GC-Future Water Archives - Earth and Environmental Sciences Area

To Pump or Not to Pump: New Tool Will Help Water Managers Make Smarter Decisions

June 26, 2019

Berkeley Lab scientists (from left) Deborah Agarwal, Juliane Mueller, Reetik Sahu, Bhavna Arora, and Charuleka Varadharajan are developing a computational tool for smarter groundwater management. (Credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab) The overpumping of groundwater in California has led to near environmental catastrophe in some areas – land is sinking, seawater is intruding, and groundwater storage capacity…

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Workshop Explored Role of Data in Solving Hydrologic Problems

June 5, 2019

A recent workshop held at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science focused on how to apply hydrologic transport data skills to real-world hydrologic problems. Zexuan Xu, an EESA postdoctoral fellow, coordinated the May event, “Critical Timescales of Hydrologic Transport.” Zexuan is currently working as part of a team of researchers studying ecosystem changes in a…

Post GC-Future Water Publication Research Highlight

Thirty Percent of CO2 Released Into Atmosphere from Soil Originates From the Deep Subsurface

October 30, 2018

Soil harbors three times as much carbon as Earth’s atmosphere, but until recently research into how warming affects the amount of carbon released from soil into the atmosphere was limited to investigations of the top meter of soil. Researchers at Berkeley Lab are the first to examine soils and sediments as deep as seven…

Post GC-Future Water Publication Research Highlight

Meanders of the Colorado River Shown Beneficial to Water Quality

October 19, 2018

Scientists who study the exchange of chemicals in rivers and streams examine activity taking place within the nutrient-rich portions of streambeds, floodplains, and riverbanks known as hyporheic zones – which provide habitat for various aquatic organisms. Berkeley Lab researchers investigating hyporheic exchange have now shown that meanders near the headwaters of the Colorado…

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Berkeley Lab’s Peter Fiske Shares Vision for Creating Sustainable Water Systems in Piece Authored for R&D Magazine

October 15, 2018

In California a whopping 19 percent of the total electrical demand is used in some way to move or treat water. Peter Fiske, director of the Lab’s Water-Energy Resilience Research Institute wrote a piece published in R&D Magazine on opportunities for science and technology in creating sustainable water systems, including a look at water-energy research at…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division Climate Sciences Department Energy Geosciences Division GC-Future Water

How Drought and Other Extremes Impact Water Pollution

October 15, 2018

This Q and A article appeared first on the Berkeley Lab News Center. Previously, the work of the Watershed Function SFA Research team was featured during a podcast for News Deeply. You can hear Bhavna Arora talk about her research here. One in 10 Americans depends on the Colorado River for bathing and drinking.…

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Tackling Indivisible Challenges in Watershed Science through Radical Collaboration

September 27, 2018

The Earth and Environmental Sciences’ Watershed Function project led the first “Watershed Science Collaboration Workshop” during Sept 23-25, 2018 in Crested Butte, CO. Over 100 leading scientists from around the globe joined to identify and discuss crosscutting watershed frontier research challenges. Attendees included microbial and plant ecologists, hydrologists, geochemists, geologists, geophysicists, remote and snow sensing…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division Energy Geosciences Division GC-Future Water Hydrogeology Department

Berkeley Lab, BIDS Take on Big Data

September 4, 2018

The world is currently generating data at a break-neck pace — about 2.5 quintillion bytes per day — and this trend is only accelerating. To make sense of this torrent of information, Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) has built an ecosystem of researchers to advance data-analytic methods and inquiry, develop and expand software and analytics tools, and share…

Post Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division Climate Sciences Department Discovery Geosciences Program Domain Energy Geosciences Division Environmental and Biological Systems Science Program GC-Climate Carbon Sink GC-Future Water GC-Microbial Engines GC-Resilient Systems GC-Sustainable Earth Geophysics Department Geothermal Systems

Geosciences Measurement Facility Celebrates Its 45th Summer Field Season

August 21, 2018

Within the Department of Energy complex of national laboratories, the Geosciences Measurement Facility (GMF) at Berkeley Lab is distinguished by its ability to build, test, and deploy customized instrumentation and innovative data acquisition and telemetry solutions, which are enabling scientists to address some of the most critical Earth, energy and environmental challenges that we face.…

Post BES Isotopes Program Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division Ecology Department Energy Geosciences Division GC-Future Water GC-Sustainable Earth Geochemistry Department Hydrogeology Department Publication Research Highlight

Berkeley Lab Isotope Geochemists Study Isotopic Fractionation by Plants

August 3, 2018

Isotope geochemists at Berkeley Lab are the first to establish the degree of Potassium (K) isotopic fractionation by plants. Isotopes are atoms of the same element that have a different number of neutrons. Scientists have just in the past decade begun studying for key nutrient elements (other than C,…