Incorporating climate change model projections into ecological risk assessments to help inform risk management and adaptation strategies: Synthesis of a SETAC Pellston Workshop®

Abstract

The impacts of global climate change are not yet well integrated with the estimates of the impacts of chemicals on the environment. This is evidenced by the lack of consideration in national or international reports that evaluate the impacts of climate change and chemicals on ecosystems, and the relatively few peer‐reviewed publications that have focused on this interaction. In response, a 2011 Pellston Workshop® was held on this issue and resulted in seven publications in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Yet, these publications did not move the field towards climate change and chemicals as important factors together in research or policy making. Here we summarize the outcomes of a second Pellston Workshop® on this topic held in 2022, that included climate scientists, environmental toxicologists, chemists, and ecological risk assessors from 12 countries and various sectors. Participants were charged to assess where climate models can be applied to evaluating potential exposure and ecological effects at geographical and temporal scales suitable for ecological risk assessment, and thereby be incorporated into adaptive risk management strategies. We highlight results from the workshop's five publications included in the special series “Incorporating Global Climate Change into Ecological Risk Assessments: Strategies, Methods and Examples”. We end this summary with the overall conclusions and recommendations from participants.

Incorporation of climate change into a multiple stressor risk assessment for the Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) population in the Yakima River, Washington, USA

“…It should be further investigated if models already developed for other risk assessments can be similarly modified. The other studies in this series demonstrating approaches to incorporating climate change into probabilistic risk assessment serve as additional examples of this type of study (Cains et al, 2023;Mentzel, Nathan, et al, 2023;Stahl et al, 2023;Mentzel, Martínez-Megías, et al, 2024;Oldenkamp et al, 2023).…”

“…An outcome of the 2022 Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Pellston Workshop on incorporating climate change predictions into ecological risk assessment (Stahl et al, 2023) was the question of how to integrate ecological risk assessments that focus on contaminants with the environmental alterations from climate projections. This article is one of three case studies (Cains et al, 2023;Mentzel, Nathan, et al, 2023) and an overview article .…”

Environmental management cycles for chemicals and climate change, EMC4: A new conceptual framework contextualizing climate and chemical risk assessment and management

“…This article is part of a series (Landis et al, 2023;Mentzel et al, 2023;Moe et al, 2023;Oldenkamp et al, 2023;Stahl et al, 2023) produced at a Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Pellston ® workshop in June 2022. The workshop goal and, more specifically, this article was to address the concern that potential environmental and ecological impacts associated with a changing climate were not being considered in national or international chemicals management processes.…”

“…al., 2023;Moe et al, 2023;Oldenkamp et al, 2023;Stahl et al, 2023), our task was to Three case studies (e.g., global, regional, local) provide example applications of these questions. The answers to each question are not meant to be exhaustive but illustrative.…”

Integrating climate model projections into environmental risk assessment: A probabilistic modeling approach

“…To bridge this gap, a SETAC Pellston workshop ® was organized in June 2022 to stimulate collaboration between climate modelers and environmental risk experts (Stahl Jr. et al, 2023). The participants identified and discussed numerous examples of ecosystems where environmental risks of chemicals are known to be influenced by climate change.…”