Development of continental scale multimedia contaminant fate models: Integrating GIS

Abstract

The incentives and approaches for modelling chemical fate at a continental scale are discussed and reviewed. It is suggested that a multi-media model consisting of some 20-30 regions, each of which contains typically seven environmental compartments represents a reasonable compromise between the issues of the need for detailed resolution, avoidance of excessive data demands and inherent complexity and transparency. Strategies adopted in compiling the Berkley-Trent (BETR) model for North America are discussed and used to illustrate the issues of selecting appropriate number and nature of segments, treatment of air and water flows and the acquisition of environmental data. It is suggested that GIS software can play a valuable role in gathering and processing such data and in the display and interpretation of the results of the model assessment. The BETR model will be a useful tool for describing the nature of persistence and long-range transport of chemicals of concern in the North American environment.

A first European scale multimedia fate modelling of BDE-209 from 1970 to 2020

“…Chemical fate and behaviour are described using fugacity (f, Pa), which is related to concentration (C, mol/m 3 ) by the proportionality constant, Z (mol/m 3 ·Pa) the fugacity capacity specific to the chemical, environmental compartment and temperature. Full details of model description can be found in Mackay (2001 and Woodfine et al (2001). The model uses the physical-chemical properties of BDE-209; molecular weight, vapour pressure, aqueous solubility and partition coefficients, compiled from the scientific literature and presented in Table S1.…”

A method of urban ecological risk assessment: combining the multimedia fugacity model and GIS

“…Earlier studies have focused on chemical spatial distributions in relatively small areas, for example, river basins in the United States (the Connecticut River Basin) and Europe (the River Rhine Basin) (Ares et al 1998;Calliera et al 1999;Barra et al 2000;Coulibaly et al 2004;Hollander et al 2006;Luo et al 2007a, b). On a larger scale, the Berkeley-Trent North American Contaminant Fate Model (BETR North America Model) was combined with GIS to simulate the long-range transport of chemicals Woodfine et al 2001;Prevedouros et al 2004). …”

Dynamic modeling of chemical fate and transport in multimedia environments at watershed scale—I: Theoretical considerations and model implementation

“…Most of these applications were designed to describe the steadystate response to chemical inputs (so-called level III models), and treat the entire simulation domain as a unit environment without spatial variations. There is a small, but growing, number of multimedia environmental fate models that consider more accurate descriptions of the environment and analyze chemical dynamics Woodfine et al, 2001;Sweetman et al, 2002Sweetman et al, , 2004Coulibaly et al, 2004a,b). However, these models do not support the utilization of time-dependent environmental parameters such as temperature, wind, precipitation, and water flows.…”