A new study led by Berkeley Lab has provided the first physical evidence that warmer temperatures lead to a significant drop in the stored carbon stock in deep forest soils. An experiment in California’s Sierra Nevada forest found that the carbon content in subsoils dropped 33% over five years. The research team, led by Margaret…
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Microbiologists study how tiny soil-dwelling microbial organisms behave individually and in community in order to evaluate how climate change is affecting the extent carbon is being released from soils into the atmosphere as planet-warming carbon dioxide. A new paper by EESA scientists published in the journal Nature Communications describes how microbes responded to experimental soil…
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A community of researchers to learn how critical DOE Environmental System Science (ESS) data is managed, stored, discovered Berkeley, CA, May 11, 2021 – The Environmental System Science Data Infrastructure for a Virtual Ecosystem (ESS-DIVE) repository of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DoE) Earth and environmental science data hosted its first hands-on workshop dedicated to…
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Beneath the earth’s surface, just below the soil layer, there’s hard, solid bedrock. When this subsurface rock is of marine sedimentary origin, it harbors relatively large quantities of nitrogen from millennia of accumulated dead plant and animal matter. Cracks within the bedrock allow groundwater, oxygen, and roots to percolate, which physically and chemically breakdown…
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EESA climate experts are exploring how wetland emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, are evolving with climate change. Their new research, published today in the journal Nature Communications, examines the degree to which intra- and inter- seasonal changes in air and soil temperatures influence the amount of methane (CH4) released into the atmosphere by…
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EESA climate scientists contributed to the stunning discovery that lightning strikes will increase by 100% this century above the Arctic Circle, where lightning is practically unheard of, due to climate warming. A paper published today in the journal Nature Climate Change describes how such an increase in lightning will drive further warming and wildfires across…
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The alteration of bentonite buffer under high temperature is a critical research question for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste. Researchers at Berkeley Lab have actively participated with international colleagues in the “HotBENT” project, the centerpiece of which is long-term evaluation of bentonite buffer heated at 175-200 oC at the Grimsel Test Site in Switzerland.…
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Xiaoqin Wu, Sara Gushgari-Doyle, and Mon Oo Yee from Romy Chakraborty’s group in EESA’s Ecology Department and the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT have published a paper in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology describing a study they hope will advance cultivation and isolation strategies for recovering diverse, uncultivable, and novel microorganisms from Earth’s…
Read MoreNigel Quinn leads the HydroEcological Engineering Advanced Decision Support research group (HEADS) which specializes in the development of environmental decision support systems to improve understanding and find solutions to complex water resources and water quality problems in California and worldwide. In January, Nigel was awarded life membership in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). This…
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ALTEMIS scientists and students participated in the Waste Management Symposia (WMS), held virtually March 8-12, by sharing their research findings at the annual conference established in 1974 to foster global innovation and collaboration in the management of radioactive waste and related contamination. The ALTEMIS project – funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of…
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