Ecological harm and economic damages of chemical contamination to linked aquatic-terrestrial food webs: a study-design tool for practitioners
Open accessAbstract
Contamination of aquatic ecosystems can have cascading effects on terrestrial consumers by altering the availability and quality of aquatic insect prey. Comprehensive assessment of these indirect food-web effects of contaminants on natural resources and their associated services necessitates using both ecological and economic tools. In the present study we present an aquatic-terrestrial assessment tool (AT2), including ecological and economic decision trees, to aid practitioners and researchers in designing contaminant effect studies for linked aquatic-terrestrial insect-based food webs. The tool is tailored to address the development of legal claims by the US Department of the Interior's Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Program, which aims to restore natural resources injured by oil spills and hazardous substance releases into the environment. Such cases require establishing, through scientific inquiry, the existence of natural resource injury as well as the determination of the monetary or in-kind project-based damages required to restore this injury. However, this tool is also useful to researchers interested in questions involving the effects of contaminants on linked aquatic-terrestrial food webs. Stylized cases exemplify how application of AT2 can help practitioners and researchers design studies when the contaminants present at a site are likely to lead to injury of terrestrial aerial insectivores through loss of aquatic insect prey and/or dietary contaminant exposure. Designing such studies with ecological endpoints and economic modeling inputs in mind will increase the relevance and cost-effectiveness of studies, which can in turn improve the outcomes of cases and studies involving the ecological effects of contaminants on food webs. Environ Toxicol Chem 2023;42:2029-2039. Published 2023. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of SETAC.
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Many organisms, such as many insects, spend part of their lifetime in the aquatic and part in the terrestrial environment.
“This distinction does, however, not do justice to the life cycle of the many organisms that spend part of their lifetime in the aquatic and part of it in the terrestrial environment, such as many insects (Kraus et al., 2023).”
From Strong bioaccumulation of a wide variety of PFAS in a contaminated terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem (2025) · cites this paper as Kraus et al., 2023
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- Kraus, J. M., Walters, D. M., & Mills, M. A. (2020). Contaminants and eco- logical Subsidies, Springer Nature.
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Strong bioaccumulation of a wide variety of PFAS in a contaminated terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem
Gkika, I. S., Arie Vonk, J., ter Laak, T. L., van Gestel, C. A. M., Dijkstra, J., Groffen, T., Bervoets, L., & Kraak, M. H. S. (2025) · Environment International · doi:10.1016/j.envint.2025.109629 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
- Authors
- Kraus, J. M., Skrabis, K., Ciparis, S., Isanhart, J., Kenney, A., & Hinck, J. E.
- Affiliations
- United States Geological Survey (US)
- United States Department of the Interior (US)
- United States Fish and Wildlife Service (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kraus, Johanna M.
- Venue
- Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2023-03-15
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 2029-2039
- ISSN
- 0730-7268 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-8618
- OpenAlex
- W4324309208
- Cited by
- 9
- References
- 61
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 5 · 2023: 2
- FWCI
- 1.03
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of the Interior
- U.S. Geological Survey
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Environmental Toxicology and Ecotoxicology
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Freshwater macroinvertebrate diversity and ecology
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Mercury impact and mitigation studies
- Keywords
- chemical pollution, natural resource damage assessment, economic damage, ecological harm, decision tree, research design, oil spills, hazardous substance releases, ecosystem services
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Insecta, Ecosystem, Food Chain
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