Abstract
Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) is an approach to place-based ecological risk assessment that is currently under development by EPA's Office of Research and Development. The pilot assessment will be done for the mid-Atlantic region and builds on data collected for the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program. ReVA is being developed to identify those ecosystems most vulnerable to being lost or degraded in the next 5 to 50 years and to elucidate which stressors cause the greatest risk to ecosystem goods and services. The goal here is not exact predictions, but an early warning system to identify and prioritize the undesirable environmental changes we should expect over the next few decades. As such, ReVA represents a new risk paradigm for EPA that will require innovative approaches to combine existing knowledge, focus new research, and synthesize many types of information into a meaningful assessment designed to inform environmental decision-makers about future environmental risk.
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Smith, E.R. An Overview of EPA's Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) Program. Environ Monit Assess 64, 9–15 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006465814700
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006465814700