Using US Natural Resource Damage Assessment to understand the environmental consequences of the war in Ukraine.

Military conflict has led to large-scale environmental changes throughout recorded human history. Pollution from war contaminates surface water and soil, releases large volumes of greenhouse gases into the air, and directly harms wildlife and biodiversity. Although much is understood about the human toll of war, numerous examples of postwar reconstruction suggest that underestimating the severity of wartime damages to ecosystems and natural resources results in prolonged or incomplete recovery of the environment. A data-driven scientific approach closely aligned with the evidentiary rules standard in western legal systems is needed to quantify the injury, destruction, or loss of natural resources and inform the estimation of the reparations necessary to restore the environment fully. The US Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process and the European Union environmental liability directive are well-suited for a systematic and science-based analysis of the ecological injuries incurred during armed conflicts. Both approaches include a preliminary damage assessment process, which could be initiated during wartime to document and predict the likely severity of the injuries and prioritize, in advance, rehabilitation activities after the cessation of hostilities. In this article, we refer to news reporting of Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine as an example of how a preliminary damage assessment could be conducted remotely and later modified by in-country inspections and analysis to verify and refine the scale of injuries and to develop reparation proposals. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2023;19:366-375. © 2022 SETAC.

Environmental monitoring tools and strategies in salmon net-pen aquaculture.

As global salmon production accelerates in response to higher consumer demand for seafood, so does the need for sophisticated monitoring strategies to enable and maintain ethically sound, productive, and environmentally friendly production of fish. Innovative technologies are needed to ensure proper water quality, react to unfavorable hydrodynamic conditions, monitor for changes in fish health, and minimize ecological interactions with indigenous aquatic life, including fish escapes. Automated sensors connected wirelessly to data stations, visualization aids, and acoustic and physical tagging technologies are emerging tools capable of detecting environmental stress and its associated behavioral changes in farmed fish. Computer modeling of the monitoring data collected from a single salmon farm or collection of farms sharing a data network can be used to spot environmental trends vital for anticipating some of the consequences of climate change. Environmental regulations governing salmon farming in coastal areas are becoming more stringent in response to public pressures to protect coastal and ocean resources and to provide for multipurpose use of marine resources. As net-pen salmon aquaculture expands globally, new technologies will be essential to collect and interpret the anticipated larger volumes of data needed to meet these stringent regulatory requirements and to safeguard the high investment costs inherent in salmon farming. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:950-963. © SETAC.

Sources of 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin and Other Dioxins in Lower Passaic River, New Jersey, Sediments.

Elevated levels of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), and other contaminants have been reported in lower Passaic River, New Jersey, USA, sediments since the 1980s. Nearly 8000 surficial and buried sediment samples have been collected along the 17 miles (27.4 km) of river and analyzed for various contaminants, including the seventeen 2,3,7,8-substituted PCDD/F congeners. Principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis reveal spatial heterogeneity in the distribution of dioxin congeners, with respect to both sediment depth and river mile. Polytopic vector analysis resolved 11 unique 2,3,7,8-substituted dioxin congener profiles in the river sediment. The profiles were consistent with multiple dioxin source types, including manufacture of certain dyes and pigments, chlorinated industrial chemicals, hexachlorophene, polychlorinated biphenyls, waste disposal and incineration, the production and use of 2,4,5-trichorophenol (2,4,5-TCP), and other industrial processes. The distribution of dioxin profiles in surface and buried river sediments is indicative of multiple inputs of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD) and other dioxins at different locations along the lower Passaic River. These findings are inconsistent with historical claims that a former herbicide manufacturing plant in the lower reach of the river is the only significant 2,3,7,8-TCDD source and consistent with evidence of several different inputs associated with the production, use, and/or disposal of 2,4,5-TCP at several locations along the lower Passaic River. Environ Toxicol Chem 2021;40:1499-1519. © 2020 SETAC.

Current practices and knowledge supporting oil spill risk assessment in the Arctic.

Oil spill response (OSR) in the Arctic marine environment conducted as part of operational planning and preparedness supporting exploration and development is most successful when knowledge of the ecosystem is readily available and applicable in an oil spill risk assessment framework. OSR strategies supporting decision-making during the critical period after a spill event should be explicit about the environmental resources potentially at risk and the efficacy of OSR countermeasures that best protect sensitive and valued resources. At present, there are 6 prominent methods for spill impact mitigation assessment (SIMA) in the Arctic aimed at supporting OSR and operational planning and preparedness; each method examines spill scenarios and identifies response strategies best suited to overcome the unique challenges posed by polar ecosystems and to minimize potential long-term environmental consequences. The different methods are grounded in classical environmental risk assessment and the net environmental benefit analysis (NEBA) approach that emerged in the 1990s after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The different approaches share 5 primary assessment elements (oil physical and chemical properties, fate and transport, exposure, effects and consequence analysis). This paper highlights how the different Arctic methods reflect this common risk assessment framework and share a common need for oil spill science relevant to Arctic ecosystems. An online literature navigation portal, developed as part of the 5-year Arctic Oil Spill Response Technologies Joint Industry Programme, complements the different approaches currently used in the Arctic by capturing the rapidly expanding body of scientific knowledge useful to evaluating exposure, vulnerability and recovery of the Arctic ecosystem after an oil spill.

A plea for patience and research on surface water connectivity in the U.S. Clean Water Act.

While winter has proven to be one of the coldest and snowiest seasons on record throughout much of the United States, the coming summer could be unseasonably warm in Washington, DC if the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) successfully implements its reinterpretation of one of the nation's proudest environmental regulatory accomplishments, the Clean Water Act (CWA). In 2013, USEPA and the US Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) bypassed the traditional scientific review and public comment process by submitting to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a proposed rule establishing a broad interpretation of the scope of the forty year old CWA. In the US, the OMB is tasked, among other duties, with evaluating the significance of agency policies and proposed regulations on the national economy. Integr Environ Assess Manag © 2014 SETAC.

Sediment quality guidelines: challenges and opportunities for improving sediment management.

During the International Conference on Deriving Environmental Quality Standards for the Protection of Aquatic Ecosystems held in Hong Kong in December 2011, an expert group, comprising scientists, government officials, and consultants from four continents, was formed to discuss the important scientific and regulatory challenges with developing sediment quality guidelines (SQGs). We identified the problems associated with SQG development and made a series of recommendations to ensure that the methods being applied were scientifically defensible and internationally applicable. This document summarizes the key findings from the expert group. To enable evaluation of current SQG derivation and application systems, a feedback mechanism is required to communicate confounding factors and effects in differing environments, while field validation is necessary to gauge the effectiveness of SQG values in sediment quality assessments. International collaboration is instrumental to knowledge exchange and method advancement, as well as promotion of 'best practices'. Since the paucity of sediment toxicity data poses the largest obstacle to improving current SQGs and deriving new SQGs, a standardized international database should be established as an information resource for sediment toxicity testing and monitoring data. We also identify several areas of scientific research that are needed to improve sediment quality assessment, including determining the importance of dietary exposure in sediment toxicity, mixture toxicity studies, toxicity screening of emerging chemicals, how climate change influence sediments and its biota, and possible use of new toxicity study approaches such as high throughput omic-based toxicity screenings.