ABSTRACT
The world is indeed complicated. The ecosystems of your nation include an effective infinity of species, life stages, levels of organization, behaviors, species interactions, processes, and structures. Add the nonliving environment and you include topographies, hydrologies, contaminant mixtures, background chemistries, energy flows, material cycles, climates, seasonalities, temperatures, substrates, and other complexities. The tests and models developed for assessments are inevitably simpler than the real world. Determining how to appropriately handle complexity is one of the most difficult issues for environmental assessors.
