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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Residual strain and microstructure evolution in 316L stainless steel fabricated by hybrid additive/subtractive manufacturing

The extreme thermal gradients in additive manufacturing (AM) result in residual strains. Subsequent machining operations can relieve the AM strains but can introduce additional strains. AM and machining on the same platform, also called interleaving, during hybrid manufacturing has been shown to improve productivity. However, the impacts of these operations on the resulting residual strains are not well understood. In this investigation, neutron diffraction was used to measure residual strains in hybrid manufactured 316L stainless steel where blown-powder laser directed energy deposition (DED), and machining operations were interleaved in 1-inch intervals. We observe that the dominant texture developed during AM, resulting from different spot sizes and deposition parameters, significantly affects residual strain evolution. A dominant <011> texture along the build direction does not show any strain localization during interleaved deposition and machining whereas a dominant <001> texture shows strong tensile strain localization consistent with the pauses for machining at the end of AM step. Using coolant during machining can further alter the residual strain evolution. Our work shows that a combination of AM parameters and machining strategy can be used to influence the nature and magnitude of residual strains in components fabricated using convergent manufacturing technologies.

Hybrid manufacturing↗
DOE OSTI2021

Effect of metallosupramolecular polymer concentration on the synthesis of poly[n]catenanes

Poly[n]catenanes are a class of polymers that are composed entirely of interlocked rings. One synthetic route to these polymers involves the formation of a metallosupramolecular polymer (MSP) that consists of alternating units of macrocyclic and linear thread components. Ring closure of the thread components has been shown to yield a mixture of cyclic, linear, and branched poly[n]catenanes. Reported herein are investigations into this synthetic methodology, with a focus on a more detailed understanding of the crude product distribution and investigations into how the concentration of the MSP during the ring closing reaction impacts the resulting poly[n]catenanes. In addition to a better understanding of the molecular products obtained in these reactions, the results show that the concentration of the reaction can be used to tune the size and type of poly[n]catenanes accessed. At low concentrations the interlocked product distribution is limited to primarily oligomeric and small cyclic catenanes (number average molar mass $\overline{Mn}$ = 6.2 kg mol -1 , number of rings = 4). However, the same reaction at increased concentration can yield branched poly[n]catenanes with an $\overline{Mn}$ ca. 21 kg mol -1 and evidence of structures with as many as 640 interlocked rings (1000 kg mol -1 ).

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Location generalizability of image-based air quality models

This paper is to be submitted at the IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) Computer Vision for Earth Observation workshop. The full paper abstract is below: The ability to rapidly quantify atmospheric pollutants is important both for global emissions monitoring and for mitigating the adverse effects that follow a hazardous chemical release. In the aftermath of a chemical release, imagery is often the only available resource to assess local conditions. Recent work has demonstrated initial success in predicting particulate matter pollution from imagery; however, these results are tied to a specific site and do not generalize to new geographic locations. In this work, we seek to understand how easily deep learning models generalize to new locations in the context of image-based air quality assessments, targeting two distinct tasks: (1) broad measures of particulate matter pollution, and (2) the mass of a given chemical released in hazardous plumes. For the latter, we focus on sulfur dioxide, a toxic aerosol and a major component of particulate matter pollution caused by industrial fossil fuel consumption. To develop a model that operates in the widest possible range of environments, we test different training strategies, including the use of new geolocation foundation models. The best performing models achieve >80% accuracy when evaluating unseen imagery at previously seen sites, but we find significant drops in performance when evaluating imagery from unseen sites, at best 65%. Additionally, we present the public release of the National Parks Air Quality Index Dataset, a new medium-sized dataset that pairs imagery with sensor-based air quality measurements at 15 different national parks.

