Biological and Environmental Sciences Directorate

Detection and Simulation of Ecosystem Response (DSER) Initiative

ORNL is advancing the science and technology to detect, understand, and simulate ecosystem responses to natural and anthropogenic factors. Our capabilities are directed at two scientific challenges:

  1. Detecting and understanding multiple causes of ecosystem responses to energy production and use, especially those responses associated with critical thresholds.
  2. Developing and applying advanced measurement and sensor technology and simulation tools to inform proactive management of interactions between nature and society and to measure improvement in our forecasting skill.

Our approach will include developing a suite of technologies that will greatly enhance our capabilities to measure and model important ecosystem processes in the coming years. These will include genomic-based approaches to understanding ecosystem responses that are scalable across levels of biological organization and facilitate predicting larger-scale regional, abrupt, or pending but lagged change.

Methods and sensors (as well as existing sensor technologies) will be developed to identify and measure ecosystem changes that operate across a range of temporal and spatial scales. We will take advantage of the advances in real-time sensors that can include bio-implantation, nanotechnology applications, and relationships with SensorNet and satellites.

Simulation and visualization capabilities addressing nature–society interactions will be used that assimilate sensor data in real (or near-real) time. These will include an in silico laboratory for investigating regional-scale ecosystem change and for facilitating stakeholder interactions and education. Modeling and the computational sciences will yield new methods and standards for measuring improvement in ecosystem forecasting skill. [Contact: Stan Wullschleger, 865-574-7839.]