The 2% of microbes on Earth that we can grow in the lab have led to groundbreaking discoveries, such as the vaccine for malaria, but can you imagine what the other 98% could give us? Sara Gushgari-Doyle’s approach to cultivating difficult-to-culture microorganisms tied her for second place in the Sept. 17 finals of Berkeley Lab’s…
Read More
Barbara Bomfim, an EESA postdoctoral fellow, shared her experiences as an adventure racer and discussed breaking into the environmental sciences in Brazil with AGU’s Sharing Science Community. Learn more about Bomfim and her perspective on navigating the sciences as an early-career scientist here. Bomfim works on the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments-Tropics project, focusing on quantifying…
Read More
Berkeley Lab’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program has informed recipients across the laboratory of new and renewed funding for their projects beginning in October. In EESA, Dan Feldman, Charlie Koven, Sebastien Uhlemann, and Curt Oldenburg will be receiving funding for new projects. Mengsu Hu, Romy Chakraborty, Ben Gilbert, and Pouya Vahmani will receive renewal…
Read More
Berkeley Lab is one of 14 organizations from around the world that have collectively been awarded $12.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to launch a new Biology Integration Institute (BII), called EMERGE and led by Ohio State University. The Institute aims to improve understanding of ecosystem-climate interactions, focusing on permafrost systems. Bill Riley…
Read More
Twelve early career scientists will go head-to-head in the third annual Berkeley Lab SLAM on Sept. 17, competing for a grand prize of $3,000. From EESA, James Dennedy-Frank and Sara Gushgari-Doyle are among the finalists. The event takes place virtually from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and will be live-streamed. The virtual audience will get…
Read More
Record drought and heat have some farmers worried about where and when crops can be grown in the future, even in California where unprecedented microclimate diversity creates ideal growing conditions for many of the most popular items in America’s grocery stores. A third of the vegetables and two-thirds of fruits and nuts consumed by Americans…
Read More
Last month, an international team of scientists, including Berkeley Lab’s William Riley and Qing Zhu, published an update on the global methane budget as part of the Global Carbon Project. They estimated annual global methane emissions at nearly 570 million tons for the 2008 to 2017 decade, which is 5% higher than emissions recorded for the early 2000s and the equivalent of 189 million more cars on the world’s roads.
Read More
Thermal mud pots at Controlled Thermal Resources’ project site at the Salton Sea. (Courtesy CTR) Deep beneath the surface of the Salton Sea, a shallow lake in California’s Imperial County, sits an immense reserve of critical metals that, if unlocked, could power the state’s green economy for years to come. These naturally occurring metals are dissolved…
Read More
Scientists from the Energy Geosciences Division will collaborate with European partners on three new geothermal research projects through the Department of Energy’s membership in GEOTHERMICA, a transnational consortium that combines the in-country financial resources and research expertise of 15 participating countries to demonstrate and validate novel concepts in geothermal energy use. This marks the first…
Read More
Scientists who work to address challenges ranging from vegetation productivity under increasing temperatures to the impact of future drought at continental scale need to rely on data that can connect the biology taking place on land with changes in atmospheric concentrations of water and trace gases like carbon dioxide. Climate and ecosystem modelers, soil microbiologists,…
Read More