ARCHIVE - EES Division Highlights/Accomplishments

Archive

March 30, 2005

EES Scientist Serves as Guest Editor for Special Feature of Ecology
Brent Newman of EES-2 was recently guest editor of a special feature on the Ecohydrology of Semiarid Landscapes, which was published in the February issue of the journal Ecology. He was also coauthor of a paper on "Ecohydrological Control of Deep Drainage in Arid and Semiarid Regions" that is included in the special feature. The papers are interdisciplinary and synthetic, covering a range of topics that describe the scientific and societal issues relevant to ecohydrological management in water limited environments. The special feature can be found in Ecology, v. 86, pp. 275-319.

Yucca Mountain Briefings and Tours
On March 21, 2005, Bruce Reinert of EES-7 in Las Vegas, Nevada, briefed Major General Stephen M. Goldfein, Commander, Air Warfare Center; Ms. Yvonne Gresnick, 98th Range Wing Vice; Lieutenant Colonel Rich Ziebarth, Acting Director, USAF/DOE Liaison Office, all from Nellis Air Force Base. A portion of YMP is on the Nellis Range. The information included an overview of geology, results of testing activities and repository layout.

Additionally, on March 21, 2005, Bruce Reinert briefed a small group of White Pine County Officials, Nevada.

On March 22, Bruce Reinert briefed three small groups of visitors from U.S. House of Representatives, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), and Japan Nuclear Safety Commission.

"Tours" at Yucca Mountain consist of a general briefing of the tunnel/repository layout and experiments (both completed and ongoing). The briefings are conducted in an underground excavation off the main tunnel called an Alcove. This Alcove has been customized for tours, including maps/displays and is about 160 meters (175 yards) underground.

March 23, 2005

EES's Wendee Brunish attends IGAT Meeting
Wendee Brunish, EES-11, attended the Interagency Geotechnical Assessment Team (IGAT) meeting, held at Applied Research Associates in Alexandria Virginia on March 10 and 11, 2005. Brunish leads the EES effort on the Tunnel Target Defeat Advanced Concepts Technology Development (TTD ACTD) project, funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The EES-developed Geotechnical Assessment Methodology for Underground Targets is being used to develop 3-D geologic models for the test targets in the ACTD research, including the U16b tunnel at the Nevada Test Site. The IGAT meeting included discussions of how the ACTD work would be carried out.?/p>

EES Awarded Grant from Southern California Earthquake Center
Carl Gable of EES-6 was recently awarded a grant from the Southern California Earthquake Center for a project that he co-leads titled "Collaborative Research: Development of Community Finite Element Models of Fault Systems Studies and Meshing the Community Block Model." Part of this project includes organizing and hosting a workshop that fosters collaboration on advanced mesh development techniques for the analysis of deformation in complexly-faulted geologic settings. Through Carl's work, LANL leads in this area-this is a spinoff of efforts to develop gridding technologies for groundwater modeling that honor the complex hydrogeologic settings involved in projects such as Yucca Mountain Project, Nevada Test Site, and the local Groundwater Protection Program. The techniques are also being used in the assessment of hard- and deeply-buried target defeat and have also been developed collaboratively with weapons physics code teams.

EES Scientist Published in Journal of Petrology
Jamie Gardner, EES-9, published "Petrogenesis of pre-caldera mafic lavas, Jemez Mountains Volcanic Field, (New Mexico, U. S. A.)," in the February 2005 issue of the Journal of Petrology. The paper details the results of of petrologic, isotopic, and other geochemical studies of the origins and crustal interactions of the mafic magmas in the Jemez Mountains. For the full paper, reference: Wolff, J. A., Rowe, M. C., Teasdale, R., Gardner, J. N., Ramos, F. C., and Heikoop, C. E., "Petrogenesis of pre-caldera mafic lavas, Jemez Mountains Volcanic Field, (New Mexico, U. S. A.)," Journal of Petrology, v. 46, pp. 407-439 (2005).

Gardner Serves on Dissertation Committee
Jamie Gardner, EES-9, traveled to Washington State University to serve as a dissertation committee member and examiner on a student's Ph.D. qualifying exams. While there he gave a very well-attended and well-received talk, "Geology and Paleoseismology of the Pajarito Fault System, Rio Grande Rift, New Mexico," to the combined departments of the University of Idaho and Washington State University.

EES Publishes Report on Lessons-Learned from the Cerro Grande Wildfire
An article by Randy Mynard, Gordon Keating and Paul Rich of EES-9 has been published in the January/February 2005 issue of the Journal of Emergency Management. The 10-page report, "GIS for Emergency Response: Lessons from the Cerro Grande Wildfire," discusses the May 2000 disaster and how an offsite cartographic facility was set up to provide maps to the LANL Emergency Operations Center. It offers many lessons-learned, including ways to facilitate the use of geographic information systems (GIS) for emergency management.

