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ARCHIVE - EES Division Highlights/Accomplishments 2003September 24, 2003 Los Alamos GISLab Wins Certificate of Award at ESRI The Los Alamos GISLab mission focuses on scientific and technical excellence in GIS, including leadership, basic and applied research, and GIS services for Los Alamos projects and operations. GISLab staff consistently performs at an outstanding level. In 2002, GISLab and colleagues received an ESRI Special Achievement Award for efforts during and after the Cerro Grande Fire. In 2003, the GISLab team received a Los Alamos Award Program award for their contribution to enterprise GIS. Fehler Reports as Member of New Mexico State University Advisory Council In contrast to last year's meeting, when the department seemed to have low morale and most everyone expressed concerns about the future of the department, morale was substantially improved this year. There are three new faculty members and a new one on the way to joining the department. The energy level in the department was very high and was a dramatic contrast to last year. The recommendations made by the committee last year were followed almost in their entirety. Los Alamos Attends Worldwide Underground Facilities Conference September 17, 2003 Environmental Damage from Hydrogen Fuel Cells Questioned Yucca Mountain Tours County Officials, Energy, and Environmental Communities Los Alamos, New Mexico Tech, and Sandia Participate in University of Wisconsin Workshop The purpose of the workshop was to introduce and test new software tools for relative and absolute event relocation. ?Absolute event location? improves the location estimate of seismic events by relocation using improved tools, improved models, additional data, improved data analysis methods, or some combination thereof. The workshop presented, demonstrated, and provided hands-on access to several new software tools for relative and absolute event relocation. These included a bispectrum method for validating waveform cross-correlation information, a 3D-capable modification of the "double-difference" relative relocation technique, and local (xyz), regional (spherical coordinates), and flexible grid versions of a new tomographic algorithm that incorporates both absolute and differential travel time and location data. Test applications with various datasets were performed, and software was distributed to participants. The potential for collaborative applications was discussed. These methods will be showcased in a special "location methods" session at the upcoming Fall American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. September 10, 2003 Earth and Environmental Sciences Receives Two Distinguished Performance Awards The ARM program is central to the US Climate change research program portfolio, and thus, the TWP team is an integral part of DOE's effort to address a major political and technical problem that has large impacts at the national and international levels, bringing distinction to Los Alamos National Laboratory. The overall goal of the DOE ARM Program is to improve the predictive capabilities of General Circulation Models (GCMs) by improving the treatment of radiative transfer and the parameterization of cloud properties and cloud formation used in those GCMs. The central infrastructure of the ARM program depends on implementation and operation of three permanent climate-monitoring stations to supply long-term continuous and high quality data to support the model developments. One of these sites, the Tropical Western Pacific is directed out of the TWP Project Office at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Since 1992, the TWP team has developed and operated Atmospheric Radiation and Cloud Stations (ARCS) in remote locations in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Republic of Nauru. Recently, Los Alamos' TWP team led an international collaboration of scientists and technicians in installing a third ARCS in Darwin, Australia that began collecting data on April 1, 2002. The management plan had significant risks. The contracting process, the site approval, and the construction of the new maintenance center all needed to stay on schedule to ensure success of the TWP program at PNG and Nauru as well as Darwin. The Distinguished Performance Award for the ARM Tropical Western Pacific team recognizes the team's direct and significant contribution to the success of the DOE climate change research program. The team has truly excelled in their performance of the broad spectrum of scientific, engineering, technical, administrative, and management activities needed to achieve ambitious near-term goals while maintaining their operational objectives and reducing overall costs. The TWP team is an excellent example of what a highly diverse and dedicated team, from widely ranging backgrounds can accomplish when motivated by a clear goal of improving the understanding of the world we live in. For more information about the TWP operations at www.twppo.lanl.gov. Sandoval and Whitaker Contribute to WATUSI Watusi was high explosive test at the Nevada Test Site that was observed by seismic networks and infrasound stations. Sandoval and Whitaker's part was to record the event from infrasound arrays at distances of about 50 km to 890 km from the test. All of our stations recorded signals from the test, which had a size of 19 tons. These new data fit well with our data from earlier tests taken from 1982 to 1992. The Laboratory's