The importance of recognizing Buffer Zones to lands being developed, restored, or remediated: on planning for protection of ecological resources.

Environmental management relies on many types of information before making decisions regarding remediation, restoration, or other land use decisions, including ecological data, such as risks to species, populations, communities, and ecosystems. The aim of this investigation was to describe the ecological information required within the context of making environmental decisions and providing visual communication tools for regulators, conservationists, and the public to understand the risk to ecological resources on- and off-site. It is suggested that ecological information used in environmental decisions is required to be transparent throughout the planning and execution of a project, which needs to include: 1) ecological information and evaluations within development areas or units (in this case, watersheds), and 2) resources in adjacent areas (Buffer Zones) that might be affected.

Combining ecological, eco-cultural, and environmental justice parameters to create Eco-EJ indicators to monitor cultural and environmental justices for diverse communities around contaminated sites.

Assessing environmental quality often requires selection of indicators that can be employed over large spatial scales and over long-time periods to assess the health and well-being of species, natural communities, and ecosystems, and to detect changes warranting intervention. Typically, the ecologic environment and the human environment are evaluated separately and selection of indicators and monitoring approaches are not integrated even though ecological indicators may also provide information on risk to human consumers from contaminants (e.g.

Risk to ecological resources following remediation can be due mainly to increased resource value of successful restoration: A case study from the Department of Energy's Hanford Site.

Many nations are faced with the need to remediate large contaminated sites following World War II, the Cold War, and abandoned industrial sites, and to return them to productive land uses. In the United States, the Department of Energy (DOE) has the largest cleanup challenge, and its Hanford Site in the state of Washington has the most extensive and most expensive cleanup task. Ideally, the risk to ecological resources on remediation sites is evaluated before, during, and after remediation, and the risk from, or damage to, ecological resources from contaminants should be lower following remediation.

A paradigm for protecting ecological resources following remediation as a function of future land use designations: a case study for the Department of Energy's Hanford Site.

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.

Evaluation of ecological resources at operating facilities at contaminated sites: The Department of Energy's Hanford Site as a case study.

The U.S. and other developed nations are faced with many contaminated sites remaining from World War II, the Cold War, and abandoned industries, that require remediation and restoration to allow future land uses with minimum acceptable risk to humans and ecological resources.