Investing from Within: Exploring Environmental Interactions | Part 1 of a 3-Part Series

One day in early November 2020, on a patch of land bordering the Arctic Ocean in Alaska, technicians winched a tethered balloon into the sky over a dot on the map called Oliktok Point. The light was dusk-like. Sunrise in Oliktok came at around noon; sunset arrived 90 minutes later.

High above, dangling from a slender steel tether, a 15-pound payload the size of an airline carry-on bag swung inside a weather-proof housing. It contained an instrument developed at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) to sample aerosols―tiny atmospheric particles―at intervals of every few minutes. That’s very fast for such a device.

The prototype miniaturized instrument is an automated size- and time-resolved aerosol collector (STAC), part of a project led by EMSL chemist Swarup China. The device is compact enough to be packed aboard unmanned aerial systems used for atmospheric research. For now, the focus is on tethered balloons, which can linger within a single targeted column of air from ground level to 1,000 meters (3,280 feet).

The nanoscale samples it nabs every few minutes in Oliktok will go back to EMSL to be characterized on the laboratory’s sophisticated microscopy, spectroscopy, and mass spectrometry platforms.

Facility Research Investments

The STAC payload is one outward sign, among many, of the fruits of facility research investments at EMSL. Such internal investments are unsung sources of innovation. These funds promote novel research and external collaborations that align with EMSL’s vision for the year 2030 and its three science areas: Environmental Transformations and Interactions (ETI), Functional and Systems Biology (FSB), and Computing Analytics and Modeling (CAM).

In turn, facility research investments are also in sync with the research mission of the Biological and Environment Research (BER) program at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which supports EMSL and other user facilities. STAC, for instance, falls under the BER research mission regarding Earth and environmental systems and provides needed data to improve predictive models describing atmospheric behavior.

Aerosols, suspended in the air as solid or liquid particles with a broad range of sizes, contribute to cloud formation. They also affect changes in climate because of their radiative (light-scattering or light-absorbing) properties. STAC’s one-of-a-kind capabilities allow the capture of aerosols at prescribed elevations and durations, which is not possible with aircraft or land-based collectors.

China and his team plan to send a lighter, smaller version of STAC aloft during 2021 tethered balloon work supported by DOE’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility. That includes experiments at ARM’s Southern Great Plains atmospheric observatory in Oklahoma; during the Tracking Aerosol Convections Interactions Experiment (TRACER), an ARM field campaign in coastal Texas; and in Colorado during another upcoming ARM field campaign, Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL).

What inspires such facility research investment projects?

Outreach and feedback come from national workshops and meetings as well as BER events for principal investigators. There is important input from EMSL webinars, workshops, summer schools, and other activities open to facility users and staff. Ideas flow in from the User Executive Committee at EMSL, chaired by University of Michigan aquatic geochemist Rose Cory.

The ETI Realm

Overall EMSL facilities research and science strategy are overseen by chief science officer Justin Teeguarden and chief information officer Lee Ann McCue, in consultation with Earth scientist Nancy Hess, for ETI-focused investments. Hess is part of an EMSL-wide strategic investments committee. Others on this committee include biologist Scott Baker and chemist and chief scientist for visual proteomics Ljiljana Paša-Tolić.

To drill down into the realm of facility research investment funding, ETI makes a good test case, with its focus on research related to biogeochemical transformations, Terrestrial-Atmosphere Processes, and Rhizosphere Function. (FSB and CAM are the subjects of forthcoming articles on internal investments.)

STAC, developed as partner proposal with ARM, is one example of recent ETI facility research investment funding that benefits EMSL users as well as staff.

So is a universal imaging sample holder designed by senior research scientist Zihua Zhu and other EMSL scientists. It allows different analytical and imaging tools to map the plant–microbe interface at precisely the same location, allowing for multimodal investigations on the same sample with precise location registry.

Zhu, an expert in time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, described the holder in a 2019 paper on image analysis of plant root samples. It is one of several published studies utilizing the universal holder, which Hess says is not yet widely used by EMSL users.

