The Enterprise, Wisconsin, Radiation ForestnPreirradiation Ecological Studies

摘要

A 1440-acre forest in northern Wisconsin which is being used for gamma-irradiation studies on various northern forest com¬munities is described. A brief history of the area, which is typical of much of the upper Great Lakes forest region, is pre¬sented together with a description of its current condition. Development of the tract into a radiation research facility is described. A 10,000-Ci I37Gs radiation source was used. Studies on each radia¬tion site will include characterization of the preirradiation communities, changes occurring during irradiation, and postirra-diation recovery.nResearch on the effects of ionizing radia¬tion on various terrestrial ecosystems has been under way for well over a decade. Major facilities developed for radiation research on plant communities and their individual components include those at Emory University (Piatt, 1962), Brook-haven National Laboratory (Woodwell, 1963), Savannah River, Georgia (Golley and McCormick, 1966), and the Nevada Test Site (French, 1964) and in Puerto Rico (Odum and Pigeon, 1970). Since 1965 we have used 137Cs point sources at our institute to study radiation effects on individual forest tree species (Ru¬dolph, 1964;Miksche and Rudolph, 1968;Rudolph and Miksche, 1970). Al¬though the northern forests of coniferous and deciduous species cover a large por¬tion of the landscape from Nova Scotia to Connecticut and westward into the north¬ern Lake States and adjoining areas of Canada, little is known about the effects of ionizing radiation on these intact ecosystems.