We benefit from ecosystem services (ES) everyday—the water we drink, the food we eat, even the vacation at the beach. It is widely recognized that we need to protect the ecological processes that deliver these benefits, yet ES have not yet been formally incorporated into environmental risk assessment, one of the primary methods that inform regulatory decision making. Wayne Munns discusses the reasons for and challenges to the routine inclusion of ES endpoints in ERAs. Access the article in the July 2016 issue of IEAM.

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About the Guest

Wayne R. Munns, Jr. is the Director of USEPA’s Atlantic Ecology Division in Narragansett, Rhode Island. He currently conducts research and oversees programs in the areas of ecosystem services and ecological risk assessment. He is a member of EPA’s Risk Assessment Forum, and past chair of SETAC’s Ecological Risk Assessment Advisory Group. He has advised the World Health Organization on the integration of human health and ecological risk assessment and has served on a number of interagency and international panels and working groups to advance methods to inform environmental policy and decisions. Prior to joining EPA in 1995, Wayne was a Senior Scientist, Division Manager, and Assistant Vice President for Science Applications International Corporation.

Articles Referenced in this Podcast

Munns, W. R., Rea, A. W., Suter, G. W., Martin, L., Blake-Hedges, L., Crk, T., Davis, C., Ferreira, G., Jordan, S., Mahoney, M. and Barron, M. G. 2016. Ecosystem services as assessment endpoints for ecological risk assessment. IEAM 12: 522–528.