Ecological risk assessment and food webs: multiple stressor effects on biodiversity and ecosystem function

生态风险评估是用来确定人类活动对环境造成不利生态影响的可能性。大多数管制毒性研究衡量的是化学品对单个生物体的影响，而没有考虑对生物组织更高层次的影响，包括生物多样性、生态系统功能和生态系统服务。我们的假设是，通过将监管决策建立在标准化条件下暴露于单一化学品的敏感分类群的个人水平端点上，提供生态系统服务的生态系统的生物多样性和生态功能也将得到保护。虽然以标准毒性研究为基础的管制评估旨在保护生态生物多样性，但这些评估并非旨在预测，也没有任何支持性证据表明它们对生态系统功能有多大的保护作用。制定方法，使我们能够将经常测量的内容（即单一化学品对个体生物的影响）外推到我们想要保护的内容（即支持生态系统服务提供的生物多样性和生态系统功能），并在更现实的多压力源背景下考虑化学品的风险。这是生态毒理学研究的一个重要而基本的目标，特别是在全球气候变化的背景下。

Ecological risk assessment is used to determine the likelihood of adverse ecological effects resulting from human impacts on the environment. Most regulatory toxicity studies measure the effect of chemicals on individual organisms and do not consider impacts on higher levels of biological organisation, including biodiversity, ecosystem function and ecosystem services. The assumption is that by basing the regulatory decision on individual-level endpoints of sensitive taxa exposed to single chemicals under standardised conditions, the biodiversity and ecological functions of ecosystems that deliver ecosystem services will also be protected. Although regulatory assessments based on standard toxicity studies are intended to be protective of ecological biodiversity, they are not intended to be predictive nor is there any supportive evidence of how protective they are of ecosystem function There is a need, therefore, to develop approaches that enable the extrapolation of what has been frequently measured (i.e. the effects of single chemicals on individual organisms) to what we want to protect (i.e. biodiversity and ecosystem functions underpinning ecosystem service delivery) and that consider the risk of chemicals in a more realistic, multi-stressor context. This is an important and fundamental objective for ecotoxicological research, especially in the context of global climate change.