Groundwater makes up 30 to 50 percent of California’s water supply, but until recently there were few restrictions placed on its retrieval. Then in 2014 California became the last Western state to require regulation of its groundwater. With deadlines starting this year, for the first time water managers in the nation’s premier agricultural region – the…
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Researchers from Berkeley Lab and 20 other institutions have found that land use and atmospheric changes are altering forest structure around the world, resulting in fewer of the mature trees that are better at storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The scientists evaluated data and observations from more than 160 previous studies designed to…
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A Berkeley Lab internship program involving master’s-level students from the nation’s fifth most diverse university will enter its third year in June. So far six students have completed the program, which brings talented students from Cal State University East Bay (CSUEB) in Hayward to work on research projects with scientists in Berkeley Lab’s EESA. A…
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Pat Dobson has been named a fellow of The Geological Society of America. GSA members are elected to fellowship in recognition of a sustained record of distinguished contributions to the geosciences and to the society. An EESA staff scientist, Dobson is the Area’s Geothermal Systems Program Lead. Since joining Berkeley Lab’s former Earth Sciences…
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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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