Familiarity with the biological components of an ecosystem is essential
to meaningful radiobiological assessment.
Inventories of natural components were not made in the early nuclear
test programs because of inadequate realization of the biological
potential. Later, they could be made only after radionuclides already
had been introduced into the environments.
The survey of the mid-Pacific region before Operation Crossroads
represented the earliest effort to examine an environment in detail
before a nuclear detonation, but was designed so that it had only
inferential value for other long-range biological research. The test
surveys were useful, however, in expanding knowledge of specific
environments. In addition, it was standard practice to make comparative
collections of organisms in regions removed from the test sites to
establish base lines, or “controls”, against which to measure
radiobiological developments.
The most extensive inventory of an environment—an inventory designed
specifically in relation to an anticipated nuclear detonation—was that
made between 1959 and 1962, as a preliminary phase of Project Chariot,
in the Cape Thompson area of Northwest Alaska. Chariot was a part of the
AEC Plowshare Program in which it was proposed to excavate a harbor at
the mouth of the Ogotoruk Creek, which empties into the Chukchi Sea.
Although the excavation project actually never was undertaken, the
“predetonation” environmental investigations involved 3 years of
coordinated research into the climatic, marine, coastal, and terrestrial
aspects of the region, and detailed studies of the history and the
radiological and ecological situations of the human population.
[Illustration: _Taking a soil sample for the Project Chariot biological
inventory to determine kinds and relative abundance of invertebrates and
other soil organisms._]
The program was an effort to make a model environmental inventory. Its
significance was both in its assessment of the base for determining the
“biological cost” of the proposed operation and in the thoroughness of
its documentation of the environmental features of a part of the world
that previously had been virtually unexplored. It was a prototype for
future studies.