Protection of Pine Barrens Habitat on Federal Lands: A Case Study Using the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory

Industrial, radiological, and chemical wastes remain from nuclear production and research from the Cold War and subsequent industrial activities. Cleanup of these lands is essential to allow future land uses. Some of the US Department of Energy's (DOE) lands will remain in federal ownership, where research and development continue. An opportunity exists to preserve important habitats and ecological resources while still completing a cleanup mission. This paper uses DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) as a case study to examine whether it has sensitive and rare ecological habitat compared to the surrounding region. Our approach was to use the National Land Cover Database to compare the percentage of land use types on BNL to areas from its border to 10 and 30 km of BNL. BNL has a higher percentage of forest on its lands (63%), than occurs in the surrounding region within 10 km (39%) and within 30 km (26%). Pine barrens habitat is threatened globally and is unique in the northeast. Other than the NJ Pinelands, this habitat does not occur for several hundred kms to the south. Our approach can be used at other sites to understand the importance of specific ecological vegetation types compared to the surrounding regions, and to encourage protection when sites contain unique regional habitats. Critical and climax vegetation provides the habitat for endangered and threatened species, as well as local and regional species of concern.