Climate, Environment, and BioSciences

With the formation of a new Environment and Life Sciences (ELS) directorate to consolidate our strengths in plant sciences, imaging, and climate studies, Brookhaven Lab is well-suited to address some of the most challenging scientific questions related to achieving a sustainable future. This work will focus on developing cross-disciplinary research and technology programs that seek to understand the relationships between climate change, sustainable energy, and ecosystems, with the ultimate aim of providing input for more informed climate change management strategies, approaches to adaptation, and policy decisions.

Critical outcomes from this work will include:

  • Significantly improved climate models based on high-quality data and clear identification of the key parameters
  • Quantitative data on terrestrial greenhouse gas emissions produced by rising global temperatures
  • New sustainable feedstock options for producing biofuels, including methods to make plant matter easier to convert into energy and ways to direct plants’ conversion of sunlight into high-energy fuels

This research will draw on expertise across the Laboratory with experiments being conducted at the National Sychrotron Light Source (NSLS) and NSLS-II, the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, the Biology Department, and in field studies — including a revamped multi-factor Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) experiment — with computational support coming from the New York Blue supercomputer.

Among the factors these studies will explore are:

  • The natural exchange of greenhouse gases and the carbon cycle in terrestrial ecosystems, including the tundra, to quantify potential acceleration of atmospheric warming
  • Microbe plant interactions, with the aim of increasing productivity, photosynthetic efficiency and yields of desired end products
  • The role of clouds and aerosols in climate change
  • Improved methods for engineering plants and processing plant feedstocks for efficient production of biofuels
  • The role of plant growth in carbon sequestration and soil-carbon fixing 

Central to these efforts will be an improved understanding of the effects of changing atmospheric and environmental factors on plant growth and metabolism, so as to optimize plants for biofuel production. New imaging studies using positron emission tomography (PET) and radiotracers will help unravel these interactions.

Overall, this research will depend upon and foster new collaborations with other DOE National Laboratories, including Oak Ridge and Pacific Northwest and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, as well as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the New York Center for Computational Sciences (jointly run with Stony Brook University), and other New York State and university partners

Brookhaven researchers are investigating methods to make plant matter easier to convert into energy