Tropical Radioecology is a guide to the wide range of scientific practices and principles of this multidisciplinary field. It brings together past and present studies in the tropical and subtropical areas of the planet, highlighting the unique aspects of tropical systems. Until recently, radioecological models for tropical environments have depended upon data derived from temperate environments, despite the differences of these regions in terms of biota and abiotic conditions. Since radioactivity can be used to trace environmental processes in humans and other biota, this book offers examples of studies in which radiotracers have been used to assess biokinetics in tropical biota. This book: Features chapters co-authored by world experts that explain the origins, inputs, distributions, behaviour, and consequences of radioactivity in tropical and subtropical systems. Provides comprehensive lists of relevant data and identifies current knowledge gaps to allow for targeted radioecological research in the future. Integrates radioecological information into the most recent radiological consequences modelling and best-practice probabilistic ecological risk analysis methodology, given the need to understand the implications of enhanced socio-economic development in the world's tropical regions. John Twining has published research and conducted field and laboratory studies on the nuclear industry's impact on the environment over four decades. While much of this work has been related to Australia's role as a uranium supplier, he has also evaluated this impact at the Maralinga test sites in the deserts of central Australia and the effects of French testing in the central Pacific. John also focused on the uptake of radionuclides by crops and the use of isotopes as tracers of biological processes. Much of this work was accomplished in tropical or subtropical environments, and this experience proved valuable for Tropical Radioecology. John is now associate editor for the Journal of Environmental Radioecology and a self-employed consultant radioecologist.

Tropical Radioecology is a guide to the wide range of scientific practices and principles of this multidisciplinary field. It brings together past and present studies in the tropical and sub-tropical areas of the planet, highlighting the unique aspects of tropical systems. Until recently, radioecological models for tropical environments have depended upon data derived from temperate environments, despite the differences of these regions in terms of biota and abiotic conditions. Since radioactivity can be used to trace environmental processes in humans and other biota, this book offers examples of studies in which radiotracers have been used to assess biokinetics in tropical biota. Features chapters, co-authored by world experts, that explain the origins, inputs, distribution, behaviour, and consequences of radioactivity in tropical and subtropical systems. Provides comprehensive lists of relevant data and identifies current knowledge gaps to allow for targeted radioecological research in the future. Integrates radioecological information into the most recent radiological consequences modelling and best-practice probabilistic ecological risk analysis methodology, given the need to understand the implications of enhanced socio-economic development in the world’s tropical regions.

This book presents a history of radioecology, from World War II through to the critical years of the Cold War, finishing with a discussion of recent developments and future implications for the field. Drawing on a vast array of primary sources, the book reviews, synthesizes and discusses the implications of the ecological research supported by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) of the United States government, from World War II to the early 1970s. This was a critical period in the history of ecology, characterized by a transition from the older, largely descriptive studies of communities of plants and animals to the modern form of the science involving functional studies of energy flow and mineral cycling in ecosystems. This transition was in large part due to the development of radioecology, which was a by-product of the Cold War and the need to understand and predict the consequences of a nuclear war that was planned but has never occurred. The book draws on important case studies, such as the Pacific Proving Grounds, the Nevada Test Site, El Verde in Puerto Rico, the Brookhaven National Laboratory and recent events such as the nuclear disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima. By revisiting studies and archived information from the Cold War era, this book offers lessons from the history of radioecology to provide background and perspective for understanding possible present-day impacts from issues of radiation risks associated with nuclear power generation and waste disposal. Post-Cold War developments in radioecology will be also reviewed and contrasted with the AEC-supported ecology research for further perspectives. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of radioecology, environmental pollution, environmental technology, bioscience and environmental history.

Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American "tropical biologists" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity. Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire.

The Chernobyl accident drew attention to the difficulties of understanding the dynamics of radionuclide transport through the environment using older methods developed after the pseudo steady state pollution resulting after the weapons testing fallout. More recent approaches, which are reported in this book, have incorporated both the dynamic aspects highlighted by the pulse Chernobyl input and the importance of improvement in models that can be brought about by constraining parameters on the basis of a knowledge of the fundamental physics, chemistry, biology and ecology of the ecosystems involved. The papers within this volume include hydrodynamic models of suspended solids transport, ion exchange interpretation of radionuclide sorption: approaches applying a knowledge of membrane transport kinetics to the uptake of radionuclides by biota; the effects of different ecological niches on the relative uptake of radionuclides by different species; kinetic models of radionuclide uptake through trophic chains and the success and failure of different countermeasures attempted after the Chernobyl accident.