There is significant uncertainty in terms of how the release of contaminants might impact the Arctic environment. This task will study this important issue and develop a model for consequence assessment in the Arctic environment. The model will use a fugacity approach along with uncertainty modeling. Important steps involved in this task are:

• Dispersion/transportation and contaminant partition modeling in different media.
• Exposure modeling. This step will study how contaminants might be exposed/available to different ecological entities.
• Impact modeling. This subtask will attempt to assess impact caused by contaminant release.
• Uncertainty analysis. This task will consider variability and imprecision in the knowledge and attempt to qualify uncertainty in assessed consequences.

The proposed framework for Consequence Assessment, including the collaborating university partners, is shown below.