DOE Awards $13.1 Million for Research in Environmental System Science

July 2023

17 Projects Span Environmental Systems Research Across the U.S.

DOE announced $13.1 million in funding for 17 ESS projects to universities, academic institutions, federal research labs, and nonprofits. Awards focus on measurements, experiments, field data, modeling, and synthesis to provide improved understanding and representation of ecosystems and watersheds to advance the sophistication and capabilities of models spanning from individual environmental processes to Earth-system scales.

Selected projects cover a range of environmental system science topics, including understanding and modeling current and future hot moments in wetland interfaces, improved understanding of the responses of cold regions (e.g., mountains and the Arctic) to changes in climate drivers, and a novel approach to analyze and integrate publicly available data through modeling and machine learning to advance our understanding of ecosystem and watershed processes.

“Coupling of observational and experimental data with environmental modeling has been a hallmark of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) supported research,” said Todd Anderson, DOE Acting Associate Director of Science for BER in DOE’s Office of Science. “These awards will result in a better grasp of critical processes linking climate and environmental systems needed to improve our ability to predict future impacts.”

The projects were selected by competitive peer review under the DOE BER Funding Opportunity Announcement for Environmental System Science. Funding totals $13.1 million in Fiscal Year 2023 for projects lasting up to three years. The awards brochure can be viewed here.