Earth and Environmental Sciences Area Logo Earth and Environmental Sciences Area Logo
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Logo
Menu
  • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Organizational Charts
    • Virtual Tours
    • EESA Strategic Vision
  • Our People
    • A-Z People
    • Alumni Network
    • Area Offices
    • Committees
    • Directors
    • IDEA Working Group
    • Paul A. Witherspoon
    • Postdocs & Early Careers
    • Search by Expertise
  • Careers & Opportunities
    • Careers
    • Intern Pilot w/CSUEB
    • Mentorship Program
    • Recognition & Funding Opps
    • EESA Mini Grants
    • S&E Metrics for Performance and Promotion
    • Student Opportunities
    • Supervisor EnRichment (SupER) Program
    • Promotion Metrics (Scientific)
  • Research
    • Area-Wide Program Domain
      • Earth AI & Data
    • Our Divisions
    • Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division
      • Environmental & Biological Systems Science
        • Programs
        • Environmental Remediation & Water Resources
        • Ecosystems Biology Program
        • Bioenergy
      • Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions
        • Programs
        • Climate Modeling
        • Atmospheric System Research
        • Terrestrial Ecosystem Science
      • Climate & Atmosphere Processes
        • Programs
        • Climate Modeling
        • Atmospheric System Research
      • Earth Systems & Society
        • Programs
        • Climate Modeling
    • Energy Geosciences Division
      • Discovery Geosciences
        • Programs
        • Basic Energy Sciences (BES) Geophysics
        • Basic Energy Sciences (BES) Geochemistry
        • Basic Energy Sciences (BES) Isotope
      • Energy Resources and Carbon Management
        • Programs
        • Carbon Removal & Mineralization Program
        • Carbon Storage Program
        • Geothermal Systems
        • Hydrocarbon Science
        • Nuclear Energy & Waste
      • Resilient Energy, Water & Infrastructure
        • Programs
        • Water-Energy
        • Critical Infrastructure
        • Environmental Resilience
        • Grid-Scale Subsurface Energy Storage
        • National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI)
    • Projects
    • Research at a Glance
    • Publication Lists
    • Centers and Resources
    • Technologies & National User Programs
  • Departments
    • Climate Sciences
    • Ecology
    • Geochemistry
    • Geophysics
    • Hydrogeology
    • Operations
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Earth & Environment Newsletter
  • Intranet
  • Safety
    • EESA Safety
  • FoW
  • Search

  • all
  • people
  • events
  • posts
  • pages
  • projects
  • publications

DOE Funds Projects to Advance Forest Carbon Dioxide Removal Efforts and Agricultural Soil Carbon Conservation4 min read

by Julie Bobyock on August 1, 2023

Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division Climate Sciences Department Proposals Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program

The DOE Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) recently announced $5 million in funding for four projects–two from Berkeley Lab with EESA leadership.

The projects selected offer “promising solutions” to the nation’s climate change challenges by helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will “accelerate their deployment into the private sector for maximum impact,” according to DOE Chief Commercialization Officer and Director of the Office of Technology Transitions Dr. Vanessa Z. Chan.

One of the projects selected focuses on developing methods and technology to monitor and accurately predict the carbon emitted and absorbed in forests to inform forest-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts and will be led by Charlie Koven and Jennifer Holm, two lead investigators of the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments-Tropics project. The team will employ the Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator (FATES), a mechanistic vegetation modeling approach at the heart of the NGEE-Tropics project that simulates detailed forest carbon balances and takes into account changing interactions of forested ecosystems in a warming Earth system, and under changing land management. 

FATES development substantially improves the ability to accurately calculate the carbon emitted or absorbed in forests–and is a huge benefit to CDR research which requires precise carbon accounting. This project will be a collaborative effort involving scientists and industry experts in the voluntary carbon market from Cultivo, Living Carbon and UC Berkeley’s Carbon Trading Project. 

Representation of factors encompassed by the NGEE-Tropics model – E3SM-FATES (Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator). Credit: Diana Swantek/Berkeley Lab

“The goal is to use this approach to develop high quality monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) technology and better characterize dynamic baselines for calculation of carbon credits,” Holm explained, “as well as to take into account changing climate risk of forest carbon reversal due to wildfire and other disturbance processes. Ultimately, this funding will enable the testing and deployment of a Measurement, Reporting, and Verification technology for closer engagement with CDR industry partners to help move past any market barriers, advancing our understanding of forest carbon balances and removal details on a larger scale.”