The universal sample holder supports a longer-term EMSL goal―to understand, predict, and control plant–microbe interactions in the rhizosphere, which Zhu refers to as perhaps “the most complex microbial realm on Earth.”

Another example of EMSL facility research funding in the ETI space is a transparent gel system that allows roots to be imaged as they grow. It’s being developed at EMSL using designs and methodologies from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Understanding the genotype controls on the root system architecture could bring improvements in plant productivity and plant hardiness in the face of environmental perturbations. It could also inform soil-based designs for long-term carbon storage.

“They designed it and we built it,” said Hess of the gel system and the Danforth partnership. “It’s an example of a new capability to address the science questions (EMSL) users come to us with.”

A Peek Around the Corner

Hess also mentioned an aspirational ETI project—an automated sample throughput system to speed analysis. The proof-of-concept operation may be in place in 2021.

The pilot project will take in and analyze complex samples of dissolved organic matter from the Worldwide Hydrobiogeochemistry Observation Network for Dynamic River Systems (WHONDRS), creating a trail of data and metadata. The three-year-old global research consortium, which investigates the biogeochemistry of river corridors, is co-directed by ecologist James Stegen and Earth scientist Amy Goldman, both EMSL users from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

Such an automated high-throughput system will reduce the potential for human error and provide process lessons for the future. It also aligns precisely with BER missions and EMSL decadal goals.

Teeguarden called the automated throughput project “a peek around the corner for what the future might hold.”

A Boost for the Best

Facility research investment funding can also be used to upgrade an existing system capability whose initial price tag was paid for in another way.

For instance, facility research investment funds are being used for alterations to the $17.5 million 21 Tesla Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) mass spectrometer, paid for originally by BER Major Item of Equipment funds.

Dubbed “21T,” the hulking, humming, giant instrument was put into operation at EMSL in 2015 and rigged with an FTICR magnet that is one of the two largest in the world. Designed and built at EMSL, 21T spectrometer generates high-performance results in measuring peptide isotopic fine structures, mixtures of complex organic matter, and large proteins.

Alterations to 21T enabled by facility research investment funding will “keep this flagship capability on the leading edge of technology,” says Paša-Tolić.

She is an expert on the convolutions of “capability planning,” which includes investments in EMSL’s capital equipment (pegged at $6 million a year), co-managing EMSL’s capital and operations budgets, divesting, and enhancing partnerships with industry, universities, other government agencies, and its host institution, PNNL.

Science drives both investments and divestments, says Paša-Tolić―science that is always aligned with BER missions, user needs, and EMSL goals.

‘Obvious Synergies’

“These internal investments benefit (EMSL) users,” says Hess.

One example is STAC again, a partner project started in 2019 that benefits both the EMSL and ARM user communities.

ARM operates fixed and mobile atmospheric observatories in climate-critical regions around the world. One of them is at Oliktok Point, which is part of a larger ARM complex called North Slope of Alaska.

STAC could dramatically change the particle-size and time resolutions of aerosol sampling. Vertical profiles of aerosols and their size-resolved chemical composition are not well represented in models. Ground and satellite instruments have limitations, and airborne instruments largely measure only along the horizontal at great speeds. Tethered balloons, designed to ease into the sky at a slow pace along a vertical column, can change that, especially once coupled with China’s new lightweight and sensitive instrument.

During an online users meeting in November 2020, ARM technical director Jim Mather called out the STAC collaboration between the two user facilities―one practiced at field observations and the other at supplying fine-grained analytical work in a laboratory setting. “There are obvious synergies there, especially in the aerosols space.”

Meanwhile, he says China’s new instrument will significantly expand aerosol measurement capabilities.

To shine a light on EMSL facility research investment funding, Paša-Tolić called China’s automated aerosol sampler an example of “partnering for maximum impact.”

The STAC will be available to the user community as part of ARM field campaigns in the upcoming FICUS EMSL-ARM call for proposals that will be announced in early January 2021.