Radioecology
- LAST REVIEWED: 05 January 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 March 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199830060-0229
- LAST REVIEWED: 05 January 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 March 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199830060-0229
Introduction
Historically, radioecology is a branch of radiation biology that focuses on the movement of radionuclides through the biosphere and thereby affects ecological processes, but also the composition and the functioning of ecosystems. Modern radioecology has expanded to include studies of the consequences of radiation for biological processes (e.g., adaptation and evolution) and organismal, population, and ecosystem endpoints (Mothersill and Seymour 2012, cited under Bystander Effects). Radioecology is the scientific discipline focusing on how radioactive substances interact with nature, the mechanisms responsible for migration of such substances, and the uptake of radioactive substances in individuals, in the food chain that is composed of these individuals, and in ecosystems that are composed of the populations of these different species. Radioecological research may consist of field experiments to ensure biological realism in experiments, designed field and laboratory experiments, and the development of predictive simulation and population models. This interdisciplinary science combines aspects from basic biology; traditional scientific fields such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and ecology; and applied aspects of radiation protection. Radioecological studies form the basis for estimating doses and assessing the consequences of radioactive pollution for the health of the environment, but ultimately also for all living organisms, including humans. While radiation may have broad-scale consequences for living beings, and for the future of the entire planet, radioecology constitutes, perhaps surprisingly, but a modest branch of research. We can most readily display this by listing the number of citations of scientific publications in radioecology and accompanying fields. The number of citations at Web of Science Core Collection, accessed 21 October 2022, in radioecology (900) is much smaller than other fields of biology, such as ecology (543,534), evolution (1,858,846), genomics (191,867), and genetics (645,554). This distribution of citations for different fields of biology, ecology, and radiation biology implies that radioecology is relatively undeveloped when compared with these other major fields. That said, there was a dramatic increase in the numbers of publications following the Chernobyl accident in 1986, and an even greater increase following the Fukushima accident of 2011, suggesting a growing interest in this field. Additionally, we provide a list of five fields of radioecology that potentially could be particularly productive and hence impact the distribution of overall citation scores within and among fields. The authors gratefully acknowledge Gennadi Milinevsky and Igor Chizhevsky for logistic support and help in organizing fieldwork in Ukraine, and Isao Nishiumi and Keisuke Ueda for help with field work in Fukushima. The authors received funding from the CNRS (France), the University of South Carolina, the Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust, and the US Fulbright Program to conduct their research.
Historical Background
The study of radioactivity (a term originally coined by Marie Curie), but also, later, our knowledge of ionizing radiation, was dominated by the cluster of the five Nobel Prize winners in Paris, France, at the beginning of the last century. Henri Becquerel detected evidence of radioactivity and subsequently received a Nobel Prize for his research in the same year as Marie and Pierre Curie. Marie Curie specialized in physics and had an outstanding knowledge of the theory of radioactivity. She received two Nobel Prizes in the fields of radioactivity and the treatment of neoplasms. Pierre Curie covered a range of scientific disciplines, including physics and crystallography, magnetism, and radioactivity. Together with Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel, he contributed to making significant developments in radioactivity and received, with these two colleagues, a joint Nobel Prize in 1903. These studies mainly dealt with radioactivity, but never directly dealt with radioecology except for ecology in its broadest sense of the word, such as when considering the impact of abiotic factors such as ionizing radiation on cancer. Among the following generation, Hermann Joseph Muller was a geneticist specializing in the physiological and genetic effects of radiation (see Muller 1958). He received a Nobel Prize for his studies and his contributions to the study of mutation and mutagenesis. His studies today still form the basis for our current knowledge of studies of mutation, mutagenesis, and the mutation law of evolution.
Muller, Hermann Joseph. 1958. Evolution by mutation. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64:137–160.
DOI: 10.1090/S0002-9904-1958-10191-3
A review of Muller’s ideas about mutations as a mechanism in evolution.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Accounting for Ecological Capital
- Adaptive Radiation
- Agroecology
- Allelopathy
- Allocation of Reproductive Resources in Plants
- Animals, Functional Morphology of
- Animals, Reproductive Allocation in
- Animals, Thermoregulation in
- Antarctic Environments and Ecology
- Anthropocentrism
- Applied Ecology
- Aquatic Conservation
- Aquatic Nutrient Cycling
- Archaea, Ecology of
- Assembly Models
- Autecology
- Bacterial Diversity in Freshwater
- Benthic Ecology
- Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning
- Biodiversity, Dimensionality of
- Biodiversity Patterns in Agricultural Systms
- Biofuels
- Biogeochemistry
- Biological Chaos and Complex Dynamics
- Biome, Alpine
- Biome, Boreal
- Biome, Desert
- Biome, Grassland
- Biome, Savanna
- Biome, Tundra
- Biomes, African
- Biomes, East Asian
- Biomes, Mountain
- Biomes, North American
- Biomes, South Asian
- Biophilia
- Braun, E. Lucy
- Bryophyte Ecology
- Butterfly Ecology
- Carson, Rachel
- Chemical Ecology
- Classification Analysis
- Coastal Dune Habitats
- Coevolution
- Communicating Ecology
- Communities and Ecosystems, Indirect Effects in
- Communities, Top-Down and Bottom-Up Regulation of
- Community Concept, The
- Community Ecology
- Community Genetics
- Community Phenology
- Competition and Coexistence in Animal Communities
- Competition in Plant Communities
- Complexity Theory
- Conservation Biology
- Conservation Genetics
- Coral Reefs
- Darwin, Charles
- Dead Wood in Forest Ecosystems
- Decomposition
- De-Glaciation, Ecology of
- Dendroecology
- Disease Ecology
- Dispersal
- Drought as a Disturbance in Forests
- Early Explorers, The
- Earth’s Climate, The
- Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics
- Ecological Dynamics in Fragmented Landscapes
- Ecological Education
- Ecological Engineering
- Ecological Forecasting
- Ecological Informatics
- Ecological Relevance of Speciation
- Ecology, Introductory Sources in
- Ecology, Microbial (Community)
- Ecology of Emerging Zoonotic Viruses
- Ecology of the Atlantic Forest
- Ecology, Stochastic Processes in
- Ecosystem Ecology
- Ecosystem Engineers
- Ecosystem Multifunctionality
- Ecosystem Services
- Ecosystem Services, Conservation of
- Ecotourism
- Elton, Charles
- Endophytes, Fungal
- Energy Flow
- Environmental Anthropology
- Environmental Justice
- Environments, Extreme
- Ethics, Ecological
- European Natural History Tradition
- Evolutionarily Stable Strategies
- Facilitation and the Organization of Communities
- Fern and Lycophyte Ecology
- Fire Ecology
- Food Webs
- Foraging Behavior, Implications of
- Foraging, Optimal
- Forests, Temperate Coniferous
- Forests, Temperate Deciduous
- Freshwater Invertebrate Ecology
- Genetic Considerations in Plant Ecological Restoration
- Genomics, Ecological
- Geoecology
- Geographic Range
- Gleason, Henry
- Grazer Ecology
- Greig-Smith, Peter
- Gymnosperm Ecology
- Habitat Selection
- Harper, John L.
