title: New PEC definitions for river basins applicable to GIS-based environmental exposure assessment.
abstract: By means of GREAT-ER (Geo-Referenced Regional Exposure Assessment Tool for European Rivers) aquatic chemical fate simulations can be performed for river basins. To apply the resulting digital maps with local (river stretch specific) predicted concentrations in regional aquatic exposure and risk assessment, the output has to be aggregated to a (single) value representative of exposure in the catchment. Two spatially aggregated PEC definitions are proposed for this purpose: PECinitial (unweighted aggregation of concentrations just downstream of wastewater emissions) and PECcatchment (weighted aggregation of all average stretch concentrations). These PECs were tested using simulations for two pilot study catchments (Calder and Went, UK). This confirmed the theoretical considerations which led to the definitions, and it illustrated the need for weighting to resolve scale-dependencies.
authors.affiliation: Biomath Department, Universiteit Gent, Belgium.
authors.forename: G M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Boeije
authors.forename: J O
authors.initials: JO
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Koormann
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Vanrolleghem
authors.forename: D R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Schowanek
authors.forename: T C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Feijtel
mesh_terms: D004781:Environmental Exposure; D005060:Europe; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D014873:Water Pollutants
chemical_list: D014873:Water Pollutants