Plant, Soil and Subsurface Flow and Transport

The Plant, Soil, & Subsurface Flow and Transport Capability comprises a suite of resources for exploring physical and biogeochemical processes in the subsurface, and in the plant-soil ecosystem. Researchers can conduct experiments across a range of scales, and compare experimental and numerical results to address the nation's most challenging problems related to contaminant transport, biogeochemical nutrient cycles, plant physiology, and plant-microbe-ecosystem interactions.

The resources include:

• A plant growth laboratory with shared resources between PNNL and EMSL, where light, temperature, watering conditions, and CO₂ concentration can be carefully controlled.
• Microbial ecology laboratories for incubating cultures and communities under ambient or increased temperature/CO₂ levels, and measuring their respiration and enzyme capacity.
• Sample preparation for metatranscriptomics, metagenomics, high throughput amplicon sequencing, and other biogeochemical assays.
• Custom flow cells at the pore- and intermediate- scales to study reactive and multiphase flow in saturated and undersaturated subsurface conditions.
• Simulation of multiphase flow to design experiments, provide initial and boundary conditions, and to aid interpretation of results.
• X-ray Computed Tomography for 3-dimensional imaging of the internal structure of environmental and other samples.
• An analytical laboratory for C, H, N, S and inorganic assays.

Of course EMSL’s extensive range of instrumentation in other capabilities is available for further detailed analysis, including isolation of distinct cells and tissues, microscopy (e.g. fluorescence, electron, and atomic-force) as well as multiple -omic analyses.

See a complete list of instruments and laboratories available in the Plant, Soil & Subsurface Flow and Transport capability.