ECOFRAM

ECOFRAM Terestrial Report. United States Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Fate and Effects Division, Washington, DC (1999). 

Defining stopping rules in advance is undoubtedly difficult in 1998 Suter wrote that Step 6 of the DQO process had never been completed for an ecological risk assessment. Unless this obstacle can be overcome, frequent consultation between risk assessors and managers will be needed during each assessment to avoid over-refining it (ECOFRAM 1999). 

ECOFRAM] Ecological Committee on FIFRA Risk Assessment Methods. 1999. ECOFRAM Terrestrial Draft Report. Ecological Committee on FIFRA Risk Assessment Methods. 

FIGURE 8.1 The risk curve lines shown represent thresholds between different types of decisions (based on ECOFRAM 1999a and 1999b). These thresholds would be determined by decision makers and may move location subject to other factors that affect the decision (e.g., pesticide benefits). The bottom graph shows an example risk curve with uncertainty bounds. The curve clearly fits within the acceptable risk category however the upper uncertainty bound does not, indicating a need for risk mitigation or further refinement of the risk assessment. 

Hendley el al., 2001 Maund et al., 2001 Solomon and Takacs, 2001 Travis and Hendley, 2001) and has been put forward as a procedure applicable to risk assessment of pesticides for regulatory purposes (USEPA, 1998 ECOFRAM, 1999). 

ECOFRAM (1999). ECOFRAM Aquatic and Terrestrial Final Draft Reports, http //www.epa.gov/oppefedl/ecorisk/... 

Suter et al. 1993 Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry [SETAC] 1994 European Union 1997 Ecological Committee on FIFRA Risk Assessment Methods [ECOFRAM] 1999 Campbell et al. 1999). The initial use of conservative assessment criteria (i.e., err on the side of caution) allows substances that do not present a risk to be eliminated from the risk assessment process early, thus allowing the focus of resources and expertise to be shifted to potentially more problematic substances or situations. As one ascends through the tiers, the estimates of exposure and effects become more realistic with the acquisition of more accurate and/or representative data, and uncertainty in the extrapolation of effects is thus reduced or at least better characterized. Likewise, the methods of extrapolation may become more sophisticated as one ascends through the tiers (Figure 1.2). 

Each of the classes of models discussed above can be used for different kinds of extrapolations, including extrapolation of biochemical or mortality effects observed in individuals to effects at the population level, extrapolation of results obtained from semifield experiments to the real field, and integration of population and landscape characteristics to landscape-level population consequences of chemical stressors. For additional information on population models and their use in ecological risk assessment, the reader is directed to the reviews found in Sauer (1995), Caswell (1996), ECOFRAM (1999), Newman (2001), Pastorok et al. (2002), Regan (2002), Bartell et al. (2003), and Sauer and Pendleton (1995 2003). 

The general disadvantages of the taxonomy-based metrics are that they are time consuming and that the analysis of the community composition requires identification expertise, which may not be available. According to the WFD, MS shall identify the appropriate taxonomic level for biological quality elements required to achieve adequate confidence and precision in the classification. The EU FP-5 project ECOFRAME tested a simplified taxonomic metric for phytoplankton based on the domination... 

Moss, B., Stephen, D., Alvarez. C.. Becaies. E., Van de Bund, W., Collings, S.E. et al. (2003) The determination of ecological quahty in shallow lakes - a tested system (ECOFRAME) for implementation of the European Water Framework Directive, Aquatic Consen ation Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. 13, pp. 507-549. 

Over the last 10 years a lot of efforts have been made to implement probabilistic methods for environmental risk assessments (ERA) into regulatory decisionmaking schemes. ECOFRAME in the US (www.epa.gov/oppefedl/ecorisk) was the first and largest project in this area, the EU-project EUFRAM (vww.eufram. com) is a comparable initiative. Whereas on the effect side, several examples exist where species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) were used for regulatory decisionmaking, comparable cases on the exposure side are rare. 

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