History of the Idaho NERP

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 NERP 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 NERP provides a coordinating structure for ecological research and information exchange at the INL. The Idaho NERP 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 NERP provides infrastructure support to ecological researchers through the Experimental Field Station and museum reference collections. The Idaho NERP 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 NERP 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 NERP 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 NERP 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 following sections describe past and current ecological research activities on the Idaho NERP.

2006 Research

• Monitoring Amphibian and Reptile Populations on the INL
• Annotated Checklist of the Ants on the Idaho National Laboratory
• Ecology, Conservation of Rattlesnakes in Sagebrush Steppe Ecosystems:  Landscape Disturbance, Small Mammal Communities, and Great Basin Rattlesnake Reproduction
• The Protective Cap/Biobarrier Experiment
• Developing a Conservation Management Plan for the Idaho National Laboratory
• Cesium in Soils and Plants in the Sagebrush Steppe Ecosystem
• Minimizing Risk of Cheatgrass Invasion and Dominance at the Idaho National Laboratory
• Sagebrush Demography on the Idaho National Laboratory
• Long-Term Vegetation Trends on the Idaho National Laboratory

Past Research:

• Fine-scale Movement Patterns of Coyotes (Canis latrans) on the INEEL in Idaho.
• Monitoring Amphibian and Reptile Populations on the INL
• The Effect of Landscape Change on the Life History of Western Rattlesnakes
• Phylogenetic Analysis of the Abronia ammophila Green (Nyctaginaceae) Species Complex
• Factors that Influence the Road Mortality of Snakes on the Eastern Snake River Plain
• Ecological Impacts of Irrigating Native Vegetation with Treated Sewage Wastewater
• Natural and Assisted Recovery of Sagebrush in Idaho's Big Desert
• The Protective Cap/Biobarrier Experiment
• Monitoring Amphibian and Reptile Populations on the INL
• Alternative Container Design for Large Acreage Revegetation
• Use of Genetic Markers as a Screening Tool for Ecological Risk Assessment at the INL: Microsatellite Mutation Rate of Burrowing Mammals
• Crested Wheatgrass Rates of Spread into Native Sagebrush Steppe in Eastern Idaho
• Experimental Remote Sensing of Vegetation on the INL
• Sagebrush Demography on the INL
• Development of an Integrated Watershed Information Management Tool for Long-term Facilities Stewardship at the INL
• Assessing the Effects of Soil-forming Processes on Surface Caps
• Coupled Effects of Biointrusion and Precipitation on Soil Caps

Contact:  Roger Blew, PhD, Coordinator
Idaho National Environmental Research Park
rblew@stoller.com