Projects Aim to Improve the Understanding of Watersheds, Wetlands, and Other Terrestrial Environments

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $6 million in funding for nine projects to study the complex chemical, physical, and biological processes in watersheds, salt marshes, wetlands, and a range of other terrestrial environments to improve representation of these processes in earth system models.

“As earth system models grow in sophistication, they are becoming capable of much more accurate and detailed representation of complex ecological processes,” said Chris Fall, Director of DOE’s Office of Science.  “These studies will provide the data needed to achieve more realistic representation of watersheds, wetlands, and other particularly complex environments.”

Selected projects cover a range of environmental science topics, from the biological and chemical processes in watersheds and wetlands, to carbon and methane cycling, to the subsurface transport and processing of environmental toxins.  Studies are expected to combine both modeling and observation.

The grand challenge is to aid earth system models in reducing uncertainty and better representing these complex ecological processes.

Projects were chosen by competitive peer review under the DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement, under the Environmental System Science Program, sponsored by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), within the Department’s Office of Science.

Funding totals $6 million in Fiscal Year 2020 dollars for projects lasting three years in duration.  A list of projects can be found at the BER website under “What's New.”