Abstract
Human activities can be powerful drivers of ecosystem change within catchments. While most long-term catchment studies have been conducted at pristine sites, such studies are less common from sites more impacted by human activity. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Biological Monitoring and Abatement Program (BMAP) was developed in the mid-1980s to (1) assess compliance with environmental regulations, (2) identify causes of adverse ecological impacts, (3) provide data for human and ecological risk assessments, and (4) evaluate the effectiveness of remedial actions taken to mitigate the impacts of contaminants in soils, groundwater, and surface water by documenting ecological recovery on the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR), a federally owned 33 476-acre site in eastern Tennessee, managed by the US Department of Energy. The ORR is composed of multiple watersheds containing many small to mid-size streams. BMAP uses an integrated approach for determining stream health; its databases include long-term seasonal records of contaminant concentrations in water and biota, data from aquatic toxicity testing, and surveys of macroinvertebrate and fish assemblages from impacted and reference streams. These long-term data provide valuable records of degradation and recovery in catchment ecosystems. Our objective here is to describe our study system and data series in order to increase awareness of the availability of these long-term data to the catchment science community.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e14340 |
| Journal | Hydrological Processes |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2021 |
Funding
This work was funded by multiple organizations including environmental compliance departments at the Y-12 Complex, ORNL, and ETTP, as well as the Water Resources Restoration Program that support the CERCLA-based biological monitoring activities in Oak Ridge, TN. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the US Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Long-term monitoring programs are investments in future knowledge. As such, we acknowledge the valuable contributions of past and present ORNL staff members that established and enhanced the BMAP datasets. These individuals include Mark Peterson, Ryan McManamay, Kitty McCracken, Gail Morris, Kelly Roy, Mike Ryon, John Smith, George Southworth, Marshall Adams, Craig Brandt, Sig Christensen, Mark Greeley Jr., Walter Hill, Roxanna Hinzman, Lynn Kszos, Jim Loar, and Art Stewart. Further, we thank Kristine Moody, Scott Brooks, and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on this manuscript. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide licence to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). This work was funded by multiple organizations including environmental compliance departments at the Y‐12 Complex, ORNL, and ETTP, as well as the Water Resources Restoration Program that support the CERCLA‐based biological monitoring activities in Oak Ridge, TN. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT‐Battelle, LLC, for the US Department of Energy under contract DE‐AC05‐00OR22725. Long‐term monitoring programs are investments in future knowledge. As such, we acknowledge the valuable contributions of past and present ORNL staff members that established and enhanced the BMAP datasets. These individuals include Mark Peterson, Ryan McManamay, Kitty McCracken, Gail Morris, Kelly Roy, Mike Ryon, John Smith, George Southworth, Marshall Adams, Craig Brandt, Sig Christensen, Mark Greeley Jr., Walter Hill, Roxanna Hinzman, Lynn Kszos, Jim Loar, and Art Stewart. Further, we thank Kristine Moody, Scott Brooks, and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on this manuscript. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non‐exclusive, paid‐up, irrevocable, world‐wide licence to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). The BMAP datasets were initiated and contributed by a large team of researchers within the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Data are the property of the project sponsor, which may differ across waterbodies, and are under the supervision of UT‐Battelle, LLC, under contract DE‐AC05‐00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE).By presenting an overview of our monitoring program, we hope to increase awareness of the availability of this extensive data resource to fuel new research as well as provide an example of the power of long‐term datasets and the efforts required for their establishment, perpetuation, and preservation, which can be of great utility for emerging programs.
Keywords
- bioaccumulation
- contaminants
- fish
- macroinvertebrates
- monitoring
- toxicity