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At least 613 records · Page 34

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DOE OSTI2024

Hanford Site Raptor Nest Monitoring Report for Calendar Year 2022

The U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL), conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing DOE-RL activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under DOERL stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision making under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980. DOE/EIS-0222, Final Hanford Comprehensive Land Use Plan Environmental Impact Statement, (CLUP) evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with implementing a comprehensive land-use plan for the Hanford Site for at least the next 50 years and ensures that DOE-RL, its contractors, and other entities conduct activities on the Hanford Site in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2024

Hanford Site Roadside Bird Surveys Report for Calendar Years 2021-2023

The U.S. Department of Energy, Hanford Field Office (HFO) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing HFO activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under HFO stewardship at Hanford which is required for decision-making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The Hanford Site Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP, DOE/EIS-0222-F), which is the Environmental Impact Statement for Hanford Site activities, helps ensure that HFO, its contractors, and other entities conducting activities on the Hanford Site are in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2022

Hanford Site Roadside Bird Surveys Report for Calendar Year 2019

The U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing DOE-RL activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under DOE-RL stewardship at Hanford which is required for decision-making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The Hanford Site Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP, DOE/EIS- 0222-F), which is the Environmental Impact Statement for Hanford Site activities, helps ensure that DOE-RL, its contractors, and other entities conducting activities on the Hanford Site are in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2022

Hanford Site Roadside Bird Surveys Report for Calendar Year 2018

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2022

Hanford Site Bird Surveys Report for Calendar Year 2016

Resource stewardship is an integral part of the U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) responsibilities at the Hanford Site. Efficient conservation or management of any species or any population is supported through the availability of reliable information on the population in question. DOERL conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track this information. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitat under DOE-RL stewardship at Hanford that is required for decision-making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). The Hanford Site Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP, DOE/EIS-0222-F), which is the Environmental Impact Statement for Hanford Site activities, helps ensure that DOE-RL, its contractors, and other entities conducting activities on the Hanford Site are in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2025

Hanford Reach Fall Chinook Salmon Redd Monitoring Report for Calendar Year 2024

The U.S. Department of Energy, Hanford Field Office (HFO) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing HFO activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under HFO stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. DOE/EIS-0222, Final Hanford Comprehensive Land-Use Plan Environmental Impact Statement, (CLUP) evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with implementing a comprehensive land-use plan for the Hanford Site for at least the next 50 years, and ensures that HFO, its contractors, and other entities conduct activities on the Hanford Site in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2025

Hanford Reach Fall Chinook Salmon Redd Monitoring Report for Calendar Year 2023

The U.S. Department of Energy, Hanford Field Office (HFO) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing HFO activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under HFO stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. DOE/EIS-0222, Final Hanford Comprehensive Land-Use Plan Environmental Impact Statement, (CLUP) evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with implementing a comprehensive land-use plan for the Hanford Site for at least the next 50 years, and ensures that HFO, its contractors, and other entities conduct activities on the Hanford Site in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2024

Hanford Reach Fall Chinook Salmon Redd Monitoring Report for Calendar Year 2022

The U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing DOE-RL activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under DOE-RL stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. DOE/EIS-0222, Final Hanford Comprehensive Land-Use Plan Environmental Impact Statement, (CLUP) evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with implementing a comprehensive land-use plan for the Hanford Site for at least the next 50 years, and ensures that DOE-RL, its contractors, and other entities conduct activities on the Hanford Site in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2023

Hanford Reach Fall Chinook Salmon Redd Monitoring Report for Calendar Year 2021

The U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL), conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing DOE-RL activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under DOE-RL stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. DOE/EIS-0222, Final Hanford Comprehensive Land-Use Plan Environmental Impact Statement, (CLUP) evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with implementing a comprehensive land-use plan for the Hanford Site for at least the next 50 years, and ensures that DOE-RL, its contractors, and other entities conduct activities on the Hanford Site in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2021

Hanford Reach Fall Chinook Salmon Redd Monitoring Report for Calendar Year 2020

The U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing DOE-RL activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under DOE-RL stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. DOE/EIS-0222, Final Hanford Comprehensive Land Use Plan Environmental Impact Statement, (CLUP) evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with implementing a comprehensive land-use plan for the Hanford Site for at least the next 50 years, and ensures that DOE-RL, its contractors, and other entities conduct activities on the Hanford Site in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2020

