblages and on ecosystem functioning.