What could be a relevant and cost & time effective tools-set for ecosystem risk assessment strategies ?
Résumé
Socio-economic development and sustainable development politic programs are nowadays link to a sharp increase in performing ecosystems risk assessment (ERA) studies in UE countries. Some relevant methodologies have previously been proposed in order to give consensual guidances and directives in this field. Each states that, depending on the studies context, those assessments should be focused on the biological targets of one or more of the three inland environmental compartments (aquatic, terrestrial, air). This leads to usually describe ERA studies as an expensive and time consuming work, and in several cases one could question the relevancy of such extensive investigations. Many biological assessment tools from individuals bioassays to in situ studies are used in this field but few works were aimed to suggest a generic, scientifically and environmentally relevant and cost-time effective tools-set for ERA. Based on previous studies and our experience in the field of environmental risk assessment, we propose a decision tree taking into account the balance between time, cost and relevancy of various biological tools, including both ecotoxicological and ecological point of view. We also suggest that biological tools and environmental monitoring cannot be dissociated in an ERA strategies. Taking into account of this complementarity, we discuss how these tools could be selected and we finally propose an optimal base-set assessment package for ERA on the model of required data set for new existing substances in the European regulation. We think that this work is the next challenge in the way to further define consensual ERA strategies and methodologies.