Byler, Eleanor B. [BATTELLE (PACIFIC NW LAB)]↗
DOE OSTI2022

Integration of Pumped Heat Energy Storage with Fossil-Fired Power Plant (Final Report)

The project team of Southwest Research Institute ® (SwRI ® ), Malta Inc. (Malta), and Luminant Generation Company LLC (Luminant) completed a feasibility study for the integration of a 100-MW, 10-hour (1000-MWh) Malta Pumped Heat Energy Storage (MPHES) system with multiple full-sized fossil-fired electricity generation units (EGU) in Luminant portfolio. MPHES is a long-duration, molten-salt-energy storage technology that uses turbomachinery and heat exchangers to transfer energy to a thermal storage media when charging, and removes the heat in a similar fashion when discharging. With high round trip efficiency (60-65%) and long lifespan (30+ years), MPHES provides economic benefits to the fossil-asset owners that can be scaled to integrate with assets across their portfolio. This technology uses hardware components, workforce personnel, and skillsets similar to those used by fossil EGUs, allowing for synergy when co-locating the two technologies. Luminant has approximately 39,000 megawatts of generation across 12 states, operating in six of the seven competitive markets in the U.S. and powered by a diverse portfolio of natural gas, nuclear, coal, and solar facilities. The DeCordova plant in Granbury, Texas, a simple cycle natural gas peaker power plant, was used as the fossil-fired asset in this project. The local market in Granbury, Texas has many influences, including several nearby power plants, a Luminant-owned nuclear plant (Comanche Peak), and substantial wind energy, which causes both negative pricing at night and high market volatility. Reducing false starts of the DeCordova plant and better responding to market volatility would be an economic advantage. Luminant is currently integrating battery storage plant on site to begin addressing these challenges. Integrating long-duration storage, like MPHES, would expand this capability beyond one hour of storage and have the potential to greatly reduce the total number of gas turbine starts. The MPHES charging requirement could help offset the overnight operating costs of Comanche Peak, which cannot load follow, and the nearby Luminant-owned Wise County combined cycle plant that cycles too often. Following the assessment of Luminant’s ERCOT-based portfolio for integration compatibility with Malta’s PHES system and the project tasks of conceptual study, technoeconomic analysis, technology gap assessment, and commercialization plan, the project team effort has resulted in several key outcomes: (1) Identification of market trends in a high-wind penetration market outside a major metropolitan area; (2) Creation of a dispatching model for the MPHES system and the pairing of Li-ion battery with a gas turbine in a real time market; (3) Revenue and cost estimations for operating MPHES alongside a gas peaker plant with real dispatching considerations and comparison with variations in the Malta implementation, including doubling the storage capacity and using two discharge drivetrains; (4) Potential carbon emission reductions possible by replacing gas turbine operation with Malta PHES operation; and (5) Summary of literature-based future market predictions for Texas.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2025

American-Made Solar Prize: Edgeli Enables DER Integration (CRADA 615) (Final Report)

The purpose of this project was to demonstrate how granular time series data and automated data transformation, and impact assessment tools could speed interconnection approvals for distributed energy resource projects of various types and sizes. Types included community solar, rooftop solar, and EV charging projects. Using software routines to automate the transformation of data (e.g. GIS) to a network database and power flow model then applying scenarios to create hourly (8760) hosting capacity values and voltage and thermal impacts for specific projects, we were able to demonstrate the feasibility of quickly assembling and analyzing key utility data sets for interconnection purposes. The outcomes of this effort will become the foundation for future work that will enhance and encapsulate the software components developed as part of this project, into web services (e.g. APIs) that can be integrated into queue management systems and automate interconnection screening processes.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Modeling for a Digital Twin-Based Remote Operation System Framework

New reactor designs and technologies are being developed to grow and advance the nuclear industry. Microreactors are one of the many new concepts for advancing the industry. Microreactors are very small reactors generally designed to have an operating power of 20 MWth or less. They are ideal for many applications in which it would not be feasible to have a large-scale reactor, such as powering remote communities, military bases, and mining sites. Many of these applications currently rely on diesel generators for power, and replacing those generators with the carbon-free energy of a microreactor is a major driving factor for microreactor development. However, most of the use cases for microreactors are in isolated locations where construction and labor costs are much higher. Microreactors will need to be comparable to other energy production methods for their deployment to be successful. Remotely operating the microreactor has a great potential to benefit the economics and make it more cost competitive. With remote operations, the operation facility location could be strategically chosen based on factors such as construction costs, workforce size, etc. The benefits of remote operations could be leveraged even more if the remote operation system is semi-autonomous. If the remote operation system is semi-autonomous, more microreactors could be operated and monitored from one remote operation facility. Additionally, with the system handling some tasks for the human operator, it could reduce the number of operating staff necessary for the microreactor. Digital twins can be used to introduce a level of automation to the remote operation system. Digital twins are capable of component monitoring, system operation and control, and predictive performance [1]. All of those features are important for a successful semi-autonomous remote operation system.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

DESI Emission-line Galaxies: Unveiling the Diversity of [O II ] Profiles and Its Links to Star Formation and Morphology

We study the [O II ] profiles of emission-line galaxies (ELGs) from the Early Data Release of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). To this end, we decompose and classify the shape of [O II ] profiles with the first two eigenspectra derived from principal component analysis. Our results show that DESI ELGs have diverse line profiles, which can be categorized into three main types: (1) narrow lines with a median width of ∼50 km s −1 , (2) broad lines with a median width of ∼80 km s −1 , and (3) two redshift systems with a median velocity separation of ∼150 km s −1 , i.e., double-peak galaxies. To investigate the connections between the line profiles and galaxy properties, we utilize the information from the COSMOS data set and compare the properties of ELGs, including star formation rate (SFR) and galaxy morphology, with the average properties of reference star-forming galaxies with similar stellar mass, sizes, and redshifts. Our findings show that, on average, DESI ELGs have a higher SFR and more asymmetrical/disturbed morphology than the reference galaxies. Moreover, we uncover a relationship between the line profiles, the excess SFR, and the excess asymmetry parameter, showing that DESI ELGs with broader [O II ] line profiles have more disturbed morphology and higher SFR than the reference star-forming galaxies. Finally, we discuss possible physical mechanisms giving rise to the observed relationship and the implications of our findings on the galaxy clustering measurements, including the halo occupation distribution modeling of DESI ELGs and the observed excess velocity dispersion of the satellite ELGs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Mechanical properties and strengthening mechanisms of cold sprayed Al-Mg alloys

This paper investigates the mechanical properties and strengthening mechanisms of cold sprayed Al-Mg alloys as a function of Mg content. Cold spray (CS) is a solid-state deposition process that can be used as a repair technique for structural components. However, the limited ductility of cold sprayed materials is an unsettled issue in CS community. Herein, reproducible, and significantly increased elongation to failure (∼15%) in as-deposited conditions is reported in CS Al-Mg binary alloys with low Mg content (≤ 2.5 wt%). Furthermore, reducing Mg content down to 2.5 wt% in CS Al-Mg binary alloys demonstrated comparable mechanical strength to its wrought counterparts. Strengthening mechanisms were analyzed in wrought and CS Al-Mg alloys based upon microstructural characteristics, such as grain size, Mg solute concentration, and dislocation density. A quantitative evaluation of yield strength revealed that grain boundary strengthening is predominant in CS Al-Mg alloys as compared with their wrought counterparts. When comparing among CS Al-Mg binary alloys of different compositions, Mg solute concentration, and dislocation density governed mechanical strength. In conclusion, the underlying mechanism for the variation of mechanical properties and strengthening mechanisms is discussed in terms of these microstructural characteristics.

Additive manufacturing↗
DOE OSTI2022

NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF AIR DEHUMIDIFICATION THROUGH WATER DROPLETS DIELECTROPHORESIS

This paper numerically investigated the dehumidification of moist airflow in a converging rectangular duct with electrically enhanced condensation. The aim was to develop a condensation model that predicted water vapor condensation by employing the dielectrophoresis principle. The charged droplets were injected into the computational domain to produce a gradient electric field. The dielectrophoretic interaction between the droplets and vapor molecules of the humid air resulted in local water vapor condensation at the vapor and liquid droplet interface. This phenomenon is described in detail in this paper. A hybrid Eulerian-Lagrangian solver SprayFoam was developed based on OpenFOAM® to simulate condensation in two-phase gas-liquid mixtures. The following developments were made based on the standard compressible multiphase flow solver SprayFoam in OpenFOAM®: (1) Eulerian solver for gas phase (2) multi-component species transport, and (3) Lagrangian solver for gas-droplet two-phase flows and sub-models for liquid droplets. The newly developed numerical model was experimentally validated with data from a series of tests conducted in the authors' laboratory. The results showed that the simulations followed the same trends as the data, and the model predicted the condensation due to the electro-spray injection process in the air stream. The injected water droplets, which are electrically charged to their Rayleigh limits, increased in size while wiping out the humidity from the air. The simulations indicated that the dehumidification was about 1% for 0.5 cubic feet per minute airflow rate. Scaling up to larger flows is a future follow-up work.

Yel Mahi, *Maliha↗
DOE OSTI2023

Implementation of Smart Materials for Actuation of Traditional Valve Technology for Hybrid Energy Systems

The ever-changing nature of the power industry will require the implementation of hybrid energy systems. Integration of tightly coupled components in hybrids often involves the diversion of exhaust gas flow. An innovative smart material actuation technology is proposed to replace traditional electro-mechanical actuated valve mechanisms with lighter and less expensive actuators. A shape memory alloy (SMA) spring-actuated valve was designed for high-temperature service to demonstrate the promise of smart materials in control valve applications. With SMA springs only generating a maximum force of 3.2 N, an innovative valve design was necessary. To demonstrate the concept, a 3-inch Nominal Pipe Size valve was designed, and 3D printed using the stereolithography technique. Increasing the electrical current to actuate the SMA springs reduced actuation time. The maximum current of 10 A produced the lowest actuation time of 2.85 s, with an observed maximum stroke rate of more than 100 stroke completion %/s (considering actuation open/close as 100% stroke) at the midrange. The final assembly of the valve was estimated to provide a cost reduction of more than 30% and a weight reduction of more than 80% compared to the other available automatic valves in the present market.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Strength stability at high temperatures for additively manufactured alumina forming austenitic alloy

Several fast-spectrum nuclear reactors designed to generate high power (~450 MWe) rely on forced convection of media such as supercritical CO 2 , sodium, or liquid lead to cool the nuclear core, operating at temperatures up to 600 °C. Cost-effective, high-strength Fe-based alumina forming austenitic (AFA) alloys are a promising candidate for the fabrication of critical nuclear components. This study investigated laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) processing of an AFA alloy composition optimized for improved creep resistance. Electron microscopy revealed an elongated grain structure along the build direction with a fine sub-grain cellular structure decorated with (Cr,Fe,Nb) 23 C 6 carbide precipitates at the intercellular boundaries. Finally, at temperatures of 20–900 °C, the LPBF alloy's superior tensile properties compared to its arc-melted counterpart and other advanced steels (e.g., SS316) were attributed to the distribution of nano-sized carbide precipitates, whereas the high ductility was attributed to the LPBF alloy's elongated grain structure.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Understanding and controlling water-organic co-transport in amorphous microporous materials

The transport of molecules in microporous material is a significant and active area of research in separation applications. The movement of vapor/liquid molecules in a high-loading condition in microporous spaces is especially challenging to interrogate. This project aims to understand and control the transport of complex water and organic solvent mixtures in varying structures of microporous carbon molecular sieve (CMS) and activated carbon membranes. Modeling of transport behavior in such carbonaceous samples using computational modeling is difficult due to their amorphous structure. Therefore, this research intends to study the transport mechanism of water-organic mixtures by experimentally revealing fundamental transport properties, such as guest sorption amounts as well as diffusion and permeation rates. Considering the different size and guest-host affinity of water and organic solvent molecules, the objective of this research is to understand the structural conditions within the ultramicropores and micropores that generate different types of molecular transport and selection mechanisms within such complex systems. Carbonaceous materials are developed using tailored pyrolysis techniques to pyrolyze polymeric precursors, including polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC),polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), polymer of intrinsic microporosity (PIM) -1, and fully aromatic polyamide. The initial stage of the research will focus on the microscopic diffusion and sorption studies of pure component water, xylene isomers, and n,n- dimethylformamide within various carbons. Additional structural investigation on CMS, such as gas physisorption and neutron scattering studies, will be executed to gain deeper insight into these structure-transport relationships. Scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron microscopy are also used to further characterize these materials. The research will progress to probe mutual diffusion of complex water-organic mixtures within various CMS microstructures. Competitive sorption and permeation studies of the binary mixtures in different microstructural CMS will be followed. The obtained binary mixture transport parameters were used to predict binary water-organic mixtures transport.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2026