- Harvesting Alternative Water Resources (US West)
- Heavy Metal Tolerance
- Heterogeneity
- Himalaya, Ecology of the
- Host-Parasitoid Interactions
- Human Ecology
- Human Ecology of the Andes
- Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence
- Hutchinson, G. Evelyn
- Indigenous Ecologies
- Industrial Ecology
- Insect Ecology, Terrestrial
- Invasive Species
- Island Biogeography Theory
- Island Biology
- Keystone Species
- Kin Selection
- Landscape Dynamics
- Landscape Ecology
- Laws, Ecological
- Legume-Rhizobium Symbiosis, The
- Leopold, Aldo
- Lichen Ecology
- Life History
- Limnology
- Literature, Ecology and
- MacArthur, Robert H.
- Mangrove Zone Ecology
- Marine Fisheries Management
- Mass Effects
- Mathematical Ecology
- Mating Systems
- Maximum Sustainable Yield
- Metabolic Scaling Theory
- Metacommunity Dynamics
- Metapopulations and Spatial Population Processes
- Microclimate Ecology
- Mimicry
- Multiple Stable States and Catastrophic Shifts in Ecosyste...
- Mutualisms and Symbioses
- Mycorrhizal Ecology
- Natural History Tradition, The
- Networks, Ecological
- Niche Versus Neutral Models of Community Organization
- Niches
- Nutrient Foraging in Plants
- Ocean Sprawl
- Odum, Eugene and Howard
- Old Fields
- Ordination Analysis
- Organic Agriculture, Ecology of
- Paleoecology
- Paleolimnology
- Parental Care, Evolution of
- Pastures and Pastoralism
- Patch Dynamics
- Peatlands
- Phenotypic Plasticity
- Phenotypic Selection
- Philosophy, Ecological
- Phylogenetics and Comparative Methods
- Physiological Ecology of Nutrient Acquisition in Animals
- Physiological Ecology of Photosynthesis
- Physiological Ecology of Water Balance in Terrestrial Anim...
- Physiological Ecology of Water Balance in Terrestrial Plan...
- Plant Blindness
- Plant Disease Epidemiology
- Plant Ecological Responses to Extreme Climatic Events
- Plant-Insect Interactions
- Polar Regions
- Pollination Ecology
- Population Dynamics, Density-Dependence and Single-Species
- Population Dynamics, Methods in
- Population Ecology, Animal
- Population Ecology, Plant
- Population Fluctuations and Cycles
- Population Genetics
- Population Viability Analysis
- Populations and Communities, Dynamics of Age- and Stage-St...
- Predation and Community Organization
- Predator-Prey Interactions
- Radioecology
- Reductionism Versus Holism
- Religion and Ecology
- Remote Sensing
- Restoration Ecology
- Rewilding
- Ricketts, Edward Flanders Robb
- Secondary Production
- Seed Ecology
- Senescence
- Serpentine Soils
- Shelford, Victor
- Simulation Modeling
- Socioecology
- Soil Biogeochemistry
- Soil Ecology
- Spatial Pattern Analysis
- Spatial Patterns of Species Biodiversity in Terrestrial En...
- Spatial Scale and Biodiversity
- Species Distribution Modeling
- Species Extinctions
- Species Responses to Climate Change
- Species-Area Relationships
- Stability and Ecosystem Resilience, A Below-Ground Perspec...
- Stoichiometry, Ecological
- Stream Ecology
- Succession
- Sustainable Development
- Systematic Conservation Planning
- Systems Ecology
- Tansley, Sir Arthur
- Terrestrial Nitrogen Cycle
- Terrestrial Resource Limitation
- Territoriality
- Theory and Practice of Biological Control
- Thermal Ecology of Animals
- Tragedy of the Commons
- Transient Dynamics
- Trophic Levels
- Tropical Humid Forest Biome
- Urban Ecology
- Vegetation Classification
- Vegetation Mapping
- Vicariance Biogeography
- Weed Ecology
- Wetland Ecology
- Whittaker, Robert H.
- Wildlife Ecology