Watusi Experiment Team's goal was to demonstrate that US national security depends on our ability to accurately detect and verify seismic and infrasound events (ground based monitoring). The purpose of ground based monitoring of nuclear explosions, places an emphasis on our need to distinguish between naturally occurring and man-made events. This experiment, conducted at the Nevada Test Site, involved a 38,000-lb explosive shot (TNT equivalent) that was used to characterize new infrasound sensors, including a novel superconducting sensor, and to compare new sensor performance with existing infrasound and seismic diagnostics for detection of low-end seismic events and nuclear tests. The successful conduct of the Watusi experiment demonstrated a characteristic that is more essential than ever for our Nation-that of cooperation and partnership amongst multiple agencies to carry out a large, complex and hazardous task in a timely, and cost-effective manner. Thanks to the Watusi Team, the Laboratory was successful in planning, leading, and executing this extraordinary endeavor under a very short deadline. The level of work performed on this project is a demonstration of the highest standards of science and engineering at the Laboratory. The Watusi Team has brought Laboratory credit and visibility to DOE, NNSA and other governmental agencies. The successful completion of this experiment positions the U.S. and the NTS favorably, should nuclear testing need to be resumed. In addition, the reputation of the Laboratory was significantly enhanced within the Intelligence Community by the successful completion of this experiment. AARP Tours Yucca Mountain September 3, 2003 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Bechtel Corp. Tour Yucca Mountain Jim Cameron from Bechtel Corporation visited YMP on August 28; Jim is investigating the possibility of using the existing excavated rock from the Exploratory Studies Facility and the rocks to be excavated from the emplacement drifts as invert material. Frontiers in Science Public Lectures Features Groundwaters of Northern New Mexico Groundwater aquifers in Northern New Mexico store a vast amount of fresh water, supplying the majority of the water we drink. The combined impacts of drought and expanding populations in the region, however, are causing aquifer water levels to decline and wells to run dry. Answers to such questions as, "how fast are we depleting the groundwater resource?" and, "how much fresh water is left?" require careful research in the hydrogeology of the aquifers. Hydrogeology blends two earth sciences, hydrology and geology, to understand how water flows in aquifer rocks, to explain historical trends in flow, and to predict future trends in water quantity and quality. Our research focuses on the Espa?ola Basin and uses three-dimensional mathematical computer models of groundwater flow to interpret these various hydrogeologic data and to suggest possible future scenarios for local groundwater basins. This research is one important component of our collective effort to protect this precious resource. The Frontiers in Science Public Lecture Series is in an effort to inform the neighboring communities about the broad range of scientific and engineering research that is being done at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The series will highlight Laboratory science and will be presented by Laboratory scientists. The detailed program is available here. August 26, 2003 Earth and Environmental Sciences Division (EES) Ready to Contribute to Healthy Forest Initiative Dr. McDowell, Los Alamos scientists, and their collaborators examined the ratio of different "isotopes" of carbon in annual tree rings, which provided them with an index of water stress and photosynthesis over the past 20 years, including before and after mechanical thinning. "A tree grows by consuming carbon through the process of photosynthesis, during which they take in two types of carbon, the isotopes carbon 12 and carbon 13, through holes in the needles called stomates," said Nate McDowell, a former OSU graduate student and lead author on this study. "Trees take in differing amounts of these two types of carbon depending on the degree of water stress they are experiencing.? The release also states, "By studying the ratio of these two isotopes in the annual tree rings, we can tell when and if water stress was alleviated by thinning, even before any increase in wood growth occurs," McDowell added. "It appears that trees may have a lag time of several years in their stem growth after water availability and subsequent photosynthesis have improved. This indicates that growth may be taking place elsewhere in the plant, such as in the roots or canopy." Regarding the research, Dr. Jeffrey Heikoop, McDowell's mentor stated, ?Researchers in EES are now poised to address the President's Healthy Forest Initiative, an issue that will be with the west for some time to come.? http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2003/Aug03/thinning2.htm Environmental Management Science Program Awards Los Alamos and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Project Additional information is available at: http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/press/2003/tl_sequestration_partnershipselections.html http://www3.fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/partnerships/2003sel_southwest.html http://www3.fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/partnerships/2003sel_nrockies.html