Yucca Mountain Briefings and Tour
On March 14, 2005, Dick Kovach of EES-7 in Las Vegas, Nevada, briefed a group of 35 Churchill County High School students (a county east of Carson City, Reno). The information included an overview of geology, results of testing activities and repository layout.

On March 15, 2005, Dick Kovach briefed a group of about 50 visitors from the Sun City Anthem (retirement community in Las Vegas, Nevada). The information included an overview of geology, results of testing activities and repository layout.

On March 15, 2005, Bruce Reinert escorted visitors from the HISTORY CHANNEL as they conducted interviews and took pictures/video of the underground for a program that will air on June 19.

March 16, 2005

EES's Scott Baldrige Publishes in Nature
Scott Baldridge (EES-11) is coauthor on a paper recently published in the journal Nature, titled "Lithospheric Structure of the Rio Grande Rift." Coauthors on the paper are from New Mexico Tech, New Mexico State University, University of Texas at Austin, and Arizona State University. The paper reports interpretation of results from a passive seismic experiment conducted in the region including the Rio Grande Rift of New Mexico. They conclude that the rift extension, which is known to be very slow compared to other rift zones in the world, is a pure-shear rifting mechanism. They also show that the extension in the lower crust is distributed over a region having a width of four times the width of the surficial expression of the rift. They propose a model that includes significantly less concentrated mantle upwelling beneath the Rift, which they propose explains the limited amount of surface volcanics compared to other continental rift systems. This project was partially funded by LANL IGPP.

AREVA Tours Yucca Mountain
Bruce Reinert, EES-7, briefed managers from AREVA and Framatome on February 22. AREVA is a nuclear power and electricity transmission group. A member of AREVA Group, COGEMA, is working on the design of surface handling facilities for the Yucca Mountain repository. The briefing included an overview of geology, results of?testing activities and repository layout.

EES Conducts Tours and Briefings of Yucca Mountain
On March 9, 2005, Dick Kovach briefed the Bechtel/SAIC (BSC) General Council. This group traveled throughout the underground visiting several locations.

On March 9, 2005, James Craig assisted a group of 40 visitors from the Midwest Geosciences Group by answering questions, escorting to various locations, and discussing results of testing activities and repository layout.

On March 9, 2005, Bruce Reinert briefed the City College of New York Alumni, a group
of about 30 visitors.

On March 7, 2005, Bruce Reinert briefed a group of 40 individuals from Desert Greens Community (local group from Pahrump, Nevada).

"Tours" at Yucca Mountain consist of a general briefing of the tunnel/repository layout and experiments (both completed and ongoing). The briefings are conducted in an underground excavation off the main tunnel called an Alcove. This Alcove has been customized for tours, including maps/displays and is about 160 meters (175 yards) underground.

March 9, 2005

EES Scientists Attend Volcanic Hazard Analysis Workshop
Frank Perry (EES-9), Allen Cogbill (EES-11), Greg Valentine, Don Krier (both EES-6) and Gordon Keating (EES-9) attended Workshop 2 (Alternative Models) of the Probabilistic Volcanic Hazard Analysis Update for the Yucca Mountain Project, February 15-18 in Las Vegas Nevada. The goal of the workshop was to discuss alternative models and approaches to modeling the spatial and temporal distribution of volcanism in the Yucca Mountain region and to discuss data and interpretations relating to the nature and geometry (both surface and subsurface) of basaltic eruptions in the region. Presentations were made by Cogbill (Modeling and Interpretation of Aeromagnetic Data), Valentine (Conduit Diameters and Other Eruptive Event Characteristics) and Perry (Sample Analysis and Drilling Plan). These were part of 23 in-depth presentations by national and international scientists concerning geophysics, tectonics, analog studies and magmatic processes related to basaltic volcanism and their bearing on the probability of future basaltic volcanism impacting the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste repository.

EES Participates in Poster Session on Espanola Basin
The annual meeting of the Espanola Basin Technical Advisory Group was held in Santa Fe on March 1-2, 2005. This group is an ad hoc group of technical people who represent government and academic organizations conducting geologic, geophysical, and hydrologic studies related to understanding the Espanola basin. Three posters were presented at the meeting by members of EES-11:

Origin of a Basalt-to-Trachyandesite/Dacite Suite in the Jemez Volcanic Field by Upper Crustal Contamination, W. Scott Baldridge and Richard G. Warren.

A Database of Geochemical, Petrographic, Mineralogic, and Geochronological Analyses for the Jemez Volcanic Field to Support The 3-D Geologic Model Of The Pajarito Plateau, T.G. Warren, G.L. Cole, D.E. Broxton, E.C. Kluk, S.J. Chipera, G. WoldeGabriel, D.T. Vaniman, M.G. Snow, and F. Goff.

