MP6 Landscape-Scale Ecological Risk Assessment
Room 18A/B, Level 4
2:10 PM - 5:30 PM, Monday, 10 November 2003
Chair: Lapustka, Larry ,
(133) The hierarchical patch dynamics paradigm (HPDP) as a multiscale framework for landscape and regional and scale ecological risk assessment.
Landis, W,
ABSTRACT- One of the thorniest issues in landscape scale ecological risk assessment is the formulation of a framework or paradigm that permits an understanding of dynamics, recognizes patch structure, and incorporates an understanding of how non-equilibrium dynamics can give rise to large scale persistent structures. The hierarchical patch dynamic paradigm (HPDP), developed by Wu and Loucks, is a robust ecological and landscape framework for constructing conceptual models. HPDP explicitly incorporates landscape events at various grain sizes and scales, incorporates patch dynamics, and fully recognizes ecological systems as complex systems. In use in ecological risk assessment, the HPDP can be applied so that effects at the molecular level can be understood within a landscape context with appropriate caveats for extrapolation and the propagation of uncertainty. The landscape and regional context of assessment and measurement endpoints is easily described using a HPDP approach. Examples of the application of HPDP to risk assessments will be presented including a conceptual model for invasive species. Incorporation of the HPDP in conceptual model development will improve the predictions made by risk assessments.
Key words: hierarchical patch dynamics paradigm, landscape ecology, ecological risk assessment, regional risk assessment