Environmental Science

NERSC users advance fundamental science to understand, predict and mitigate the impact of environmental contamination. One of the most important problems involves hazardous materials that have leached into the subsurface and are at risk of being more widely dispersed by groundwater flow.  Rigorous models that accurately simulate reactive contaminant movement and incorporate coupled physical, chemical and biological processes are required for to create predictive capabilities applicable to field-scale subsurface contamination problems.  The goal is scientifically-driven decision making for environmental remediation and long-term stewardship.

NERSC has played and will continue to play a vital role for this key Office of Science mission driver. The key challenge is the widely varying scales involved.  Important biogeochemical processes (e.g., microbial respiration) are best understood at very small scales, typically ranging from molecular to cellular level, with time scales of minutes to days. However, predicting phenomena in aquifers requires very large simulations typically ranging from meters to kilometers and time scales of months to years or even centuries. This problem is aggravated by the variability of natural subsurface properties that exist across the broad spectrum of spatial and temporal scales.

Representative examples of this research  appear below.