Indicators in Regional Ecological Monitoring and Risk Assessment

摘要: When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created following Earth Day in 1970, it apparent to public that pollutant sources such as smokestacks, wastewater treatment plants, and industrial waste dumps were having a devastating effect on their surrounding environment. Biological deserts punctuated forests around smelters, petroleum wastes rivers caught fire, Lake Erie pronounced dead when dissolved oxygen consumed by organic eutrophication, whole neighborhoods abandoned homes toxic discovered soils groundwater. It did not require graduate degree ecology determine environment unacceptably degraded or cause of most problems. Nor difficult notice return fish, animals, vegetation areas downstream downwind regulation worst pollutants.