Demographic Toxicity Methods in Ecological Risk Assessment (with CD-ROM)

This edited volume collects population and metapopulation models for a wide variety of species, focusing on the use of models in population-level risk assessment for toxins. Each chapter of Demographic Toxicity describes the application of a population model to one species, with the aim ofdemonstrating how various life history characteristics of the species are incorporated into the model, how ecotoxicological impacts are modeled, and how the results of the model has been or can be used in risk assessment. The model in each chapter is implemented in RAMAS software, which uses matrixmodeling of population dynamics. RAMAS software is believed to be the most powerful tool ever invented for this task.Demographic Toxicity includes a CD that contains a demo version of the program and the data files for each species. The book explains how to use these specific tools for modeling,analysis, and interpretation of data. Demographic Toxicity provides a major review of current knowledge on population dynamics in different species, representing both terrestrial and aquatic environments.

H. Resit Akcakaya is a professor at Stony Brook University in New York. His current research interests include risk assessment, population viability analysis, and the effects of landscape dynamics on species persistence. One of the principal architects of the RAMAS library of software, he developed models for integrating metapopulation and landscape dynamics, and for incorporating uncertainty into IUCN criteria for threatened species.