Division of Life Sciences, Rutgers University, 604 Allison Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA.
Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI), Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA.
Environ Monit Assess. 2020 Feb 17;192(3):181. doi: 10.1007/s10661-020-8084-x.
Since the late 1980s, there has been a US federal mandate to clean up contaminated sites remaining from the Second World War, the Cold War, and abandoned industries. One determinant of cleanup standards for remediation is future land use-how will the land be used and by whom? Land use decisions may be consensus documents developed by site owners, state and federal agencies, and local stakeholders. Often there are competing views and/or claims on how remediated sites should be used, including as open or green space. Large sites are likely to have more ecological heterogeneity within similar land use designations because of differences in climate, geology, topography, and history of human use. This paper uses the Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Site as a case study to examine how and whether future land use designations will protect species, species diversity, heterogeneity, and ecosystems once remediation is complete. The objective of this paper is to describe "future land use designations" on a large, complex site (DOE's Hanford Site) and to examine the following: (1) how future land use designations were made and have changed over time, (2) how land use designations included the value of ecological resources, (3) how risk evaluations of ecological resources from remediation were made, and (4) how future land use may affect the health and well-being of ecological resources on site in the post-remediation period. The paper provides a paradigm for integrating ecological protection into future land use designations such that rare and sensitive resources are protected throughout the process. The paradigm includes the following: (1) developing future land use designations, (2) defining resource levels (values), (3) relating resource levels to land use designations and management, (4) defining risk evaluations, (5) determining the likelihood that valuable resources will occur on each land use type after remediation, and (6) evaluating the potential risk to those resources that results from activities allowed under future land use designations. The paper discusses the importance of each step, the implications for protection of ecological resources, and the importance of land use designations in the assessment of risk to ecological resources from both continued monitoring and maintenance by DOE (or other land owners) and the activities permitted by the established future land use designations.
自 20 世纪 80 年代末以来，美国一直有一项联邦指令，要求清理第二次世界大战、冷战和废弃工业遗留下来的污染场地。修复的清洁标准的一个决定因素是未来的土地用途——土地将如何使用以及由谁使用？土地使用决策可能是由场地所有者、州和联邦机构以及当地利益相关者制定的共识文件。对于如何使用修复后的场地，经常存在相互竞争的观点和/或主张，包括作为开放空间或绿地。由于气候、地质、地形和人类使用历史的差异，大型场地在类似的土地用途指定中可能具有更多的生态异质性。本文以美国能源部 (DOE) 的汉福德场址为例，研究一旦修复完成，未来的土地用途指定将如何以及是否能够保护物种、物种多样性、异质性和生态系统。本文的目的是描述大型复杂场地（美国能源部的汉福德场址）的“未来土地用途指定”，并研究以下内容：(1) 未来土地用途指定是如何制定的以及随着时间的推移发生了哪些变化，(2) 土地用途指定如何纳入生态资源的价值，(3) 如何对修复后的生态资源进行风险评估，以及 (4) 未来的土地使用可能如何影响修复后场地内生态资源的健康和福祉。本文为将生态保护纳入未来土地用途指定提供了范例，从而在整个过程中保护稀有和敏感资源。该范例包括以下步骤：(1) 制定未来土地用途指定，(2) 定义资源水平（价值），(3) 将资源水平与土地用途指定和管理联系起来，(4) 定义风险评估，(5) 确定在修复后每种土地用途类型上出现有价值资源的可能性，以及 (6) 评估未来土地用途指定允许的活动对这些资源造成的潜在风险。本文讨论了每个步骤的重要性、对生态资源保护的影响，以及未来土地用途指定在评估生态资源风险方面的重要性，包括对能源部（或其他土地所有者）继续进行的监测和维护活动以及既定未来土地用途指定所允许的活动造成的风险。
