History of the
Idaho National Environmental Research
Park
The Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
was designated as a National Environmental Research Park (NERP) in
1975. The NERP program was established in response to
recommendations from citizens, scientists and members of Congress to
set aside land for ecosystem preservation and study. This has been
one of the few formal efforts to protect land on a national scale
for research and education. In many cases, these protected lands
became the last remaining refuges of what were once extensive
natural ecosystems.
There are five basic objectives guiding activities on the NERPs.
They are to:
Develop methods for assessing and documenting
the environmental consequences of human actions
related to energy development.
Develop methods for predicting the environmental
consequences of ongoing and proposed energy
development.
Explore methods for eliminating or minimizing
predicted adverse effects from various energy
development activities on the environment.
Train people in ecological and environmental
sciences.
Use the NERPs for educating the public on
environmental and ecological issues.
The
NERPs provide rich environments for training
researchers and introducing the public to the
ecological sciences. They have been used to educate
grade school and high school students and the
general public about ecosystem interactions at U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) sites; train graduate and
undergraduate students in research related to
site-specific, regional, national, and global
issues; and promote collaboration and coordination
among local, regional, and national public
organizations, schools, universities, and federal
and state agencies.
Establishment of NERPs was not the beginning of
ecological research at federal laboratories.
Ecological research at the INL began in 1950 with
the establishment of the long-term vegetation
transect study. This is perhaps DOE's oldest
ecological data set and one of the oldest vegetation
data sets in the West. Other long-term studies
conducted on the Idaho Research Park include the
reptile monitoring study initiated in 1989, which is
the longest continuous study of its kind in the
world; as well as the protective cap biobarrier
experiment initiated in 1993, which evaluates the
long-term performance of evapotranspiration caps and
biological intrusion barriers.
Ecological research on the NERPs is leading to
better land-use planning, identifying of sensitive
areas on DOE sites so that restoration and other
activities are compatible with ecosystem protection
and management, and increasing contributions to
ecological science in general.
The
Idaho Research Park provides a coordinating
structure for ecological research and information
exchange at the INL. The Idaho Research Park
facilitates ecological research on the INL by
attracting new researchers, providing background
data to support new research project development,
and providing logistical support for assisting
researcher access to the INL. The Idaho Research
Park provides infrastructure support to ecological
researchers through the Experimental Field Station
and museum reference collections. The Idaho Research
Park tries to foster cooperation and research
integration by encouraging researchers using the INL
to collaborate, develop interdisciplinary teams to
address more complex problems, and encourage data
sharing, and by leveraging funding across projects
to provide more efficient use of resources. The
Idaho Research Park has begun to develop a
centralized ecological database to provide an
archive for ecological data and facilitate retrieval
of data to support new research projects and land
management decisions. The Idaho Research Park can
also be a point of synthesis for research results
that integrates results from many projects and
disciplines and provides analysis of ecosystem-level
responses. The Idaho Research Park also provides
interpretation of research results to land and
facility managers to support the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, natural
resources management, radionuclide pathway analysis,
and ecological risk assessment.
The
NERPs provide rich environments for training
researchers and introducing the public to the
ecological sciences. They have been used to educate
grade school and high school students and the
general public about ecosystem interactions at U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) sites; train graduate and
undergraduate students in research related to
site-specific, regional, national, and global
issues; and promote collaboration and coordination
among local, regional, and national public
organizations, schools, universities, and federal
and state agencies.