New Mexico (NM) Symposium of Hydrologic Modeling, August 12, 2003 A number of scientists and staff from the Earth and Environmental Sciences Division attended the NM Symposium on Hydrologic Modeling on August 12 in Socorro, NM. NM State University, NM Tech, University of New Mexico, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, USGS, NM Office of the State Engineer, NM Interstate Stream Commission, and the American Water Resources Association - New Mexico Section, sponsor the annual meeting on Water Resources Research. The meeting was very well attended with 140 attendees from New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and Arizona. Presentations by Los Alamos personnel included: 1. The Importance of Considering Groundwater Quality in Defining Sustainable Use: A Case Study Using 3-D Flow and Transport Models to Assess Water Resources in Northern New Mexico—Elizabeth Keating and Velimir Vesselinov; 2. Groundwater Path Analysis for the Pajarito Plateau - Kay Birdsell, Velimir Vesselinov, Elizabeth Keating, Bruce Robinson, Brent Newman, Marc Witkowski, Diana Hollis;3. Los Alamos National Laboratory Low-Head Weir: Challenges in Modeling Bromide Transport through an Unsaturated Fractured Basalt—Philip Stauffer, William Stone, Newell, Wykoff, Levitt; 4. Aqueous Geochemistry of Uranium, Los Alamos and Surrounding Areas, New Mexico—Patrick Longmire, Dale Counce; and
5. Marja Springer, who serves on the organizing committee for the yearly meetings, gave a short introduction on behalf of the Laboratory and moderated the Flowpath Analysis and Contaminant Transport session. Los Alamos' Atmospheric Isotope Research Helps Fuel Cell Technology
The journal Nature published the research on August 21 and features Rahn's findings and the research of his collaborators from the California Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Irvine, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. News Release WIPP's Mobile Loading Unit Makes House calls The two organizations worked together to assemble a nationally certified team that travels with three Mobile Loading Units (MLU) to make "house calls" to DOE facilities where TRU waste are temporarily stored. Once waste has been characterized, a highly skilled team uses standardized procedures and portable MLU equipment to safely and cost-effectively certify, load and ship as many as five shipments of TRU waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico per week. The team is particularly cost effective at "small quantity sites", so called because they have small TRU waste inventories and little or no infrastructure to certify and load waste for shipment. WIPP is currently permitted to accept only Contact-Handled (CH) TRU-waste, which by simple definition, is material/waste that exhibits activity of >100 nanocuries/gram, and has a dose rate of <200mrem on contact. August 20, 2003 Los Alamos' Tropical Western Pacific Office Honors Monty Apple Yucca Mountain Begins Voluntary Protection Program for STAR Site The Los Alamos Test Coordination Office (TCO) in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Division's YMP office provided the services and demonstrations to the VPP team. The TCO's Environment, Safety and Health Specialist, Mike Taylor, a Field-Test Representative and a long-term, senior member of the YMP Mine Rescue Team, provided a Mine Rescue Booth, demonstrated various types of mine rescue equipment, including Closed Circuit Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (CCSCBA), First Aid Equipment and Supplies, and atmospheric testing equipment, including Direct Reading Gas Testing Instruments. Mr. Taylor was interviewed by the VPP at length and was requested to provide detailed explanations of mine rescue procedures, equipment, and supplies. This introductory meeting and presentation is important to the entire YMP in achieving OSHA VPP "Star Status". Tooele County, Utah, Nuclear Energy Institute, and Congress Members Tour Yucca Mountain Bruce Reinert, of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Division's Yucca Mountain Project, toured Commissioners from Tooele County, Utah on August 8 and the visitors included: Myron Bateman, Health Office; Harry Shinton, Hazardous Materials Planner; Richard Lakin, Emergency Coordinator; Matthew Lawrence, Commissioner; Dennis Rockwell, Commissioner/ Chairman; Gene White, Commissioner; David Michaelson, Hazard / CIS Analyst; Jeff Coombs, Environmental Health Director; and Wade Mathews, Public Information Officer. Congressional staffers from the Nuclear Energy Institute received a tour from Reinert on August 13 and they included: Clint Williamson, Director of Legislative Programs; Marsha Shasteen, Minority Staff Counsel; Kristofer Baumgartner, Legislative Assistant; Leslie Huddleston, Regional Director Legislative Assistant; Colleen Deegan, Strategic Planning & Program Integration, Bechtel Science Applications International Corporation. Tours at YMP include a general briefing of the tunnel layout and experiments (both completed and ongoing). This occurs underground in an excavation off the main tunnel called an Alcove. Los Alamos Selected as Co-PI on Two Regional Partnerships for Carbon DOE's strategy for addressing the President's FutureGen initiative relies heavily on these partnerships for developing region-specific strategies for carbon sequestration. (FutureGen is a $1B initiative to build a power plant that produces hydrogen from coal while sequestering the carbon