Who Should Attend:  Personnel from Fish and Wildlife Service (including environmental contaminants specialists and Refuge biologists) and other Department of the Interior Federal and State personnel working on projects that require a practical understanding of ecological risk assessment and the environmental decision-making process.

Length:  5days/36 hours

Objectives:  By the end of this session, the participant will be able to:

• Identify uses, benefits and limitations of ecological risk assessments;
• Evaluate the suitability of the assessment and measurement endpoints and the overall problem formulation, to maximize protection of potentially affected natural resources;
• Identify the data necessary to describe the environmental setting;
• Using data on the nature and extent of contamination, determine data gaps and quality, and describe the steps used to develop a list of contaminants of concern;
• Integrate information from the environmental setting and contaminant of concern distribution to develop a conceptual model;
• Use the conceptual model to select suitable assessment and measurement endpoints and determine the applicability of exposure models;
• Using information from the analysis phase, interpret validity of data, methods, and results used to characterize the exposure and effects portions of an ecological risk assessment; and
• Evaluate the integration of the exposure and effects assessment to calculate and characterize risk.