The risk assessment for the environmental impact of oil spills in Australia is often conducted in part using a combination of spill mapping and toxicological thresholds derived from laboratory studies. While this process is useful in planning operational responses, such as where to position equipment stockpiles and whether to disperse oil, and can be used to identify areas near the spill site where impacts are likely to occur, it cannot accurately predict the environmental consequences of an oil spill or the ecosystem recovery times. Evidence of this disconnect between model predictions and observed impacts is the lack of a profound effect of the Deepwater Horizon wellhead blowout on recruitment to fisheries in the northern Gulf of Mexico, contrary to the predictions made in the Natural Resources Damage Assessment and despite the occurrence of impacts of the spill on marine mammals, marshes, and deep water ecosystems. The incongruity between predictions made with the current approach using threshold monitoring and impacts measured in the field results from some of the assumptions included in the oil spill models. The incorrect assumptions include that toxicity is acute, results from dissolved phase exposure, and would be readily reversible. The toxicity tests from which threshold models are derived use members of the ecosystem that are easily studied in the lab but may not represent the ecosystem as a whole. The test species are typically highly abundant plankton or planktonic life stages, and they have life histories that account for rapid changes in environmental conditions. As a consequence, these organisms recover quickly from an oil spill. The interdependence of ecosystem components, including the reliance of organisms on their microbiomes, is often overlooked. Additional research to assess these data gaps conducted using economically and ecologically relevant species, especially in Australia and other understudied areas of the world, and the use of population dynamic models, will improve the accuracy of environmental risk assessment for oil spills. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2020;16:813–830. © 2020 SETAC

中文翻译：

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超越阈值：需要采用整体方法进行影响评估，以准确预测溢油造成的环境风险。

在澳大利亚，经常会对溢油的环境影响进行风险评估，部分是结合使用溢油图和实验室研究得出的毒理学阈值进行的。尽管此过程可用于规划操作响应，例如在何处放置设备库存以及是否分散油，并且可用于识别可能会发生影响的泄漏现场附近区域，但它无法准确预测事故现场的环境后果。漏油或生态系统恢复时间。模型预测和观察到的影响之间存在这种脱节的证据是“深水地平线”缺乏深刻的影响尽管自然资源泄漏评估对海洋哺乳动物，沼泽和深水生态系统造成了影响，但墨西哥湾北部渔业招募时井口井喷却与自然资源损害评估中的预测相反。当前使用阈值监视方法进行的预测与现场测量的影响之间的不一致，是由于漏油模型中包含的一些假设造成的。错误的假设包括毒性是急性的，是由溶解相暴露引起的，并且易于逆转。从中导出阈值模型的毒性测试使用了生态系统中的成员，这些成员在实验室中易于研究，但可能无法代表整个生态系统。被测物种通常是高度丰富的浮游生物或浮游生物，而且他们的生活史可以解释环境条件的快速变化。结果，这些生物从漏油中迅速恢复。人们常常忽略了生态系统组成部分的相互依赖性，包括生物对微生物群落的依赖。使用经济和生态相关物种，尤其是在澳大利亚和世界其他未研究地区，进行其他评估这些数据缺口的研究，以及人口动态模型的使用，将提高漏油事件环境风险评估的准确性。Integr环境评估管理2020； 16：813–830。©2020 SETAC