SRS laid foundation for ecological study

Web posted Saturday, November 4, 2000

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By Jason B. Smith
Staff Writer

Dr. Odum has been called the father of modern ecology, largely because of his work for the government in the early days of Savannah River Site. SPECIAL

Eugene Odum remembers having to dodge houses in the early days of Savannah River Site.

``We'd be going down the road and have to get off on the shoulder when people were moving their houses out of places like Ellenton,'' he said.

The year was 1951, Dr. Odum had been a zoology professor at the University of Georgia for 11 years, and Savannah River Site was a 200,000-acre hodgepodge of small towns in Aiken County.

It was 200,000 acres of plants and animals. That's where Dr. Odum - and several graduate students and University of South Carolina biologists - came in.

``They just wanted somebody to go out an make some catalogs,'' said Dr. Odum, now in his 80s but still studying ecology. ``We did that, but we did more than that.''

Nearly 50 years later, University of South Carolina has dropped out and those early catalogs have evolved into the Savannah River Ecology Lab - an outdoor science classroom with a budget of $12 million a year.

``It's not too surprising, but I never thought it'd be $12 million a year,'' he said. ``Now it's kind of gotten out of hand.''

University of Georgia professor Eugene Odum was one of the original group of scientists who cataloged animal species on the land that was to become Savannah River Site. His work led to the school's Ecology Institute and the lab at SRS. SPECIAL

It began with the Atomic Energy Commission asking the Universities of Georgia and South Carolina to submit bids for inventorying the flora and fauna of the site before any reactors were built. Both schools came in with ambitious proposals - Georgia's was more than $150,000, Dr. Odum said.

``In those days that was a lot of money,'' he said.

In fact, it was too much money for the commission's budget. So commission officials called a meeting with the two schools.

``Their idea was not at that time to establish any long-range programs,'' he said. ``They were thinking we'd establish a two-year to three-year program to see what was there.''

Georgia sent Dr. Odum and a dean. South Carolina sent its president and a lot of ``big shots,'' Dr. Odum said.

``They were looking for a lot of pork barrel,'' he said.

Instead, the commission offered $10,000 to each school and both accepted: Georgia would take the warm-blooded animals, insects and plants; South Carolina took the cold-blooded creatures.

For Georgia, the money was enough to pay three grad students and buy a vehicle to travel back and forth from Athens. Dr. Odum and the students set up two headquarters: one in Jackson and one in a rented barn on the site.

``The owner had not sold out,'' Dr. Odum said. ``He was still negotiating.''

Soon, the annual budget started growing, and the Georgia researchers moved out of the barn. In 1961, Georgia established a permanent ecology lab at the site.

South Carolina, meanwhile, ``just sort of dropped out,'' Dr. Odum said.

And that has led to some squabbles over the years.

``They had equal chance, and now, of course, they are mad, because the University of Georgia has a $12 million facility there,'' he said. ``But they had the same chance we had, but they sort of pooped out.''

Today, the lab has about 150 employees and is funded through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy and a series of grants from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and others.

And Dr. Odum wants it to be a center of cooperative learning.

``We don't want to fight over it,'' he said, adding that there are Clemson and South Carolina students there now. ``We want to work together.''

During the years, the ecology lab was the impetus for more than 10,000 publications, Dr. Odum said. And it was the place where researchers joined workers at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., nuclear plant to develop the field of radiation ecology - where scientists inject plants with radiation and then test animals to see if they have eaten any of the irradiated plants.

And it was the work at Savannah River Site that kick-started Dr. Odum's career. In 1953, he published Fundamentals of Ecology. That earned him the designation as the ``father of modern ecosystem ecology,'' and created an entirely new approach to studying ecology.

The book was a direct result of some of the work at SRS - and the need for a core curriculum book for University of Georgia ecology students.

``The publishers said there was no market for it,'' Dr. Odum said. ``So we created a market. And we held the market for about 10 years.''

He's also published Ecological Vignettes: Ecological Approaches to Dealing with Human Predicaments, a book aimed at laymen.

``In nature there are a lot of answers about what we should be doing in society,'' he said. ``Nature has been here longer than humans and has survived a lot of catastrophes.''

Since 1951, Dr. Odum founded three of the University of Georgia's major research institutes: the School of Ecology, Marine Science Institute on Sapelo Island and the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory.

He's still involved with the ecology lab, making an annual sojourn there each summer to meet with students. And there are two books - a history of the ecology institute and a look at the birds of SRS - slated for publication soon.

``It is a great place to do longterm and short-term work,'' he said.

He ``retired'' in 1984 but spends several hours a day in his office at the ecology institute. And he still makes it into the classroom every now and then - usually to summarize a semester of lectures for other professors.

``I used to teach small classes, and my classroom now is the world,'' he said. ``I teach the world through books and videos and all that.''

And he tries to take lunch hours with students.

``That's how I keep young,'' he said.

Reach Jason B. Smith at (706) 868-1222, Ext. 115.

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