DOE Research Set-Aside Areas of the Savannah River Site

Designated as the first of seven National Environmental Research Parks (NERPs) by the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Department of Energy), the Savannah River Site (SRS) is an important ecological component of the Southeastern Mixed Forest Ecoregion located along the Savannah River south of Aiken, South Carolina. Integral to the Savannah River Site NERP are the DOE Research Set-Aside Areas. Scattered across the SRS, these thirty tracts of land have been set aside for ecological research and are protected from public access and most routine Site maintenance and forest management activities. Ranging in size from 8.5 acres (3.44 ha) to 7,364 acres (2,980 ha), the thirty Set-Aside Areas total 14,005 acres (5,668 ha) and comprise approximately 7% of the Site's total area. This system of Set-Aside Areas originally was established to represent the major plant communities and habitat types indigenous to the SRS (old-fields, sandhills, upland hardwood, mixed pine/hardwood, bottomland forests, swamp forests, Carolina bays, and fresh water streams and impoundments), as well as to preserve habitats for endangered, threatened, or rare plant and animal populations. Many long-term ecological studies are conducted in the Set-Asides, which also serve as control areas in evaluations of the potential impacts of SRS operations on other regions of the Site. The purpose of this document is to give an historical account of the SRS Set-Aside Program and to provide a descriptive profile of each of the Set-Aside Areas. These descriptions include a narrative for each Area, information on the plant communities and soil types found there, lists of sensitive plants and animals documented from each Area, an account of the ecological research conducted in each Area, locator and resource composition maps, and a list of Site-Use permits and publications associated with each Set-Aside