dioxide.) Los Alamos was a major contributor and partner in two of these regions (out of seven total successful partnerships). National Laboratories were excluded from leading partnerships; therefore, Los Alamos teamed with strategic partners in the two regions that related to our sequestration activities. One of the partnerships was led by Montana State University and is focused on developing a sequestration strategy for the region that includes Idaho, Montana, and part of Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Minnesota. Richard Benson, Chemistry Division, led a team of Los Alamos Principal Investigators who contributed to the partnership in areas that include terrestrial and geologic sequestration and monitoring/measurement systems. Another partnership was led by New Mexico Tech and is focused on developing a sequestration strategy for the region that includes part of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and part of Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Craig Pearson, Earth and Environmental Sciences Division (EES), led a team of Los Alamos Principal Investigators that contributed to this partnership in areas that include terrestrial and geologic sequestration, carbon dioxide mineralization, and carbon dioxide capture and separation. Other technical contributors from EES included Peter Lichnter, Paul Rich, Marc Witkowski, and Hans Joachim Ziock, Manvendra Dubey, Michael Ebinger, George Guthrie, and Rajesh Pawar. Aug. 13, 2003 Los Alamos Geoscientist Awarded Carnegie Museum's Mineralogical Award At the time of the award, Dr. Wallace was a professor of Geosciences and Curator of the University of Arizona Mineral Museum and he is considered ?the foremost expert on silver and silver minerals in the United States?. Dr. Wallace specializes in forensic seismology and monitoring of underground explosions. His expertise contributes greatly to some of the major capabilities in the Laboratory's Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, which he now leads. Carbon Sequestration Team Awarded Research Funds Los Alamos' researchers are: Dongxiao Zhang, Project Leader, Bill Carey, Michael Hall, David Higdon, William Hollis, John Kaszuba, Peter Lichtner, Rajesh Pawar, and Ysheng Zhao. External collaborators are: Shiyi Chen, Johns Hopkins University, Reid Grigg, New Mexico Technological University, and Charles Lesher, University of California, Davis. The team's research on fundamental issues of long-term geological carbon sequestration, will put the Los Alamos at the forefront of geological carbon sequestration science/engineering and in a unique and advantageous position to develop future major programs in this area. NNSA's Greenaugh Briefed by LANL on Target Defeat Australia, Japan, and Patrick Burns Tour Yucca Mountain On August 6 a tour was conducted for delegations from Japan that included Hiroyuki Yamaya, Cabinet Office for National Security and Crisis Management, and Mamoru Shinohara, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Representatives from Japan for the following organizations also attended: Japanese Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry; the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology; Japanese Nuclear Cycle Development Institute; Nuclear Safety Technology Center; Nuclear Safety Commission; and the Nuclear Emergency Assistance and Training. Reinert conducted a tour on August 7 for Patrick Burns, Director of the White House Critical Infrastructure Protection. Bradley and Carney Recommend Rock Mechanics Course The course emphasized the influence of discontinuities and scale on rock-mass behavior and provided empirical means for including these effects in analysis. Techniques for in-situ measurements of deformation and stress were presented, as were procedures for analysis of rock mass stability. Chris and Ted recommend this course to their EES colleagues without reservation. See either for further information and an ARMA contact for next year's course schedule. July 30, 2003 Yucca Mountain Tours National Academies Committee and Academia Los Alamos Hosts 8th Nonlinear Elasticity in Materials Workshop Los Alamos' Hawkins Trains the Next Generation of Nuclear Weapons Policy Grads Los Alamos Leads the Way in Event Classification Los Alamos' Elastic Wave Stimulation of Oil Production Invited to Best of 2003 D&P Forum Los Alamos' Barnes Filming Interviews for New ARM Kiosk July 31,2003 Dubey Wins Mentor Award >>>Go to rest of article (pdf) July 23, 2003 Historically Black Colleges and Universities Tour Yucca Mountain The project is scheduled to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval to become a high-level nuclear repository. The application will include a design for the repository, including canister, surface, and subsurface facilities. The Repository Design Group's engineers are preparing this design. Los Alamos Scientists Present at International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics Dr. Fehler was also coauthor on a talk titled, ?Synthesis of wave envelopes in random media using the Markov envelope as a propagator in the Radiative transfer theory.? The lead author on this presentation was Professor Haruo Sato. An additional author was Dr. Tatsuhkio Saito of Tohoku University. Dr. Fehler co-chaired the session on ?Seismological Observation and Interpretation,? and participated in a working group meeting as a member of the Task Group on Scattering and Heterogeneity. A special workshop on July 10 was presented