Basalt of R9: The Areally Most Extensive Cogenetic Series of Flows Within the Cerros Del Rio Volcanic Field, New Mexico, Warren, Richard G.

EES Scientists Present to AFTAC Seismic Review Panel
On March 1, 2005, LANL researcher Steve Taylor from the Geophysics Group (EES-11) was involved with two presentations to the AFTAC Seismic Review Panel on seismic event identification. This panel is a group of scientific experts charged by AFTAC to evaluate the suitability of nuclear explosion monitoring procedures, developed by LANL and the other national laboratories, for operational use. The Panel includes Dr. Terry Wallace Acting Associate Director for Strategic Research. AFTAC is charged with monitoring nuclear testing worldwide. Los Alamos scientists play an important role in developing the knowledge and techniques that allows AFTAC to accomplish its mission through the NNSA Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Research and Engineering Program. AFTAC operates and maintains the current United States Atomic Energy Detection System (USAEDS) and installs additional seismic arrays to support national objectives. Following the meeting, Ward Hawkins (Project Leader for Ground-Based Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Program) and Steve Taylor met with Dr. David Russell (The AFTAC Director of Nuclear Treaty Monitoring) to discuss research issues and future plans.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography Visits EES
Peter Gerstoft and Karim Sabra from that Marine Physics Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography visited Los Alamos during the week of February 28. Their main motivation was to continue collaborative work with Michael Fehler of EES-11 on the use of seismic noise for seismic imaging. They presented a seminar on that topic. During their visit, they had discussions with many members of EES-11 on topics related to imaging by using correlation of noise at two seismic stations. Among related topics discussed were change detection through correlation and methods for analysis and interpretation of seismic surface waves. The collaboration between Fehler, Gerstoft, and Sabra is funded by the Cooperative Agreement on Research and Education of the University of California.

NRC/South Korean Nuclear Regulator Tours Yucca Mountain Repository
On February 24th, Bruce Reinert and Dick Kovach of EES-7 at Las Vegas, Nevada, briefed groups of officials and managers from the South Korean Nuclear Regulator; Electric Insurance, Ltd.; and Control, Nuclear Service Organization. The Yucca Mountain Repository resides on the Nellis Range. Briefings at Yucca Mountain included an overview of geology, results of testing activities, and repository layout.

March 2, 2005

EES Presents at Volcanic Hazard Analysis Workshop
Frank Perry and Gordon Keating (EES-9), Allen Cogbill (EES-11), Greg Valentine and Don Krier (EES-6) attended Workshop 2 (Alternative Models) of the Probabilistic Volcanic Hazard Analysis Update for the Yucca Mountain Project, February 15-18 in Las Vegas Nevada. The goal of the workshop was to discuss alternative models and approaches to modeling the spatial and temporal distribution of volcanism in the Yucca Mountain region and to discuss data and interpretations relating to the nature and geometry (both surface and subsurface) of basaltic eruptions in the region. Presentations were made by Cogbill (Modeling and Interpretation of Aeromagnetic Data), Valentine (Conduit Diameters and other Eruptive Event Characteristics) and Perry (Sample Analysis and Drilling Plan). These were part of 23 in-depth presentations by national and international scientists concerning geophysics, tectonics, analog studies and magmatic processes related to basaltic volcanism and their bearing on the probability of future basaltic volcanism impacting the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste repository.

WoldeGabriel Publishes Paper on Early Hominid Finds
Giday WoldeGabriel of EES-6 is co-author of a paper based upon work by an international team of Japanese, Ethiopian, and American scientists. The paper, titled "Lithostratigraphy and Sedimentary Environments of the Hominid-bearing Pliocene-Pleistocene Konso Formation in the Southern Main Ethiopian Rift, Ethiopia," was published in the journal Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, and Paleontology (2004, v. 216, pp. 333-357).  It describes the team's recent advances in unraveling the geologic and paleoenvironmental history of a geologic formation that hosts many important early hominid finds. This information is critical in understanding the interplay between human evolution and the environment.

EESfs Charlotte Rowe Publishes in Journal of Geophysical Research
Charlotte Rowe (EES-11) was co-author on the following peer-reviewed paper that was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: "Precise Relocation of Earthquakes Following the 15 June 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo (Philippines)." In this paper, Rowe and her co-authors investigate intense seismicity that occurred after the large damaging June 1991 eruption of Pinatubo volcano. They found abundant seismicity occurring directly beneath the crater that resulted from the June eruption, and they attributed this seismicity to continuing magmatic intrusive processes after the eruption. They also found a significant amount of regional seismicity in the vicinity of the volcano that they attribute to stress redistribution following the major eruptive activity.

