Biological and Environmental Systems Science Strategic Plan
Supporting sustainable life on Earth with clean energy and resilient biological, environmental, and built systems
The convergence of escalating environmental changes with a rapidly evolving international landscape, supply chains, and economies has brought the Earth toward a critical tipping point. The Earth is incredibly complex, with biological and environmental systems that are tightly coupled across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Today, there is a large gap between our predictive understanding of planet Earth and our ability to harness and manipulate biological and environmental systems as a strategy to address energy security and economic prosperity.
Simultaneously, emerging breakthrough technologies like artificial intelligence, automation and remote sensing, and synthetic biology and systems biology offer new ways to bridge this knowledge gap. In tandem with exascale computing, AI has already increased the reliability of predicting carbon, biogeochemical, and water cycles in some Earth system models. New synthetic biology tools, such as CRISPR/Cas9, are revolutionizing our ability to engineer microbes with enhanced properties, including the production of chemicals and fuels from plant feedstocks. These technologies promise to accelerate development of urgently needed innovative solutions to the impacts of extreme disturbances and to propel a growing bioeconomy.
Motivated by these challenges and opportunities, the Biological and Environmental Systems Science Directorate at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory presents this 10-year Strategic Plan and a bold new vision and research strategy.