Groundwater withdrawals are expected to peak in about one-third of the world’s basins by 2050, potentially triggering significant trade and agriculture shifts, a new analysis finds.
ORNL’s Erin Webb is co-leading a new Circular Bioeconomy Systems Convergent Research Initiative focused on advancing production and use of renewable carbon from Tennessee to meet societal needs.
A first-ever dataset bridging molecular information about the poplar tree microbiome to ecosystem-level processes has been released by a team of DOE scientists led by ORNL. The project aims to inform research regarding how natural systems function, their vulnerability to a changing climate and ultimately how plants might be engineered for better performance as sources of bioenergy and natural carbon storage.
The United States could triple its current bioeconomy by producing more than 1 billion tons per year of plant-based biomass for renewable fuels, while meeting projected demands for food, feed, fiber, conventional forest products and exports, according to the DOE’s latest Billion-Ton Report led by ORNL.
ORNL climate modeling expertise contributed to a project that assessed global emissions of ammonia from croplands now and in a warmer future, while also identifying solutions tuned to local growing conditions.
Ilenne Del Valle is merging her expertise in synthetic biology and environmental science to develop new technologies to help scientists better understand and engineer ecosystems for climate resilience.
New computational framework speeds discovery of fungal metabolites, key to plant health and used in drug therapies and for other uses.
Louise Stevenson uses her expertise as an environmental toxicologist to evaluate the effects of stressors such as chemicals and other contaminants on aquatic systems.
Jack Orebaugh, a forensic anthropology major at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has a big heart for families with missing loved ones. When someone disappears in an area of dense vegetation, search and recovery efforts can be difficult, especially when a missing person’s last location is unknown. Recognizing the agony of not knowing what happened to a family or friend, Orebaugh decided to use his internship at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to find better ways to search for lost and deceased people using cameras and drones.
The 2023 top science achievements from HFIR and SNS feature a broad range of materials research published in high impact journals such as Nature and Advanced Materials.