by Fehler at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan on "Seismic waves in the heterogeneous earth: more applications to seismology and exploration geophysics." A paper presented by Fehler and authored by Fehler, Haruo Sato (Tohoku University), and Fred Pearce (Earth Resources Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was titled, ?Characterization of Spectrum of Random Medium from Trace Measurements.? Fehler also chaired one of the two afternoon sessions at this workshop. The full day session on ?Coastal Zone Sciences," chaired by Dr. Gary Geernaert of EES's Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, was presented during this session titled, "The Coastal Drag Coefficient - Theoretical Developments and Implications for Air/Ocean Sciences.? Dr. Greg Valentine and Dr. Grant Heiken, of EES's Hydrology, Geochemistry, and Geology Group, chaired a session titled, "Assessing Volcanic Risk." The session featured numerous talks and posters, including two presentations on EES's work on volcanic risk for the Yucca Mountain Project. Los Alamos Presents Nonlinear Acoustics at the Ultrasonics International Conference July 16, 2003 FIRETEC Code Wins R & D 100 Award FIRETEC is a Physics-Based Wildfire Model and is a three-dimensional (3-D) computer code designed to simulate the constantly changing, interactive relationship between wildfire and the environment. It simulates the dynamic processes that occur within a fire and the way those processes feed off and alter each other. Los Alamos received more awards than any other Department of Energy laboratory. In recognizing the achievement, Interim Laboratory Director G. Peter Nanos noted that "many of these award-winning technical innovations were born out of Los Alamos' mission to create science that serves society. This is evidence to the fact that Los Alamos remains home to some of the best science and brightest scientific minds in the world. These innovations are the result of our pursuit of ideas that change the world." Earth and Environmental Sciences Workshops Kenneth Lepper, the technical organizer from the Earth and Environmental Sciences Division notes that the workshop is of particular interest to researchers who have activities or interest in luminescence dating. The general technical sessions will highlight current research in optical stimulation luminescence dating and a special session will be offered on "Retrospective Accident Dosimetry / Personal Dosimetry". http://www.ees10.lanl.gov/osl/NALDW2.htm The 2nd annual ?Workshop on Community Finite Element Models for Fault Systems and Tectonic Studies? will take place on August 25-29, 2003, at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The progress of numerical modeling of lithospheric deformation, benchmarking existing codes, and defining challenges that need to be met for future software development will be discussed. Particular attention will be placed on issues associated with meshing of complex domains, computational frameworks, solution methods well adapted to MPI environments, and to the definition of rigorous benchmarks. SCEC, Los Alamos, and NASA are providing partial support for the workshop. http://www.scec.org/workshops/cfem The Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics is sponsoring a workshop on Fluid Flow and Transport through Faulted Ignimbrites and other Porous Media at Ghost Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA on September 8-10, 2003. The Los Alamos contact is Claudia Lewis in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Division. The workshop will explore porous media, including volcanic and clastic sedimentary materials that exhibit a wide range in mechanical and hydrologic properties. The purpose of this workshop is to explore this range, with the goals of: 1) investigating physical controls on fault-zone deformation; 2) quantifying the hydrologic properties of structures produced by different deformation mechanisms; 3) utilizing fault-zone diagenesis as a record of fluid-rock interactions; and 4) developing methods to effectively model flow and transport through faulted porous media. The workshop includes a field trip to examine faults in the Bandelier Tuff, exposed in Bandelier and Tent Rocks National Monuments near Los Alamos. In addition, the trip will explore a range in fault-zone structures from fractures to deformation bands and will set the stage for discussing the hydrologic implications of the petrophysical and structural heterogeneity of faulted tuffs. http://www.ees.nmt.edu/Geol/Faults/Faultsflow July 9, 2003 Los Alamos and Livermore Collaborate on Test Readiness July 2, 2003 National Energy Technology Laboratory Reviews Los Alamos' Carbon Projects Carey's presentation included EES's experimental and theoretical work on carbon dioxide mineralization. The board was encouraged by this approach and the progress, which was surprising given the board's initial skepticism on this concept for carbon sequestration. Ebinger presented Los Alamos' program in terrestrial sequestration that focuses on novel monitoring methods (lasers and microbes) for carbon fluxes in ecosystems. This presentation stimulated a number of enthusiastic questions from the board both during the review and during the break. Los Alamos' efforts in carbon are focused on understanding anthropogenic and natural carbon cycles as well as their coupling. DOE and Nuclear Energy Institute Tour Yucca Mountain
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