Manvendra Dubey Give Talk to DOE-laboratory Energy Research and Development Group
Manvendra Dubey (EES-6) gave an invited presentation on  "Reaping the Environmental Benefits of a Hydrogen Economy: Why, How, and When?" to the DOE-laboratory Energy Research and Development Group in Washington DC on February 25.  The audience were 40 or so DOE-science leaders and policy experts; including Bob Marlay, the Deputy Director of DOE's Climate Change Technology Program. The talk showcased new LANL scientific work at the interface of atmospheric chemistry, climate change, and energy technologies. This work strengthens the role of EES in the new integrated hydrogen center, and builds bridges between our hydrogen, climate, and carbon programs. The LANL scientists who contributed to this ongoing research include Cathy Padro (MST -11), Thomas Rahn (EES-6), and Seth Olsen (EES-6). Charryl Berger of OEEI hosted the meeting.

Wohletz Gives Invited Colloquia Presentations
Ken Wohletz (EES-11) gave invited colloquia at U.C. Santa Cruz and Arizona State University earth science departments in February. His presentations covered the evidence for and modeling of a 6th century super-eruption of Krakatoa. The eruption caused collapse of a caldera some 50 km in diameter into the Java Sea, separating Sumatra from Java and producing the Sunda Straits. Potentially tied to worldwide climatic chaos dated at around 535 AD and documented by tree-ring and ice-core data, Ken's modeling shows that this equatorial eruption produced an atmospheric perturbation unrivaled in the last 2000 years, overshadowing better known effects of recent volcanic eruptions by many orders of magnitude. Ken also used his time to continue collaborations with Gary Glatzmaier at UCSC on modeling subsurface effects of volcanic eruptions and with Paul Knauth and Don Burt at ASU on the "Brine Splat" hypothesis for creation of Martian features imaged by the Mars Rover Opportunity, features that are inadequately explained by the popular acid lake theory.

EESfs Revelle Publishes in January Issue of MAPS
Douglas Revelle of Earth and Environmental Sciences (EES) Divisionfs Atmospheric, Climate, and Environmental Dynamics group (EES-2), along with Zden K. Ceplecha, Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic, recently published a paper in the January issue of the Meteoritics & Planetary Science Journal,h v. 40(1). The paper titled, gFragmentation Model of Meteoroid Motion, Mass-Loss and Radiation in the Atmosphere,h details information on their new Fortran code: FM (Fragmentation Model). They have determined that the new FM can well explain the radiation and full dynamics of very fast meteoroids at heights from 200 km to 130 km.

Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Tours Yucca Mountain Repository
On February 23, Bruce Reinert of EES-7 at Las Vegas, Nevada, briefed 51 officials from the EPRI Steam Generator Management Project Technical Advisory Team. The Yucca Mountain Repository resides on the Nellis Range. Briefings at Yucca Mountain included an overview of geology, results of testing activities, and repository layout.

February 23, 2005

EESf ReVelle Receives NASA Funding for Meteorite Study in Argentina
Douglas ReVelle of EES-2 is part of a team with four other NASA funded co-investigators, led by Professor William Cassidy of the University of Pittsburgh, to study the famous Campo del Cielo iron meteorite in Argentina. The meteorite is so large | about 3 m across | that it canft be moved from its impact location in a remote part of Argentina. The NASA funding is for $60K per year for a three consecutive year period and will involve a trip to Argentina to examine the meteorite. ReVelle will model the entry of this large body by a multitude of entry techniques that have already proven successful for slightly smaller bodies.

EESf Fehler Co-Authors Paper in Geophysical Research Letters
A paper titled gExtracting time-domain Greens function estimates from ambient seismic noiseh was just published in the peer-reviewed publication Geophysical Research Letters. Michael Fehler (EES-11) was coauthor on the paper along with three coauthors from the Marine Physical Laboratory of University of California at San Diego. The paper describes the successful retrieval of the time domain elastic Green function, basically the inter-station transfer function, from noise recordings made at many stations comprising the southern California broadband seismic network. The authors show that the portion of the Green Function that is obtained is the dispersed Rayleigh Wave in a few second period band centered around 6 sec. The successful retrieval of the Green Function means that we may be able to perform seismic imaging using only the noise recorded on seismic traces. Performing such imaging may allow us to image crustal structure in regions where we cannot pursue active seismic imaging using manmade sources because of limited access or because of environmental restrictions.

EES Scientists Trained in Use of Finite Element Software
David Coblentz and Chris Bradley of EES-11 with Andy Newman of EES-9 completed a one-week ABAQUS training course Feb 14-18th.  ABAQUS is a suite of software for finite element analysis and the training was in two parts. The first was an introduction to the ABAQUS/Standard and ABAQUS/Explicit software, which is used to solve linear and nonlinear problems. Some of the topics covered included: Fundamental modeling techniques, linear and nonlinear statics, linear elasticity and metal plasticity, Eigenfrequency extraction, linear and nonlinear dynamics, and Model transfer between ABAQUS/Explicit and ABAQUS/Standard. The second part of the course included an introduction to ABAQUS/CAE, the I/O GUI, which provides an interactive environment for creating ABAQUS models, submitting and monitoring analysis jobs, and viewing and manipulating simulation results.