Hanford Reach Fall Chinook Salmon Redd Monitoring Report for Calendar Year 2019

The U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing DOE-RL activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under DOE-RL stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. DOE/EIS-0222, Final Hanford Comprehensive Land Use Plan Environmental Impact Statement (CLUP) evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with implementing a comprehensive land-use plan for the Hanford Site for at least the next 50 years, and ensures that DOE-RL, its contractors, and other entities conduct activities on the Hanford Site in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2020

Hanford Reach Fall Chinook Redd Monitoring Report for Calendar Year 2018

The U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing DOE-RL activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under DOE-RL stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. DOE/EIS-0222, Final Hanford Comprehensive Land Use Plan Environmental Impact Statement (CLUP) evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with implementing a comprehensive land-use plan for the Hanford Site for at least the next 50 years, and ensures that DOE-RL, its contractors, and other entities conduct activities on the Hanford Site in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2020

Hanford Reach Fall Chinook Redd Monitoring Report for Calendar Year 2017

The U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with an array of environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing DOE-RL activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under DOE-RL stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). DOE/EIS-0222, Final Hanford Comprehensive Land Use Plan Environmental Impact Statement (CLUP) evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with implementing a comprehensive land-use plan for the Hanford Site for at least the next 50 years, and ensures that DOE-RL, its contractors, and other entities conduct activities on the Hanford Site in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2021

Hanford Site Mule Deer Monitoring Report for Fiscal Year 2019

The U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) conducts ecological monitoring on the Hanford Site to collect and track data needed to ensure compliance with environmental laws, regulations, and policies governing Department of Energy activities. Ecological monitoring data provide baseline information about the plants, animals, and habitats under DOE-RL stewardship at the Hanford Site required for decision-making under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980. The Hanford Site Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP, DOE 1999), which is the Environmental Impact Statement that evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with implementing a comprehensive land-use plan for the Hanford Site, ensures that DOE-RL, its contractors, and other entities conduct activities on the Hanford Site in compliance with NEPA.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2026

Wind River Experimental Forest Subcanopy Tower Information Sheet

Wind River was one of three sites that collected 3d sonic anemometer data for an ICOS subcanopy observation study. The three sites were defined by the following features and terrain: a deciduous broadleaf forest in flat terrain (Lanžhot, Czech Republic), a coniferous forest in mountainous terrain (Renon, Italy), and a tall conifer forest in mountain-valley terrain (Wind River, USA). The Wind River subcanopy towers were deployed in a high LAI, old-growth evergreen conifer forest and collected approximately 11 months of data. The site is an ecologically rich temperate rainforest in the western Cascade Mountains, and the biological carbon sink and source strength has been measured since 1998 using eddy covariance on the top of a 74 m tall flux tower (currently called the Wind River NEON tower). Additionally, forest inventory records date back to the 1920s. In 2024, four subcanopy towers were installed near the Wind River NEON tower to measure wind flow in the understory canopy layer for better understanding canopy flow coupling and decoupling in the subcanopy and how this affects the interpretation of overstory fluxes. The subcanopy tower installation was done by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Washington State University (WSU) with collaborations from the University of Utah and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2025

Validating Greater Sage-Grouse Individual-based Model (IBM) Tool (Final Report)

The project focused on validating the previously developed Greater Sage-Grouse Individual-based Model (GrSG IBM; LaGory et al. 2012, 2021). The objective was to transform this predictive, spatially and temporally explicit model into a portable resource to assist siting/resource managers in proactively assessing the cumulative impacts of wind energy development on the greater sage-grouse. Utilizing a bottom-up, individual-based approach, the GrSG IBM accounts for landscape context and species behavior, aiming to reduce uncertainty in estimating development impacts and support ecologically mindful land-based wind energy development. The validation effort covered approximately 6,540 km 2 near the Seven Mile Hill Wind Project in Wyoming. The GrSG IBM tool, built on the NetLogo platform (Tisue and Wilensky 2004), was executed over a 50-year period, with the analysis focusing on years following a 10-year initialization phase. Key results demonstrated the tool’s biological soundness across five key biological metrics: non-chick age class distribution (older than 10 weeks), adult sex ratio, life expectancy, population size, and overall population growth. For instance, the tool estimated that 58.6% of the non-chick population was reproductively immature, while the reference ranges from 51.4% to 57.8% (Patterson 1952, Rogers 1964). Experts confirmed the tool’s estimate was within a reasonable range for the species. The tool estimated average life expectancy of 1.43 years, while the reference ranges from 0.9 years to 1.1 years (Ammann 1957, Hamerstrom 1949). Experts also supported the model’s life-expectancy estimate as ecologically sound for the species in the study area. In terms of population change, the model estimated an annual shift between a 0.6% decline and a 1.0% increase over 50 years. While the reference suggests 2.9% annual decline in range-wide populations (Cortes et al. 2023), that includes many at-risk populations in South Dakota and Washington, for example. Our study area—in the northeastern part of Carbon County and western-edge of Albany County, Wyoming—is one of the remaining greater sage-grouse habitats supporting some of the most stable populations. Experts confirmed that the range of the annual population change spanning from a 0.6% decline to a 1.0% increase estimated by the tool was reasonable for our study area for this reason and confirmed that aligned with population estimates from existing studies on the greater sage-grouse and wind energy development in the study area (LeBeau et al. 2017a, Smith et al. 2024). Furthermore, the project showed that temporally explicit biological metrics generated by the GrSG IBM tool can complement the USGS’ Prioritizing Restoration of Sagebrush Ecosystems Tool (PReSET; Duchardt et al. 2021) by incorporating habitat restoration strategies into seasonal habitat suitability models to visualize population responses over time.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2025

