Projects

As a scientific user facility, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) provides expertise, instrumentation, and resources to 250 projects each year.

EMSL projects displayed on the EMSL web site project page reflect project abstracts and information migrated to this page before April 30, 2024. To review current and past EMSL user projects, visit EMSL Science Central.™

Elucidating the impacts of viruses on soil organic carbon and greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural peat soils

Lead Institution

University of Amsterdam

Principal Investigator

Paula Dalcin Martins

Project type

FICUS Research

Viruses are the most abundant biological entities on Earth. Despite their abundance, soil viruses are poorly characterized and viral impacts on the biogeochemical cycles in soils are vastly…

Parched: quantifying microbial ecophysiology and the fate of plant carbon during soil dry down

Lead Institution

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Steve Blazewicz

Project type

FICUS Research

In seasonally dry grasslands, soil microbes bloom during the plant growing season, survive extreme desiccation (water potential < -35 MPa) during long dry periods, and then rapidly mineralize soil…

Moisture and seasonal drivers of Inter-Kingdom metabolic interaction in a marginal soil rhizosphere

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

William Nelson

Project type

FICUS Research

Soil is a complex environment with numerous competing and cooperating populations contributing to overall ecosystem services. Plants provide most of the fresh organic carbon inputs through growth and…

Vertically and Size-Resolved Chemical Speciation of Aqueously Processed Organic Aerosols

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

Allen Goldstein

Project type

FICUS Research

This proposal focuses on improving process-level understanding and model representation of 1) aerosol-cloud interactions and 2) aerosol processes affecting cloud lifecycle, properties, and/or…

Characterization of the Aerobiome during ARM Surface-Atmosphere Integrated Laboratory (SAIL) Campaign

Lead Institution

Brookhaven National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Maria Zawadowicz

Project type

FICUS Research

Atmospheric bioaerosols are bacteria, viruses, spores or pollen and their fragments suspended in ambient air, and they can have wide-reaching potential impacts on air quality, climate, and public…

Characterizing primary biological aerosol particles during TRACER

Lead Institution

University of Michigan

Principal Investigator

Allison Steiner

Project type

FICUS Research

Atmospheric organic aerosols represent a large fraction of the total aerosol in the atmosphere and can derive from primary sources emitted directly from natural or anthropogenic processes or be…

Metabolic exchange between Spartina alterniflora and sulfur chemosymbionts of the plant's root microbiome

Lead Institution

Georgia Institute of Technology

Principal Investigator

Joel Kostka

Project type

FICUS Research

Vegetated coastal ecosystems are among the most intense carbon sinks in the biosphere, storing large amounts of carbon in their soils. Despite the fact that the root zone of coastal wetland plants…

Understanding contributions of agricultural dust to vertical profiles of ice-nucleating particles in the central Great Plains

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Susannah Burrows

Project type

FICUS Research

Agricultural dusts contribute to airborne particulate amount, aerosol optical depth, and atmospheric ice-nucleating particle (INP) concentrations in agricultural regions. Agricultural dusts include…

Resolving carbon fluxes within microbial communities inhabiting full-scale bioenergy facilities

Lead Institution

University of British Columbia

Principal Investigator

Ryan Ziels

Project type

FICUS Research

Elucidating the physiology and metabolic function of uncultivated microorganisms in their in situ environment remains a critical challenge in microbial ecology. This knowledge gap obfuscates attempts…

Temporal Dynamics of Microbial Traits Driving Divergent Patterns of Carbon Flow During Surface Litter Decomposition

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Marie Kroeger

Project type

FICUS Research

Microbially-driven surface litter decomposition is an important terrestrial ecosystem process creating soil organic carbon that serves as an essential carbon sink. Climate change projections show…

Plastic Degrading Microbial Communities from Insect Larvae Guts

Lead Institution

University of Delaware

Principal Investigator

Mark Blenner

Project type

FICUS Research

Insect microbial consortia are attractive platforms for plastics deconstruction and conversion as they degrade plastics more rapidly than microbial isolates and do not require pretreatment. While…

Resolving taxon-specific contributions to nutrient cycling in soil microbial communities through stable isotope enabled multi-omics

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Amy Zimmerman

Project type

FICUS Research

Mechanistic and predictive understanding of microbial nutrient cycling requires deconvoluting the outcomes of multiple population- and community-scale processes. Yet quantitative knowledge of…