The Department of Energy reduced funding to the Savannah River Ecology Laboratoryso severely that Laboratory officials say that they will have to close its doors by the end of the month (source, SREL statement). SREL has been a very important site for a variety of ecological studies, since it was established by Eugene Odum in 1951 (source).
I did a quick search on JSTOR to get a sense of the amount of research that refers to SREL. A full text search of JSTOR holdings from 1992-2002 (the most recent year for which Ecological Society of America journals are available) in biological sciences, botany & plant sciences, ecology & evolutionary biology, general science, and zoology retrieved 105 articles. For comparison, the same search on Hubbard Brook experimental forest produced only 49 articles. Closing of SREL will be a real loss. I hope it can be avoided. It seems especially tragic to lose it just at the time that the National Ecological Observatory Network seems to be getting its legs.
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