Carl Steefel, a senior scientist in the Earth & Environmental Sciences Area at Berkeley Lab, has been named by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) as a 2019 AGU Fellow. Every year, the AGU Fellows program recognizes members who have made exceptional contributions to the Earth and Space sciences. Vetted by a committee of AGU Fellows,…
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One of the many unanswered scientific questions about COVID-19 is whether it is seasonal like the flu – waning in warm summer months then resurging in the fall and winter. Now scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are launching a project to apply machine-learning methods to a plethora of health and environmental datasets, combined…
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Scientists who study Arctic ecosystems have forewarned a “sleeping giant” hidden within permafrost soils–trillions of tons of planet-warming greenhouse gases that will be released when rapid thaw awakens microbes, activating soil decomposition. Improving what is known about microbial community makeup and behavior in these fragile ecosystems could help determine how consequential rapid permafrost thaw will…
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EESA Faculty Affiliate Dan Stolper has received this year’s honor of the Geochemical Society’s F.W. Clarke Award, named for Frank Wigglesworth Clarke who has been called the father of geochemistry. The award honors a single outstanding contribution to geochemistry or cosmochemistry by an early-career scientist, published as a single paper or a series of papers…
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Berkeley Lab hosted last week’s 2020 Research SLAM prep workshop on April 29 for Lab employees interested in enhancing their science communication skills. The annual event challenging competitors to engage non-specialists in audience-appropriate presentations of their research takes place in September. Organized by Meg Rodriguez and the Career Pathways Office, the workshop featured the following…
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Tracking Carbon Stored in Revived Bay Area Salt Marshes Evading a bed of gooey pluff mud, Jennifer Bahramian nimbly hops onto a 16-foot tall scaffold tower. “You can get really stuck there,” she says, looking at the flint-colored soil below. A distinct rotten-egg like stench odors the cool summer breeze. “That stink,” she says, “is…
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A Watershed Moment More Than Half the World’s Water Comes From Mountainous Watersheds Now Impacted by Environmental Change Extreme weather, wildfire, land-use change, early snowmelt, and other disturbances are significantly reshaping hydrology and biogeochemical interactions within mountainous watersheds all over the world. Interactions between a watershed’s soil, plants, microbes, fluids, and minerals govern the cycling…
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Berkeley Lab is working to address barriers to more widespread deployment of offshore wind in California, where floating wind turbines could be a viable option. (Credit: SarahGower/iStock) Fiber optic cables, it turns out, can be incredibly useful scientific sensors. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have studied them for use in carbon sequestration, groundwater…
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A research team led by EESA faculty scientist Jonathan Ajo-Franklin published a paper in Nature Scientific Reports that has been named one of the top 100 downloaded Earth science papers for the journal in 2019. Since its publication in February 2019, the paper, Distributed Acoustic Sensing Using Dark Fiber for Near-Surface Characterization and Broadband…
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This article originally was published by the Computing Sciences Division at Berkeley Lab. Read below, or here. When bright green leaves start appearing and the scent of fragrant spring blossoms fills the air, we know the darker days of winter are behind us and the full bloom of spring is near. But every year…
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This article was originally published on the website of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. It was authored by Shannon Brescher Shea, a senior writer/editor in the Office of Science’s Office of Communication and Public Affairs. Ice crashed down on the windshield of the small plane. Rain pounded the wings. Water sloshed inside…
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