February 16, 2005

Dr. Sheehan of UC Boulder Visits LANL
Charlotte Rowe of EES-11 hosted a visit by Anne Sheehan from University of Colorado at Boulder on Jan 31 and Feb 1. The purpose of the visit was to further develop LANLfs collaboration with Dr. Sheehan on her work in Nepal on the India/Asia continental collision zone. As part of her visit, Dr. Sheehan presented a seminar summarizing her work in Nepal.

EESf Steck Hosts Tri-lab Seismic Event Location Working Group Meeting
On January 19 and 20, Lee Steck of EES-11 hosted a LANL/LLNL/SNL seismic event location working group meeting for the purposes of coordinating deliverables between the three laboratories. The intensive 2-day meeting covered data, software, and analysis issues and was very productive.

EES in LANLfs Nuclear Weapons Journal
The just released Summer/Fall 2004 issue of the Nuclear Weapons Journal, a LANL publication, features a cover article written by Wendee Brunish, EES-11, and David Steedman, D-3.  The unclassified article entitled "Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat," describes work designed to improve the nation's ability to perform defeat assessments on underground enemy targets.  This work builds on decades of successful work in EES Division on the containment of underground nuclear tests.

DTRA & Applied Research Associates, Inc. Visit LANL for GAMUT Presentation
On February 11, 2005, EES-11 and D-3 jointly hosted a visit from Ed Tremba of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), and Al Schenker from Applied Research Associates, Inc.  Dr. Tremba is the Chair of the Interagency Geotechnical Assessment Team. The purpose of the meeting was to provide the visitors with an in-depth understanding of the LANL Geotechnical Assessment Methodology for Underground Targets (GAMUT).  GAMUT is a leading contender for use in the DTRA Tunnel Target Defeat program to provide three-dimensional geologic models for sites of interest.

State of Nevada Tours Yucca Mountain Repository
On Tuesday, February 8th, Bruce Reinert of EES-7 hosted a group of 8 representatives from the State of Nevada on a tour of the Yucca Mountain Repository.  Included were the Technical Policy Coordinator from the Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office and the Executive Director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.  The tour visited the entire underground complex and was intended to familiarize the group with construction and testing activities at the repository.

February 9, 2005

EESf Coblentz Publishes Collaborative Work with Australia on Tectonic Plate Research
Joint research between Los Alamosf David Coblentz of EES-11, Mike Sandiford of the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences, and Wouter Schellart of the Australian National University, is leading to a better understanding of the forces that drive the motion of the Earth's tectonic plates and the distribution of stresses in the Earth's crust that give rise to great earthquakes. Their research, which was recently published in the February edition of Geology, shows that as much as 10 percent of the energy being created at plate connection points at Sumatra and Java are being transferred back into the Indo-Australian plate and causing major stresses, which contribute to mild earthquake activity in the central regions of the plate, such as in the Australian continent or central Indian Ocean, and provides us with clues as to why the plate has been slowly breaking up. The Indian Ocean quakes are, in effect, leading to the active rupture of the Indo-Australian plate into separate Indian and Australian plates. This new research provides us with important information about the stresses that are driving this drawn out tectonic plate divorce. To read the entire article, reference: Evaluating slab-plate coupling in the Indo-Australian plate. Mike Sandiford, David Coblentz, and Wouter Pieter Schellart, Geology, Volume 33, No 2, February 2005, pages 113-116.

EESf Chen and Collaborators Publish in Water Resources Research
Mingjie Chen, a graduate research associate in EES-6, is the lead author on a recently-published paper in Water Resources Research titled, "A stochastic analysis of steady state two-phase flow in heterogeneous media." Co-authors on the paper included Dongxiao Zhang of University of Oklahoma, Arturo Keller of UC Santa Barbara, and Zhiming Lu of EES-6. The paper presents a novel approach to modeling stochastic multiphase problems in a heterogeneous subsurface medium with random soil properties. It also demonstrates the significant computational efficiencies of the Karhunen-Loeve moment equation (KLME) over Monte Carlo simulations for application to steady state water-oil flow in a subsurface with heterogeneous intrinsic permeability and soil pore size distributions.

Fehler Co-hosts Workshop on Seismic Events and Geothermal Energy Development
Mike Fehler of EES-11 co-organized and ran a workshop at Stanford February 3 & 4 on significant induced seismic events associated with geothermal energy development. Fehler had been asked by DOE to co-organize this workshop to discuss a research plan for understanding how to predict and possibly control the occurrence of seismic events that are large enough to be felt and possibly cause damage to surrounding areas as well as the geothermal energy system itself. All 30 participants in the workshop were invited and included participants from the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, Indonesia, and New Zealand. Participants came from DOE, academia, government research centers, and from the geothermal industry. Fehler made a presentation at the workshop and led a considerable amount of the overall discussion.

