The concept of resilience has been discussed in ecology since the 1970s, but practitioners are now applying the concept to improve accuracy and realism in ecological risk assessments. The September 2018 issue of IEAM features invited commentaries that discuss ecological resilience and what it means in practice for risk and impact assessments. Join us as we talk with authors Marco Vighi and Andreu Rico about how to incorporate resilience into ecological risk assessment, and the challenges and opportunities facing the regulatory community.
Read Vighi and Rico’s article “The concept of Resilience in Ecological Risk Assessment: Scientific and Regulatory Issues” in the September 2018 issue of IEAM.
About the Guests
Marco Vighi was professor of Ecology, Applied Ecology and Ecotoxicology at the Universities of Milano and Milano-Bicocca. He retired in November 2015. Since December 2015 he is principal investigator at the IMDEA Water Institute, Alcalà de Henares, Spain. Since the early 1980s, his research activity was mainly oriented toward ecotoxicology. Together with Davide Calamari, he founded the School of Ecotoxicology at the University of Milano. In the field of ecotoxicology, he developed several different, experimental and theoretical, research lines related to the different component of ecological risk assessment: exposure assessment, effect assessment, risk characterization. Some of the most relevant research lines are: environmental toxicology of micropollutants on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems at different levels of organization; Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR) for organic chemicals; environmental distribution and fate of contaminants (monitoring and modeling); long range transport of persistent organic pollutants (POPs); effects and environmental fate of complex mixtures; mapping ecological risk assessment at different scale level using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Vighi’s career is characterized by the strict connection between the scientific activity and its regulatory application. Since 1991, he has been continuously a member of Scientific Advisory Committees on Toxicology and Ecotoxicology of the European Commission (CSTE, CSTEE, SCHER, SCHEER). He has published more than 160 scientific papers and books on applied ecology and on ecotoxicology. Vighi was the recipient of the 2018 SETAC Europe Environmental Education Award.
Andreu Rico currently works a post-doc researcher at the Ecotoxicology group of the IMDEA Water Institute (Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain). Previously he worked at the Aquatic Ecology Department of Wageningen University and at Wageningen Environmental Research (formerly Alterra). He has developed models for the fate and exposure assessment of chemicals, participated in several chemical and biological river monitoring campaigns, and conducted laboratory and semi-field ecotoxicological experiments in temperate and tropical regions. His current interests lie in the identification of multiple stressors affecting aquatic ecosystems in the Mediterranean region, the quantification of ecological resilience, and the assessment of chemical effects on aquatic populations and communities. Andreu participates as lecturer in two masters courses related to water quality and environmental toxicology at the University of Alcalá and the University Rey Juan Carlos (Spain). He is an active member of SETAC and forms part of the editorial board of the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (ET&C). In 2015, he won the ET&C Best Paper Award for his publication “Evaluating aquatic invertebrate vulnerability to insecticides based on intrinsic sensitivity, biological traits, and toxic mode of action.”
Articles Referenced in this Podcast
Vighi M and Rico A. 2018. The Concept of Resilience in Ecological Risk Assessment: Scientific and Regulatory Issues. Integr Environ Assess Manag 14: 581-585. doi: 10.1002/ieam.4080
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