Raccoon (Procyon lotor) Harvesting on and near the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site

Understanding the toxicodynamics of wildlife populations in contaminated ecosystems is one of the greatest challenges in ecotoxicology today. The goal is to manage these populations to minimize risk to ecosystem integrity as well as human health. Ecological risk assessments (ERAs) in the United States are designed to meet the regulatory mandates of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, an ERA evaluates the potential adverse effects that human activities have on the \u27 ora and fauna that de( ne an ecosystem (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1997). When conducted for a particular geographic location, the ERA process can be used to identify vulnerable and valued resources, prioritize data collection, and link human activities with their potential effects. Risk assessment results provide a common framework for comparing different management options, thus enabling decision makers and the public to make better informed decisions about the management of ecological resources. The ERA uses available toxicological and ecological information to estimate the occurrence of a speci( ed undesired ecological event or end point. The types of end points targeted for investigation depend on the objectives and the constraints imposed upon the risk assessment process (Newman and Strojan 1998) based on all of the relevant stakeholders; therefore, multiple endpoints at different scales may be necessary but are not commonly used (Gaines et al. 2004). In this case, the stakeholders are the public who live near and hunt on and near the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS; ( gure 4.1). To date, there is a dearth of knowledge concerning how environmental risk can be managed at the population level when using wildlife as endpoint (receptor) species

The Savannah River Site: Site Description, Land Use and Management History

The 78,000-ha Savannah River Site, which is located in the upper Coastal Plain of South Carolina along the Savannah River, was established as a nuclear production facility in 1951 by the Atomic Energy Commission. The site’s physical and vegetative characteristics, land use history, and the impacts of management and operations are described. Aboriginal and early European settlement was primarily along streams, where much of the farming and timber cutting have occurred. Woodland grazing occurred in the uplands and lowlands. Land use intensity increased after the Civil War and peaked in the 1920s. Impacts from production of cotton and corn, naval stores, fuelwood, and timber left only scattered patches of relatively untouched land and, coupled with grazing and less-frequent fire, severely reduced the extent of longleaf pine (Pinus palustrus) ecosystems. After 1951, the USDA Forest Service, under the direction of the Atomic Energy Commission, initiated a large-scale reforestation effort and continued to manage the site’s forests. Over the last decade, forest management efforts have shifted to recovering the Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Picoides borealis) and restoring longleaf pine habitat. A research set-aside program was established in the 1950s and is now administered by the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Impacts from thermal effluents, fly-ash runoff, construction of radioactive waste facilities, and release of low-level radionuclides and certain metals have been assessed by the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and other researchers

Welcome Address

Dr. Karen Gaines has served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), Daytona Beach since 2016. Prior to joining ERAU, Dr. Gaines worked at the US Department of Energy’s (USDOE) Savannah River Site, before joing the faculty of Eastern Illinois University where she served as Department Chair of Biological Sciences and founding Director of the Geographic Information Science Center. Dr. Gaines is an interdisciplinary scientist whose expertise primarliy focuses on toxicological exposure pathways for both environmental and human risk assessment, specifically as it pertains to health physics, radiobiology, metals and organics. Dr. Gaines has received numerous research and leadership awards for her work with the USDOE, US Environmental Protection Agency as well as the US Department of Defense. Dr. Gaines continues to serve these agencies, not only as a risk assessor, but also as an expert in spatial data analytics. Dr. Gaines’ PhD is in Environmental Health from University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health, where she was awarded the doctoral achievement award for her work in identifying pathway exposures for vulnerable populations living near nuclear waste sites. Dr. Gaines works closely with the Aerospace Medical Society, American Public Health Association, and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in various capacities and is an appointed member of both the Health Physics Society and the International Union of Radioecology. Since joining ERAU, Dr. Gaines has expanded the depth and breadth of the research and training capacities of COAS, especially as it pertains to Human Factors, Aerospace Physiology, and Engineering Physic

