Ben Ray Lujan
The Labs' Work Is Also Outdoors
February / March 2010
Volume 8 Number 1
During piñon nut harvesting season, travelers in New Mexico will see cars stopped along highways and forests bustling with gatherers searching for a hearty crop of the sweet seeds. The ritual is unique to my state and it is an important part of our culinary tradition and culture.
But in 2002 harvesters entered the forests to find large swaths of bare piñon trees. Blackened by affliction and blight, the trees bore no seeds and frustrated tight-knit Northern New Mexico communities accustomed to taking the harvesting season as a time to explore the woods with several generations of a single family. Our region of the country struggles with water shortages. It was certainly conceivable that a drought had struck the region and its trees; however, there were no visible signs of an exceptionally powerful or harsh drought.
Fortunately, Northern New Mexico is not only blessed with bountiful piñon trees, but the region is also home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The facility is best-known for its role in the Manhattan Project and today acts as a steward for our nuclear weapons stockpile, but scientists are also committed to a broad array of research. Since the 1970s, scientists have utilized the laboratory's unique ecological environment to study data relating to soil composition and vegetation patterns--both naturally occurring and manmade. This area of pristine environment is known as a National Environmental Research Park, and there are seven nationwide--all located within Department of Energy national laboratories and studying each laboratory's unique ecological region.
The park at Los Alamos has some of the world's longest-running data sets on soil moisture and plant water stress. When the piñon pines began to die in 2002, scientists, using the data documented at the park, determined that the trees had been unable to photosynthesize for twelve continuous months because of severe water stress. As a result, the trees were starved of carbon and subsequently had no resources left to defend against a bark beetle attack.
The data were able to provide important insight about a localized problem that was not easily recognized. The trees suffered no extreme water stress the year they died, but the prolonged stress had left them vulnerable. While this may seem like only a small discovery, it highlights the value of these research parks and the insight--on subjects ranging from what was happening to the piñon trees to the impacts of global climate change--they can add to our national scientific knowledge.
So how did these research parks come to be? In 1972, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC, the DOE's predecessor) established the first National Environmental Research Park at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The plan for a research park emerged during a formal review of the environmental research activities at Savannah River. The review team consisted of scientists, representatives from other federal agencies, and members of the newly formed President's Council on Environmental Quality. In the mid-1970s, DOE developed a policy for current and future research parks and established their mission to be the assessment and documentation of the environmental effects associated with energy and weapons use, the exploration of methods for eliminating or minimizing adverse effects of energy development and nuclear materials on the environment, to train students in the ecological and environmental sciences and to educate the general public.
The federal government's interest in and need for ecological research evolved after World War II as we sought safety and security by producing nuclear weapons in isolated regions surrounded by large buffer zones of undeveloped land. The AEC recognized a need to track both radioactive fallout from the testing of nuclear weapons and inadvertent radioactive releases from nuclear weapons production facilities into the environment. Out of this research grew new technologies for quantifying the movement of natural materials such as nutrients and fluids and of introduced pollutants through the ecosystem. The maintenance of the parks by DOE adheres to statutory obligations to promote sound environmental stewardship of federal lands and to safeguard sites containing cultural and archeological resources.
The National Environmental Research Parks have been conducting critical activities for our nation and the world's environmental research portfolio for decades. The parks are unique outdoor laboratories that offer secure settings for long-term research on a broad range of subjects including, wildlife biology, ecology, climate change effects, environmental remediation, and maintenance of freshwater ecosystems. The parks also provide rich environments for training future researchers and introducing the public to environmental science. They are one of our nation's most valuable environmental research assets, yet are often underutilized.
Unfortunately, as I discovered through further research into the activities conducted by the parks, the parks lack formal authorization and consistent funding. With no formalized funding source, the parks have been forced to obtain funding through grants or other temporary means. This funding can be unpredictable or inadequate to support work on the parks' lands. I believe that it is time to formally recognize DOE's parks with the resources they need to continue their critical research, and I have called upon my colleagues to assist me in doing so.
Last June I introduced H.R. 2729, a bill that designates six National Environmental Research Parks as protected outdoor research reserves for the purposes of conducting long-term environmental research. The bill authorizes $5 million for each of the six parks located across the country, for each of the fiscal years 2010 through 2014.
The bill also requires that the secretary of energy enter into a cooperative agreement with educational institutions in each park's region and contains an environmental education and outreach section requiring that each site support an outreach program to the public. The bill has no effect on current park operations except to provide the parks funding to continue their current activities and expand on their research programs if they choose to. I am proud to have introduced this bill and, with the help of my colleagues and Rep. Bart Gordon, chairman of the house committee on science and technology, to have moved the bill through the committee process and on to House passage.
On July 21, 2009, the authorization act passed the House. and has been assigned to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. It's clear that our country and our scientific community greatly benefit from these research parks--and the knowledge obtained from these Parks can help unravel scientific mysteries large and small.
In New Mexico, our park revealed how piñon trees became vulnerable to beetle attack. Idaho's park can study the effects of forest fires on local sagebrush ecosystems and the research conducted at Savannah River's park can further reveal impacts of energy development on river systems through its Savannah River ecology studies.
Ben Ray Lujan represents New Mexico in the House of Representatives.
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