The second Berkeley Lab-selected project will focus on developing an instrument that can better monitor and quantify soil carbon in agricultural lands. EESA Senior Scientist Eoin Brodie has teamed up with Arun Persaud, Staff Scientist from the Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics (ATAP) Division in Berkeley Lab’s Physical Sciences Area to create a new method for finding carbon stored in soil by plants and microbes. 

“It’s like an X-ray for the soil,” Brodie explained. “We have a major limitation in understanding and quantifying how carbon enters and persists in soil because of the way that we measure it,” Brodie continued. “Typically we would take a soil core sample from a position in a field and bring it back to the lab. Then we’d take a tiny fraction of the core, basically burn it and measure the carbon that’s released. It’s extremely laborious and costly to do that, and you don’t even know how representative those fractions are.” 

Soil imaging with neutrons can give a quick, detailed look at the amount and distribution of carbon (and certain other important elements) in soil without disturbing the soil or plant roots. (Credit: Berkeley Lab)

The focus of the project is to commercialize an instrument that can non-destructively measure intact soil cores without subsampling and identify the amount of carbon and other elements in soil as a function of depth with centimeter resolution. The technology has the promise to provide a much faster, cheaper, reproducible and standardized method of soil carbon analysis compared to the current standards. The instrument could have a significant impact on carbon accounting in soils for nature-based solutions and soil health goals, contributing an important new tool to measurement and verification efforts in the emerging carbon economy for agriculture.

As food demand increases, this novel tool can help develop more sustainable agricultural practices with the purpose of protecting and storing soil carbon, as agriculture currently accounts for a significant portion of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions. The project, led by Persaud, is also a collaborative effort involving Adelphi Technology, a local company making neutron generators. “This is a great opportunity to develop a new kind of instrument,” Persaud remarked. “It highlights the importance of cross-disciplinary research within the lab and shows how results from our work can be brought to the market with the help of an industry partner.”

Learn more about the other selected projects.

News & Events

Study Sheds Light on Microbial Communities in Earth’s Subsurface2 min read

August 16, 2023

  From the tops of tree canopies to the bottom of groundwater reservoirs, a vast amount of living organisms interact with nonliving components such as rock, water, and soil to shape this area of Earth known as the “critical zone.” Over half of Earth’s microbes are located in the subsurface critical zone, which ranges from…

Carl Steefel Honored in Goldschmidt Session on Reactive Transport2 min read

August 2, 2023

The contributions of Carl Steefel to the reactive transport modeling scientific community were recognized in a session held in his honor at the recent Goldschmidt 2023 conference (Lyon, France). Goldschmidt is the foremost annual, international conference on geochemistry and related subjects, organized by the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society. The session was…

Quantifying the strength of the land carbon sink3 min read

July 26, 2023

This article first appeared at nature.berkeley.edu/news. The world’s forests, grasslands, and other terrestrial ecosystems have played a substantial role in offsetting human carbon emissions—a capability that UC Berkeley researchers say would be threatened by continued global change. The assessment, published today as a new review paper in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, presents a comprehensive analysis of…

EESA Scientists Close Rhizosphere Microbiome Knowledge Gaps4 min read

July 20, 2023

The rhizosphere–the region of soil surrounding plant roots in which soil and microbes closely interact–plays an important role in soil carbon cycling. The rhizosphere is only about 1-2% of Earth’s soil volume but can store up to 30-40% of Earth’s total soil organic matter. Plants secrete organic compounds such as amino acids or enzymes known…

  • Our People
    • Area Offices
    • Committees
    • Directors
    • Organizational Charts
    • Postdocs
    • Staff Only
    • Search by Expertise
  • Departments
    • Climate Sciences
    • Ecology
    • Geochemistry
    • Geophysics
    • Hydrogeology
  • Research
    • Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division
    • Energy Geosciences Division
    • Program Domains
      • Programs
    • Projects
  • Contact
    • 510 486 6455
    • eesawebmaster@lbl.gov
    • Our Identity

Earth and Environmental Sciences Area Logo DOE Earth and Environmental Sciences Area Logo UC

A U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory Managed by the University of California

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory · Earth and Environmental Sciences Area · Privacy & Security Notice