Two-dimensional numerical and eco-toxicological modeling of chemical spills

Abstract

The effects of chemical spills on aquatic non-target organisms were evaluated in this study. Based on a review of three types of current eco-toxicological models of chemicals, i.e., ACQUATOX model of the US-EPA, Hudson River Model of PCBs, and critical body residual (CBR) model and dynamic energy budget (DEBtox) model, this paper presents an uncoupled numerical eco-toxicological model. The transport and transformation of spilled chemicals were simulated by a chemical transport model (including flow and sediment transport), and the mortalities of an organism caused by the chemicals were simulated by the extended threshold damage model, separately. Due to extreme scarcity of data, this model was applied to two hypothetical cases of chemical spills happening upstream of a lake. Theoretical analysis and simulated results indicated that this model is capable of reasonably predicting the acute effects of chemical spills on aquatic ecosystems or organism killings.

Keywords

chemical spills / acute effects / aquatic ecosystem / eco-toxicological modeling

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the USDA Agriculture Research Service (No. 58-6408-2-0062), the US State Department Agency for International Development (No. EE-G-00-02-00015-00), the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (Grant No. 09ZCGYSF00400), National Key-Projects of Water Pollution Control and Prevention (2008ZX07209-001), the Commonweal Projects Specific for Scientific Research of the Ministry of Water Conservancy of China (No. 200801135), the Open Fund of China Institute of Water Conservancy and Hydropower Research and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 50479034). The authors are grateful to the reviewers for their suggestions and comments which improved the presentation of this work.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg