ASSESSING ECOSYSTEM INTEGRITY ON
THE SRS:
TOOLS FOR RISK ASSESSMENT OF RCRA/CERCLA AREAS
J. Whitfield Gibbons
University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory
As a consequence of the impact of SRS operations on the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency has designated many SRS locations as RCRA/CERCLA areas. These include habitats with radionuclide and/or non-radioactive, chemical contamination. The juxtaposition of numerous uncontaminated sites on the SRS with contaminated ones creates an excellent research opportunity for comparative studies to identify biological assessors applicable to ecosystem management and sustainable development. Such biological assessors include species and genetic diversity indices and patterns of population and community dynamics. Selection of appropriate biological assessors can result in the determination of whether environmental risk levels are minimal for prescribed areas of the SRS. Such determinations can result in reduced costs of environmental cleanup by: (1) establishing that environmental quality of selected RCRA/CERCLA areas is sufficient to forgo unnecessary cleanup; and (2) serving as an environmental appraisal of other areas following cleanup.
Objectives:
Our proposed research has two main objectives:
1) To use integrative, cross-resource biological assessors of ecosystem integrity and
sustainability.
2) To develop and test inexpensive, practical protocols that employ multiple sampling
techniques with a diversity of organisms (herpetofauna, micro-organisms, benthic
invertebrates) with which the investigators have extensive research experience, to measure
species composition, genetic diversity, and community profiles with sufficient resolution
to employ them as ecosystem indicators.
Approach: We will compare biodiversity of selected organismal groups among three habitat categories: (1) chemically contaminated wetlands; and (2) wetlands adjacent to chemically contaminated terrestrial habitats, all of which are CERCLA/RCRA areas; (3) relatively undisturbed, reference wetlands (official Set-Aside Areas). Specific sites will be selected based on previous SREL experience and current relevance of suspected contamination. The comparative approach, with sufficient replication, will allow us to determine which genetic, population, or biodiversity measurements will be most serviceable and practical as indicators of environmental risk in future determinations at selected sites. Sampling design details (e.g., habitat categories, genetic techniques,sampling schedules, etc.) will be established upon initiation of the project.
Value to DOE: Improving Risk Assessment and Risk Management: Our study will develop inexpensive, practical biological assessors to assist DOE in risk assessment by detecting and assessing adverse effects of SRS operations on ecosystems at the genetic, population, species, and community levels. In addition, this approach can be used to evaluate the success of efforts directed at preventing and reversing environmental impacts. The results of this study will provide DOE with an accurate evaluation of the usefulness of diversity indices, selected population parameters, and genetic measurements as biological assessors of ecosystem integrity, in addition to allowing a determination of the effort and techniques required to employ surveys of local organisms as biological assessors.
PERSONNEL INVOLVED IN PROJECT:
Dr. Whit Gibbons, Judy Greene, David Scott, Tracey Tuberville