February 2, 2005

EESf Lichtner Co-Authors Advances in Water Resources Paper
Peter Lichtner, EES-6, is co-author on a new paper in Advances in Water Resources titled, gApplication of Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov with physics-based preconditioning to biogeochemical transport.h  The lead author, Glenn Hammon, was a DOE graduate fellow at Los Alamos, working under the mentorship of Lichtner. Their paper describes the application of the Jacobian-free Newton Krylov method to the simulation of multi-component geochemical transport on massively parallel computers. As a test case, they specifically study bioremediation of a NAPL source zone using up to 512 processors on the ASCI Q machine. 

 EESf Cogbill Delivers White Paper on Yucca Mountain Aeromagnetic Survey Results
Allen Cogbill of EES-11 recently delivered a white paper describing data collection and interpretation of data from an aeromagnetic survey that was conducted in the vicinity of the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository. The objective of this work was to identify volcanic rocks that are buried beneath the surface and whose existence will influence the site-wide volcanic hazards assessment. The white paper discusses data collection, data validation, data processing, and interpretation of significant features found from the data analysis. Several subsurface geological features that had not been previously identified were found as a result of this work.

EES Attends Annual Meeting of Society of Exploration Geophysicists Research Committee
Michael Fehler of EES-11 attended the annual meeting of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists Research Committee at Stanford University on January 24-25. The committee sets the agenda for post-convention workshops for the annual meeting of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, as well as chooses the topic for the Summer Research Workshop for the society. Each of the workshops are run by members of the committee and Fehler plans to co-run a workshop this summer. Participating in the committee presents an opportunity to provide input on topics to be highlighted at the annual meeting and to get a better understanding of the topics of current interest in the exploration geophysics community. The topic chosen for the 2006 Summer Research Workshop is "Imaging Beneath Salt," which is an area Los Alamos researchers are currently working in. Subsalt reservoirs comprise the majority of new petroleum resources found and developed in the continental United States. Following the committee meeting, Fehler visited the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he interacted with research collaborators and participated as a member of the thesis qualifying committee of a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Earth Sciences.

OSHA Tours Yucca Mountain Repository
A group of 18 representatives from the Department of Laborfs Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) toured the Yucca Mountain Repository on Wednesday, January 26th.  Formed in 1971, OSHA aims to ensure worker safety and health in the United States by working with employers and employees to create better working environments. Their mission, according to their website, is to assure the safety and health of America's workers by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach, and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health. The tour, hosted by Dick Kovach of EES-7, was conducted in an alcove approximately 160 meters underground and included an overview of the repositoryfs geology, results of testing activities, and layout.

January 26, 2005

EES Represents LANL at AGU Chapman Conference on Carbon Sequestration
EES and LANL had excellent representation at the recent American Geophysical Union (AGU) Chapman Conference on the science of carbon sequestration held January 16-20 in San Diego, CA.  Los Alamos had the broadest technical representation of any scientific organization\including several other national labs.  Presentations spanned from geologic systems and terrestrial systems to atmospheric systems and technical-area coverage including monitoring, geochemistry, modeling, and data management.  All of the presentations were well received, thanks to the hard work of:  Manvendra Dubey (EES-6), Mike Ebinger (EES-2), John Kaszuba (C-INC), Gordon Keating (EES-9), Andy Newman (EES-9), Rajesh Pawar (EES-6), Paul Rich (EES-9), and Hari Viswanathan (EES-6) and all of their LANL carbon coworkers who didn't get to enjoy Mission Beach.

EES Scientists Publish Water Flow & Transport Paper in Groundwater
Carl Gable and George Zyvoloski, both of EES-6, are co-authors on a paper in the current issue of Groundwater, with Kathy Bower (former LANL graduate student) as lead author.  The paper, titled "Grid resolution study of ground water flow and transport," showcases gridding techniques that have been developed at LANL.  These gridding techniques are at the cutting edge of hydrologic modeling in that they allow models to very closely honor the real geometry of geohydrologic units (e.g., stratigraphic units, fault zones).  The paper describes the sensitivity of predictive modeling results to different grid resolutions.  Note that these gridding techniques could have far-reaching applications in computational geosciences, including crustal deformation studies.

Dominion Energy, Inc. Tours Yucca Mountain Repository
A group of seven representatives from Dominion Energy, Inc. toured the Yucca Mountain Repository on Wednesday, January 19th. Dominion, headquartered in Richmond, VA, is one of the nation's largest producers of energy and has several nuclear power stations across the country.  The tour, hosted by Bruce Reinert of EES-7, was conducted in an alcove approximately 160 meters underground and included an overview of geology, results of testing activities, and repository layout.