Exposure and Exposure Modeling

Exposure to contaminants in the environment is quantified through the ecological risk assessment (ERA) process which provides a framework for the development and implementation of environmental management decisions. The ERA uses available toxicological and ecological information to estimate the probability of occurrence for a specified undesired ecological event or endpoint. The level for these endpoints depends on the objectives and the constraints imposed upon the risk assessment process; therefore, multiple endpoints at different scales may be necessary. ERAs Ecotoxicology | Exposure and Exposure Assessment 1527Author\u27s personal copy often rely on the link between these undesired endpoints to a threshold of exposure to specific toxicants and toxicant mixtures. Oral reference doses (RfD), inhalation reference concentrations (RfC), and carcinogenicity assessments are the usual way these links are expressed in the ERA, and unfortunately most of these thresholds have been developed for human health assessments and not ecosystem integrity. However, since these studies often use animal models, in many cases the original empirical data can be used when trying to apply these findings to ecological consequences or to establish ecological screening values (ESVs). The ecological exposure assessment often begins by comparing constituent concentrations in media (surface water, sediment, soil) to ESVs. The ESVs are derived from ecologically relevant criteria and standards. For example, in the United States the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Screening Values and National Ambient Water Quality Criteria (NAWQC) are often used based on ‘no observed adverse effect levels’ (NOAELs) or ‘lowest observed adverse effect levels’ (LOAELs) derived from literature to assess exposure. Radionuclide comparisons for ecological screening are typically dose-based for population level effects. In addition to the ecological threshold comparison, constituents that may bioaccumulate/bioconcentrate are identified during initial screening processes. This is done to account for toxicants that may not be present at levels exceeding ESVs, but must be considered due to trophic transfer of toxicants that may concentrate in higher-trophic-level organisms. Constituents that exceed ESV comparisons (present with means, maximums, or 95% upper confidence levels (UCLs)) are evaluated using a lines-of-evidence approach based on (1) a background evaluation, (2) a bioaccumulation/ bioconcentration potential and ecotoxicity evaluation, (3) a frequency and pattern-of-exceedances evaluation based on review of exceedances to the ESVs, and (4) an evaluation of existing biological data. From this information, ecosystems can be prioritized in terms of risk and focused for proper exposure assessments. This article presents a scientific overview and review of how toxicant exposure is estimated and applied to assess ecosystem integrity

The development of a spatially explicit model to estimate

A spatially explicit model of raccoon (Procyon lotor) distribution for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS) in west-central South Carolina was developed using data from a raccoon radio-telemetry study and visualized within a Geographic Information System (GIS). An inductive approach was employed to develop three sub-models using the ecological requirements of raccoons studied in the following habitats: (1) man-made reservoirs, (2) bottomland hardwood/ riverine systems, and (3) isolated wetland systems. Logistic regression was used to derive probabilistic resource selection functions using habitat compositional data and landscape metrics. The final distribution model provides a spatially explicit probability (likelihood of being in an area) surface for male raccoons. The model is a stand-alone tool consisting of algorithms independent of the specific GIS data layers to which they were derived. The model was then used to predict contaminant burdens in raccoons inhabiting a riverine system contaminated with radiocaesium (137Cs). The predicted 137Cs burdens were less than if one would assume homogeneous use of the contaminated areas. This modelling effort provides a template for DOE managed lands and other large government facilities to establish a framework for site-specific ecological assessments that use wildlife species as endpoints

After the Facts – These Edits Are My Thoughts

Film industries have, historically, poor records of opportunities and recognition of women. This lack of gender parity in screen industries is paralleled in the lack of studies of women filmmakers. There is, compared to the resources available on men, little written about the ways that women filmmakers have been influential on film form, and the ways their work informs film theory. For example, there are numerous books in English on male filmmakers of the Soviet Montage period Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, but none to date on their colleague, teacher, and mentor, the highly innovative woman filmmaker, Esfir Shub. Wright (2009) proposes that a corrective to the analytic frameworks that efface women would be a “paradigm shift away from authorship and textual analysis and a move toward analysing industry practices and cultures of film and media production” (10). This video essay, After the Facts, aims to instantiate that shift. The underlying research project of After the Facts is inquiring into creative practice, distributed cognition, and feminist film histories. The research methodology involves both embodied creative practice and analysis of cognitive actions occurring in practices. These analyses demonstrate that filmmaking creativity is an instance of distributed cognition (see Pearlman 2018; Pearlman, MacKay and Sutton 2018)

