SREL Reprint #2033

Preface: Herpetological research at a National Environmental Research Park

Nat B. Frazer

Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and Savannah River National Environmental Research Park, P.O. Drawer E, Aiken, SC 29802, USA

Introduction: The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) is operated by The University of Georgia, with funding provided by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). It is difficult to imagine a reader of Herpetologica who does not have at least a passing familiarity with SREL. During the last 10 years (1985-1994), 26 of the 40 issues of this journal (65%) contained contributions by herpetologists who at one time or another were students, technicians, postdoctoral fellows, or visiting or regular faculty at SREL. Numerous theses and dissertations have been completed here on herpetological subjects. Although SREL is well known as a center for herpetological research, only 507 of the 1882 articles on the laboratory's reprint list (27%) are herpetological in nature. Because many readers may not know that the "herpetology group" constitutes only one of many research programs at the laboratory, a brief history and short description of SREL's current organization may prove helpful.
In 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) provided a grant of about $10,000 to Dr. Eugene P. Odum of The University of Georgia to conduct environmental inventories on the 79,000-ha Savannah River Plant Reservation near Aiken, South Carolina. This large area (about 1% of the state of South Carolina) had been set aside as a buffer around five nuclear production reactors which were to make the fissionable materials necessary for constructing atomic bombs throughout the Cold War. The environmental inventories were to provide a base-line (e.g., Brisbin et al., 1978; Gibbons and Patterson, 1978) prior to the construction of the reactors so that any subsequent effects of the nuclear production process could be monitored.
The Savannah River Site (SRS), as the area later came to be known, provided opportunities for important ecological and environmental research over the next few decades. After the populace was moved, towns were relocated or demolished, and farms were abandoned, Odum found the site to be a natural outdoor laboratory to carry out his large scale investigations on the ecological dynamics of old field succession (e.g., Odum, 1960). He and his coworkers also began to develop further the newly emerging discipline of radioecology, defined as (1) using radioisotopes as tracers to study biological or ecological processes, (2) determining the accumulation and movement of radioisotopes in the environment, and (3) determining the effects of radiation on organisms, populations, and ecosystems (see Hinton and Scott, 1990, for applications of radioecology to herpetology). Both the scientists and their governmental sponsors recognized that in order to assess the ecological impacts of the nuclear production processes (i.e., radionuclide contamination and thermal stresses caused by the release of water used to cool the reactors), one first had to elucidate the normal life histories of resident organisms and understand the functioning of undisturbed environmental processes in natural ecosystems. Thus, the laboratory supported much basic research to characterize the natural populations, communities, and ecosystems of the area, and the ecosystem functions in their various habitats.

SREL Reprint #2033

Frazer, N.B. 1995. Preface: Herpetological research at a National Environmental Research Park. Herpetologica 51:383-386.

This information was provided by the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (srel.uga.edu).