January 19, 2005

NABIR Awards Funding for Environmental Plutonium Study
Don Reed of EES-12, in collaboration with Professor Bruce Rittman of Arizona State University (ASU), was recently awarded funding by DOE's Office of Science Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research (NABIR) Program for a project entitled "Subsurface Bio-Immobilization of Plutonium:  Experiment and Model Validation Study." The study is centered on the interactions of Shewanella alga BrY with aqueous plutonium speciesas well as environmentally representative plutonium phases.  The experimental work for this project is being performed by LANL at the Carlsbad CEMRC facility and modeling aspects of the project are being done at ASU.  The goal of this research is to investigate the long-term stability of bio-precipitated "immobilized" plutonium phases under changing redox conditions in biologically active systems.  The longevity of the subsurface immobilization of plutonium (e.g., by bio-reduction) is a key consideration in the effectiveness of remediation/containment approaches used, affects of the design/choice of immobilization approaches, and defines issues regarding the closure of contaminated sites (e.g., natural attenuation).  Plutonium is the key contaminant of concern at several DOE sites that are being addressed by the overall NABIR program.  The goal of the NABIR Program as stated by their website is to provide the fundamental science to serve as the basis for the development of cost-effective bioremediation of radionuclides and metals in the subsurface at DOE sites.

For additional information on NABIR, visit: http://www.lbl.gov/NABIR/

For additional information on the CEMRC facility, visit: http://www.cemrc.org/

EESf TenCate Studies Atomic Structure of Fontainebleau Sandstone
Recently Jim TenCate (EES-11) and Tim Darling (MST-10) with Thomas Proffen (LANSCE-12) and Katie Page (UCSD/LANSCE) published a paper in Geophysical Research Letters entitled "Local atomic structure of Fontainebleau sandstone: Evidence for an amorphous phase?"  Jim and Tim first proposed a suite of neutron experiments as an LDRD ER project a couple of years ago, thinking it might be interesting to study a sandstone by applying a technique usually reserved to study glasses.  Conventional wisdom suggests such sandstones are entirely crystalline but they thought it would be worth a look to see if they could find anything glassy. Glassy dynamics have all sorts of strange behavior, which reminded them of the nonlinear macroscopic behavior of many rocks/geomaterials.

Fortuitously, while running the experiment, Proffen got so sick he couldn't come in to do a sample change, so 24 hours of neutron diffraction data were taken on a Fontainebleau sandstone.  Analysis by Katie Page led to an unusual discovery:  approximately 7% of the rock isn't crystalline! Exactly what the non-crystalline substance is and how it behaves and contributes to the peculiar dynamics of rocks is what they're working at learning in their next set of neutron experiments (LANSCE's neutron beam comes up in February).

To learn more about neutron diffraction, see the tutorial at http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/mineralogie/crystal/teaching/teaching.html or contact Jim TenCate (tencate@lanl.gov) for a .pdf copy of the paper.

Brunish Attends Test Readiness Meeting at Nevada Support Facility
On Friday, January 14, 2005, Wendee Brunish, EES-11, LANL containment project leader, attended a test readiness meeting at the Nevada Support Facility in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The purpose of the meeting was to update the program plan for the DOE Test Readiness program.  Important containment milestones for the program were reviewed and updated as needed.  Risks to successful program completion were identified.  For containment, these included lack of Nevada Site Office funding for the Containment Evaluation Panel and lack of Bechtel Nevada funding to support materials testing on new stemming materials.

EES Collaborates in West Nile Virus Early Detection Study
Jeanne Fair ofClimate and Environmental Dynamics (EES-2), Babetta "Babs" L. Marrone, Kirsten McCabe, and Yulin Shou of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology (B-1), are collaborators on a Laboratory Directed Research and Development Exploratory Research (LDRD-ER) project titled gDevelopment of Avian Immune Response Tests for the Early Detection of West Nile Virus." As stated in the January 13th edition of the LANL Daily News Bulletin, the project proposes the development of modern immunological methods based on flow cytometry for the surveillance of immune response to West Nile Virus in the local free-range bird population.  It further suggests that this technology be applied to understand the immunological basis for West Nile Virus susceptibility and resistance in different avian species.  The project would build upon unique resources at the Lab including an established Avian Nestbox Network currently used as part of an ongoing Department of Energy program in environmental monitoring and risk reduction in combination with the technology for advanced flow cytometry applications resident in the National Institutes of Health funded National Flow Cytometry Resource.