Coastal Habitat Use by Wood Storks during the Non-Breeding Season

We documented roosting and foraging habitat use by Wood Storks during the post-breeding season in the coastal zone of Georgia from 1994-1998. Larger, more persistent aggregations of roosting storks typically oc- curred in enclosed wetlands on large estuarine islands. Smaller, more ephemeral aggregations tended to occur on salt marsh/upland ecotones, where storks appeared to be waiting for local conditions (tide levels) to become suit- able for foraging. Examination of habitat types within a 2-km radius of the larger (mean \u3e 10 storks/survey) vs. smaller (mean \u3c10 storks/survey) roosts showed that surrounding habitat structure, including those used for for- aging, were similar. Foraging storks typically fed in close proximity (median = 0.5 km) to large roosts, much closer than storks using coastal wetlands during the breeding season. Tidal creeks were used almost exclusively as foraging habitat (92%). Storks and other wading birds were almost always present when the study bird arrived. The foraging patterns of study birds and four storks carrying radios suggested that storks often used the same foraging sites and/ or marsh systems in the non-breeding season. Coastal Wood Storks apparently selected roosting sites based on the presence of conspecifics, abundant local prey, or possibly as shelter from adverse weather condition

Coastal Habitat Use by Wood Storks during the Non-Breeding Season

We documented roosting and foraging habitat use by Wood Storks during the post-breeding season in the coastal zone of Georgia from 1994-1998. Larger, more persistent aggregations of roosting storks typically oc- curred in enclosed wetlands on large estuarine islands. Smaller, more ephemeral aggregations tended to occur on salt marsh/upland ecotones, where storks appeared to be waiting for local conditions (tide levels) to become suit- able for foraging. Examination of habitat types within a 2-km radius of the larger (mean \u3e 10 storks/survey) vs. smaller (mean \u3c10 storks/survey) roosts showed that surrounding habitat structure, including those used for for- aging, were similar. Foraging storks typically fed in close proximity (median = 0.5 km) to large roosts, much closer than storks using coastal wetlands during the breeding season. Tidal creeks were used almost exclusively as foraging habitat (92%). Storks and other wading birds were almost always present when the study bird arrived. The foraging patterns of study birds and four storks carrying radios suggested that storks often used the same foraging sites and/ or marsh systems in the non-breeding season. Coastal Wood Storks apparently selected roosting sites based on the presence of conspecifics, abundant local prey, or possibly as shelter from adverse weather condition

The Effects of Drought on Foraging Habitat Selection of Breeding Wood Storks in Coastal Georgia

Foraging habitat use by Wood Storks (Mycteria americana) during the breeding season was studied for three coastal colonies during a drought year and compared to habitat use during normal rainfall years. Information on the distribution of wetland habitat types was derived using U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Wetland In- ventory (NWI) data within a Geographic Information System (GIS). Foraging locations were obtained by following storks from their colonies in a fixed-winged aircraft. Differences in hydrologic condition and, the resulting prey availability in coastal zone freshwater wetlands greatly affected foraging habitat use and breeding success of the three stork colonies. In 1997 (dry), although the foraging range of each colony did not differ from wetter years, storks used estuarine foraging habitats much more extensively. Breeding success (fledged young/nest) in 1997 was less than half the success of the wetter years. Palustrine (freshwater) wetlands seem very important to storks breed- ing along the Georgia coast. During dry years, estuarine wetlands, by themselves, do not appear to be able to support the breeding population of storks in this region. Reasons why these productive wetlands do not provide sufficient resources for successful breeding are unclear, but could include limitations to only two foraging periods (low tides) in a 24-hr period