The need for standardization in ecological modeling for decision support: Lessons from ecological risk assessment

Ecological models can be powerful tools to inform environmental decision-making by linking empirical data to environmental protection goals. For example, when assessing the risks of chemicals to ecological systems, we generally have laboratory toxicity data for a handful of species, whereas our goal is to ensure the persistence of populations of many species in the field. Population models can help link individual-level toxicity data to likely impacts on population dynamics and increase the ecological realism of risk assessments. Despite a long history of use in fisheries and conservation biology, population models have had limited use in ecological risk assessment. Here I discuss the advantages of using population models to inform ecological risk assessment and management decisions, the challenges in getting them more widely accepted, and the ways that these challenges are being overcome. Improvements in guidance for model development, documentation, evaluation, and visualization are increasing the transparency and reproducibility of models, which is leading to more widespread acceptance of the models by decision-makers. Using such guidance to develop a standardized suite of models that are fit for purpose and internationally accepted could greatly increase their use by regulatory agencies and the regulated industries.