Roadmap to Advance Heliostat Technologies for High Temperature Solar-Thermal Systems

Since its establishment, the Heliostat Consortium (HelioCon) has made substantial progress toward closing many of the gaps in concentrating solar power (CSP) research. Numerous techno-economic studies have been performed, investigating topics ranging from the trade-off between size and temperature for industrial process heat applications to optimization of the heliostat design itself for various applications. Significant improvements have been made in optical metrology techniques, with first steps toward in situ measurement of heliostat fields. Several standards have been, and continue to be, developed with the coordination of an international group of CSP industry participants. Training programs have been developed, with universities including CSP in their engineering curricula, and many public webinars have been held to provide broad access to the latest CSP research. Improved CSP components such as mirror facets and wireless communication systems have been developed, and the solar tower at Sandia National Laboratories has been upgraded with a testbed for closed-loop controls research and development. Field deployment challenges involving heliostat foundations and sensitive wildlife habitats have been explored, with progress made toward methods for streamlining project development and permitting. Additional knowledge has been added to the body of work on wind behavior of heliostats and arrays of heliostats, with progress made toward a holistic understanding of wind design methods. Finally, techniques have been developed and demonstrated for assessing soiling conditions at a proposed project site, with predictive models for the soiling rate showing good results. Taking these results together, HelioCon has contributed greatly to the global CSP research and development effort over the past several years.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Microstructure Validation of Graph Theory Model-Derived Cooling Rates in the Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing of ER70S-6 Steel

Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) enables high-rate fabrication of large metallic components, but spatial variations in thermal history can lead to microstructural heterogeneity that requires efficient process models to evaluate. This study evaluates whether cooling rates extracted from a graph theory model (GTM)-based thermal simulation are consistent with the microstructural evolution observed in an ER70S-6 WAAM wall. Thermal histories from the model were analyzed at selected build heights, and cooling rates were extracted from the final thermal excursion through the austenite phase field. Microstructures at corresponding locations were characterized using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) to quantify grain size distributions, and pearlite interlamellar spacing was used as an additional indicator of cooling behavior. The modeled cooling rates were highest near the substrate and generally decreased with build height, consistent with the observed reduction in the fine grain fraction and the progressive shift in the grain size distribution as build height increased. Pearlite spacing trends also supported the modeled cooling rate variation. These results indicate that GTM-derived thermal histories can be post-processed into metallurgically meaningful cooling rate estimates for WAAM steel builds and linked to dataset specific empirical grain size distribution relationships for process–thermal history–microstructure assessment.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Emulating aerosol optics with randomly generated neural networks

Abstract. Atmospheric aerosols have a substantial impact on climate and remain one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate prediction. Accurate representation of their direct radiative effects is a crucial component of modern climate models. However, direct computation of the radiative properties of aerosol populations is far too computationally expensive to perform in a climate model, so optical properties are typically approximated using a parameterization. This work develops artificial neural networks (ANNs) capable of replacing the current aerosol optics parameterization used in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). A large training dataset is generated by using Mie code to directly compute the optical properties of a range of atmospheric aerosol populations given a large variety of particle sizes, wavelengths, and refractive indices. Optimal neural architectures for shortwave and longwave bands are identified by evaluating ANNs with randomly generated wirings. Randomly generated deep ANNs are able to outperform conventional multilayer-perceptron-style architectures with comparable parameter counts. Finally, the ANN-based parameterization produces significantly more accurate bulk aerosol optical properties than the current parameterization when compared with direct Mie calculations using mean absolute error. The success of this approach makes possible the future inclusion of much more sophisticated representations of aerosol optics in climate models that cannot be captured by extension of the existing parameterization scheme and also demonstrates the potential of random-wiring-based neural architecture search in future applications in the Earth sciences.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Work Hardening Model of Structure in Hall-Petch Strengthening

