Wildfires have shaped the environment for millennia, but they are increasing in frequency, range and intensity in response to a hotter climate. The phenomenon is being incorporated into high-resolution simulations of the Earth’s climate by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with a mission to better understand and predict environmental change.
Growing up exploring the parklands of India where Rudyard Kipling drew inspiration for The Jungle Book left Saubhagya Rathore with a deep respect and curiosity about the natural world. He later turned that interest into a career in environmental science and engineering, and today he is working at ORNL to improve our understanding of watersheds for better climate prediction and resilience.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers recently demonstrated use of a laser-based analytical method to accelerate understanding of critical plant and soil properties that affect bioenergy plant growth and soil carbon storage.
With the world’s first exascale supercomputer now fully open for scientific business, researchers can thank the early users who helped get the machine up to speed.
Like most scientists, Chengping Chai is not content with the surface of things: He wants to probe beyond to learn what’s really going on. But in his case, he is literally building a map of the world beneath, using seismic and acoustic data that reveal when and where the earth moves.
ORNL researchers, in collaboration with Enginuity Power Systems, demonstrated that a micro combined heat and power prototype, or mCHP, with a piston engine can achieve an overall energy efficiency greater than 93%.
In a discovery aimed at accelerating the development of process-advantaged crops for jet biofuels, scientists at ORNL developed a capability to insert multiple genes into plants in a single step.
When reading the novel Jurassic Park as a teenager, Jerry Parks found the passages about gene sequencing and supercomputers fascinating, but never imagined he might someday pursue such futuristic-sounding science.
Shih-Chieh Kao, manager of the Water Power program at ORNL, has been named a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineer’s Environmental & Water Resources Institute, or EWRI.
Colleen Iversen, ecosystem ecologist, group leader and distinguished staff scientist, has been named director of the Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments Arctic, or NGEE Arctic, a multi-institutional project studying permafrost thaw and other climate-related processes in Alaska.