A Computational Workflow of Elucidating Viral Impact on Mediating Microbial Response to In-situ Experimental Warming: Bridging microbial modeling to carbon and mineral modeling

Viruses are abundant in soils and shape microbial communities in ways that can potentially influence ecosystem processes, yet their contributions to carbon cycling and mineral transformations remain poorly understood. Here we present a multi-phase framework that links virus-host interactions to soil biogeochemistry by combining ecological simulations, genome- and community-scale metabolic modeling, and statistical and machine-learning analyses. We first calibrated microbial abundance profiles under explicit infection scenarios to capture how viral pressure alters community structure, then explored alternative interaction strategies, including kill-the-winner, piggyback-the-winner, and mixed lytic-lysogenic modes, through forward simulations. These ecological shifts were translated into metabolic consequences using exchange fluxes summarized into biologically meaningful categories, while integrated statistical and machine-learning screens elevated subtle but consistent signals. Application of this framework revealed that viral infections shift the balance between organic and inorganic fluxes, redirecting metabolism from diffuse organic transformations toward inorganic pools such as protons and CO 2 , directly linking viral regulation to respiration and soil carbon balance. The roll-up analysis also isolated perturbations in critical mineral ions, including magnesium, manganese, zinc, and copper, which serve as essential enzymatic cofactors. In piggyback-the-winner scenarios, uptake of these ions was strongly suppressed. Contrasting viral strategies produced distinct community structures and metabolic outcomes, from broad suppression under kill-the-winner dynamics to dramatic redistributions under high-lytic and high-gain lysogenic regimes that collapsed vulnerable microbial populations while promoting opportunists. Together, these results provide a tractable path to trace viral perturbations from host abundance shifts to metabolic flux adjustments and ecosystem-scale processes, offering a practical way to include viruses in earth system models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2026

Section 3 Reporting: Preserve America

Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a multidisciplinary laboratory with seven Nobel Prize-winning discoveries, 37 R&D 100 Awards, and countless advances in science and technology. For over 75 years, the Laboratory has played a leading role in the Department of Energy (DOE) Science and Technology mission and continues to contribute to the DOE’s missions in energy resources, environmental quality, and national security. The Laboratory is operated and managed by Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA), which was founded by the Research Foundation for the State University of New York on behalf of Stony Brook University, and Battelle, a non-profit applied science and technology organization. BNL is committed to longstanding partnerships with researchers, academic institutions, industry, students, teachers, and the surrounding community. BNL is located near the center of Suffolk County on Long Island, New York within Brookhaven Township, about 60 miles east of New York City. Most of BNL’s principal facilities are located near the center of the 5,265-acre (8.23 square mile) site (Figure 1). The developed area encompasses approximately 1,820 acres, consisting of: ▪ 500 acres originally developed by the Army (as part of WW II Camp Upton) and still used for offices and other operational buildings. ▪ 200 acres occupied by large, specialized research facilities. ▪ 520 acres occupied by outlying facilities, such as the Sewage Treatment Plant, research agricultural fields, housing facilities, and fire breaks. ▪ 400 acres of roads, parking lots, and connecting areas. ▪ 200 acres developed for the Long Island Solar Farm. The balance of the site, approximately 3,400 acres, is largely wooded and represents a native pine barrens ecosystem. In November 2000, DOE set aside 530 acres of undeveloped land at BNL as the Upton Ecological and Research Reserve. The Upton Reserve preserves this portion of the pine barrens ecosystem and provides an area for ecological research and education activities.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