The microstructural length scale of metals changes by orders of magnitude under extreme processing conditions producing a concurrent wide range of mechanical strength and plasticity behaviors. A unified stress-strain σε σ(ε) model is formulated that’s based on superposing the components of asymptotic-curvilinear work hardening Θσ Θ(σ) to qualify and quantify these mechanical behaviors. This approach accounts for the rapid strengthening of metals beyond the initial yield point, through extended steady-state deformation, to the structural instability. The relationship between the softening coefficients cbi c bi of the work hardening formulation Θσ Θ(σ) and strength are found to reveal the microstructural scale in the material. Specifically, the rapid decrease in the slope of the Θσ Θ(σ) curve provides a measure for microstructural size consistent with a functional Hall-Petch relationship of strength. A successful application is shown for the tensile behavior of pure aluminum microstructures that result from extreme plastic deformation by equal-channel angle pressing.

Hall-Petch strengthening↗
DOE OSTI2023

Theoretical Examination of the Hydroxide Transport in Cobaltocenium-Containing Polyelectrolytes

Polymers incorporating cobaltocenium groups have received attention as promising components of anion-exchange membranes (AEMs), exhibiting a good balance of chemical stability and high ionic conductivity. In this work, we analyze the hydroxide diffusion in the presence of cobaltocenium cations in an aqueous environment based on the molecular dynamics of model systems confined in one dimension to mimic the AEM channels. In order to describe the proton hopping mechanism, the forces are obtained from the electronic structure computed at the density-functional tight-binding level. We find that the hydroxide diffusion depends on the channel size, modulation of the electrostatic interactions by the solvation shell, and its rearrangement ability. Hydroxide diffusion proceeds via both the vehicular and structural diffusion mechanisms with the latter playing a larger role at low diffusion coefficients. The highest diffusion coefficient is observed under moderate water densities (around half the density of liquid water) when there are enough water molecules to form the solvation shell, reducing the electrostatic interaction between ions, yet there is enough space for the water rearrangements during the proton hopping. Furthermore, the effects of cobaltocenium separation, orientation, chemical modifications, and the role of nuclear quantum effects are also discussed.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2024

Quantifying Drivers of Methane Hydrobiogeochemistry in a Tidal River Floodplain System

The influence of coastal ecosystems on global greenhouse gas (GHG) budgets and their response to increasing inundation and salinization remains poorly constrained. In this study, we have integrated an uncertainty quantification (UQ) and ensemble machine learning (ML) framework to identify and rank the most influential processes, properties, and conditions controlling methane behavior in a freshwater floodplain responding to recently restored seawater inundation. Our unique multivariate, multiyear, and multi-site dataset comprises tidal creek and floodplain porewater observations encompassing water level, salinity, pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), total dissolved nitrogen (TDN), partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO 2 ), nitrous oxide (pN 2 O), methane (pCH 4 ), and the stable isotopic composition of methane (δ 13 CH 4 ). Additionally, we incorporated topographical data, soil porosity, hydraulic conductivity, and water retention parameters for UQ analysis using a previously developed 3D variably saturated flow and transport floodplain model for a physical mechanistic understanding of factors influencing groundwater levels and salinity and, therefore, CH 4 . Principal component analysis revealed that groundwater level and salinity are the most significant predictors of overall biogeochemical variability. The ensemble ML models and UQ analyses identified DO, water level, salinity, and temperature as the most influential factors for porewater methane levels and indicated that approximately 80% of the total variability in hourly water levels and around 60% of the total variability in hourly salinity can be explained by permeability, creek water level, and two van Genuchten water retention function parameters: the air-entry suction parameter α and the pore size distribution parameter m. These findings provide insights on the physicochemical factors in methane behavior in coastal ecosystems and their representation in local- to global-scale Earth system models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