EPA Plans for Initiatives in Ecological Research

In 1987 EPA administrator Lee Thomas requested that the EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) establish a committee to review the agency’s past and present programs in ecological research and to outline a program of long-term ecological research related to the agency’s needs. Thomas’ concerns were threefold:

1. Over the past decade the EPA research program had evolved into a program focusing on short-term needs, to the detriment of meeting long-term research responsibilities
2. EPA’s research and development program has to be expanded and reoriented to include much more basic, long-term research not necessarily tied to the immediate regulatory needs of EPA’s program offices
3. The agency must be able to anticipate and prioritize future threats to ecological resources in order to support research and programs dealing with such threats

Early in 1988 the committee (named the Long-Term Ecological Research Needs Committee [LERN]) became a part of a new SAB special committee on research strategies (RSC). LERN was charged with assessing EPA’s long-term research needs and developing the strategic elements of a research program that would enable the agency to meet those needs and fulfill its mission--a mission that is broader than simply that of a regulatory agency.

LERN quickly recognized that a strategic ecological effects research program must accommodate a spectrum of decisions, both in the present and in the future, concerning environmental quality. Moreover, such a program must take into account that EPA is a risk management agency and that, to meet its responsibility, ecological research programs must be planned and carried out in the context of an ecological risk assessment paradigm. At least three major developments in the area of environmental protection have led to the need for this risk paradigm. The first is the realization that the aggregate effect of apparently rational decisions about single chemicals, releases, or stresses may place a total multipollutant stress on ecosystems. The second is the realization that indirect and cumulative effects from pollutants are a threat to ecological resources and can only be anticipated by having a full understanding of the interactions between pollutants and ecosystems. Finally, some of the most important stresses to be dealt with now are so pervasive that their full impact can only be understood at the ecosystem level.

The RSC committee recommended a core program of ecological effects research that would be built around four strategic elements:

1. Defining the status of ecological systems
2. Detecting trends and changes in ecosystems
3. Predicting changes in ecosystems
4. Assessing risks to ecosystems

These elements are more fully described in the LERN committee report entitled “Strategies for Ecological Effects Research”, copies of which can be obtained from the Science Advisory Board. In addition to recommending a broad and expanded program of research, the RSC recommended that EPA establish and fund a new environmental institute that would play a key role in an enlarged, coordinated program of national ecological research. This institute would have several functions:

1. It would conduct a core ecological research program that would interact with other major ecological research programs, such as the NSF-LTER, DOE-NERP, and MAB-Biosphere Reserve efforts as well as those of other federal agencies
2. It would have a central responsibility in the design and implementation of a national ecological monitoring program, which is needed to provide an overall picture of ecological health
3. 11 would serve as a center for data analysis and synthesis with the charge of analyzing and defining trends in ecological quality and describing those trends in an annual report to the nation on overall quality of the environment

During the past quarter century, U.S. ecologists have had a number of major opportunities to which they have responded with vigor and enthusiasm. These include the radioecology research programs of the Atomic Energy Commission which provided much of the experimental and theoretical systems analysis bases for ecosystem ecology; the Biome Programs of the U.S. IBP which established ecosystem ecology as a viable area of research; and the followup ecosystem program represented by the NSF LTER effort. The new initiatives of the EPA not only reflect this past effort but if supported and implemented would result in the greatest quantum jump in long-term ecological research in our short history.

Author’s address: Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6036.