January 12, 2005

Rowe Serves as Lead Guest Editor for Special Issue of BSSA
Charlotte Rowe of EES-11, was recently recognized for her significant contributions as lead Guest Editor to a special issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA) on the 2002 Denali Fault Earthquake Sequence in Alaska. The Bulletin is a bi-monthly journal that has been the premier journal of advanced research in earthquake seismology and related disciplines since 1911. The BSSA was recently recognized by Thomson ISI as the most cited earthquake journal. This special issue on the 2002 Denali Fault Earthquake Sequence, focuses on the observed effects of this large (M 7.9) earthquake, both in the near and far field (road and building damage at the fault trace, geological offsets, damage to the Trans-Alaska pipeline, human observations of shaking and motion up to thousands of miles distant, other earthquakes triggered some 2,000 miles away). Analysis of the local tectonic stresses and geological/geophysical structure, dynamic fault rupture behavior, aftershock activity, satellite observations of ground deformation and insights into the event in the context of other historic Alaska seismicity are all included in the volume. Rowe was assisted by seismologist Doug Christensen of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and geologist Gary Carver from Kodiak, Alaska.  Rowe currently serves regularly as an Associate Editor for the Bulletin, and also spent fourteen years as a seismologist in Alaska (from 1983-1997), and as Alaska's Deputy State Seismologist from 1992-1997.

United States Transport Council Tours Yucca Mountain Repository
On January 5th, Bruce Reinert of EES-7 at Las Vegas briefed a group of five officials from the United States Air Force (USAF) from the Edwards and Nellis Air Force bases. The Yucca Mountain Repository resides on the Nellis Range. Briefings at Yucca Mountain included an overview of geology, results of testing activities, and repository layout.

January 5, 2005

EES Researchers Publish in SIAM Journal of Scientific Computing
Developing methods for predicting flow and transport through heterogeneous porous media is a key area of research in EES-6.  In the latest issues of SIAM Journal of Scientific Computing, Zhiming Lu (EES-6 Subsurface Flow and Transport Team) and Don Zhang (formerly of EES-6) published results of a study comparing the computational efficiency of traditional Monte Carlo and moment equation approaches to their newly-developed moment equation technique (referred to as KLME). Their results show that the KLME approach is substantially more efficient than the other two methods, which are notoriously costly in terms of computation times, and that the KLME produces comparable results for a range of heterogeneities.  For details see: Lu and Zhang, 2004, SIAM J. Sci. Comput., v. 26, pp. 558-577.

EESfs Revelle Publishes in November Issue of MAPS
Douglas Revelle of Earth and Environmental Sciences (EES) Divisionfs Atmospheric, Climate, and Environmental Dynamics group (EES-2), along with a group of scientists around the world, recently published a paper in the November issue of the Meteoritics & Planetary Science Journal. The paper titled, gThe orbit, atmospheric dynamics, and initial mass of the Park Forest meteoriteh details observations and conclusions made from the evaluation of data collected from videographers, satellite systems, infrasound, seismic, and acoustic instruments from the fireball accompanying the Park Forest meteorite fall on March 27, 2003.

To read the entire article, reference:Brown, P., D. Pack, W. N. Edwards, D. O. Revelle, B. B. Yoo, R. E. Spalding, and E. Tagliaferri, gThe orbit, atmospheric dynamics, and initial mass of the Park Forest meteorite,h Meteoritics & Planetary Science 39, Nr 11, 1781|1796 (2004)

EES Submits Proposals in Support of the US GNEM Program
Scientists from EES-11 and EES-2 submitted several proposals in response to a Broad Agency Announcement about opportunities for work in support of the US Ground-Based Nuclear Explosion Monitoring program. The proposals were all collaborative with universities, private companies, and/or other Laboratories. Five of the proposals submitted by EES-11 staff were funded. The funded proposals and collaborating organizations were:

Project: Developing Rayleigh-wave attenuation models for Eurasia through tomography and calibrating a new MS formula Collaboration with University of Colorado (EES-11 PI: David Yang)

Project: A source-normalized methodology for 2-D attenuation: application to the Yellow Sea/Korean Peninsula region Collaboration with University of California at Berkeley and LLNL (EES-11 PI: W. Scott Phillips)

Project: Coda analysis of Soviet deep seismic sounding data Collaboration with University of Saskatchewan (EES-11 PI: W. Scott Phillips)

Project: Comprehensive GT5 Database for East Eurasia Collaboration with Multimax (EES-11 PI: Lee Steck)

Project: Development of regional phase tomographic attenuation models for Eurasia Collaboration with UC Santa Cruz (EES-11 PI: Steve Taylor)

EES Scientists Present at the 2004 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union
More than 35 papers and posters were presented by EES Scientists at the 2004 Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, California on December 13-17, 2004. This annual meeting attracts a crowd of over 10,000 geophysicists from around the world and provides an opportunity for researchers, teachers, students, and consultants to present and review the latest issues affecting the Earth, the planets, and their environments in space. This meeting covers topics in all areas of geophysical sciences.

For more information on the 2004 meeting, visit:  http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm04/

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