BER User Facilities

The Biological & Environmental Research program supports the operation of the following national scientific user facilities:

• William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL):
  The mission of the EMSL at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington, is to provide integrated experimental and computational resources for discovery and technological innovation in the environmental molecular sciences to support the needs of DOE and the nation. The facilities and capabilities of the EMSL are available to the general scientific and engineering communities to conduct research in the environmental molecular sciences and related areas. EMSL supports both open and proprietary research. Open research is basic and applied research in science and engineering where the resulting information is ordinarily published and shared broadly within the scientific community. A limited amount of proprietary research may also be conducted in the EMSL under a proprietary sales contract.

• Joint Genome Institute (JGI):
  The Office of Science / U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, unites the expertise of five national laboratories—Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Pacific Northwest—along with the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology to advance genomics in support of the DOE missions related to clean energy generation and environmental characterization and cleanup. In 2004, the DOE JGI established itself as a national user facility. The vast majority of JGI sequencing is conducted under the auspices of the Community Sequencing Program (CSP), surveying the biosphere to characterize organisms relevant to the DOE science mission areas of bioenergy, global carbon cycling, and biogeochemistry.

• Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility:
  The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility is a multi-platform national scientific user facility, with instruments at fixed and varying locations around the globe for obtaining continuous field measurements of climate data. The ACRF promotes the advancement of atmospheric process understanding and climate models through precise observations of atmospheric phenomena. With fixed research sites in three diverse climate regimes representing mid-latitude, polar, and tropical environs (i.e., the southern Great Plains of the United States, the North Slope of Alaska, and the Tropical Western Pacific), and with an ARM Aerial Facility (AAF), and two mobile ground facilities, the ARM provides the world’s most comprehensive 24/7 observational capabilities for obtaining atmospheric data specifically for climate change research. Data from the sites are available through the data archive established at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ACRF provides significant research capability for the global scientific community. Proposed projects at the ACRF are reviewed by the ARM Science Board, a highly respected group of scientists who assist with reviewing proposals for use of the facility.