Assistant Secretary Katie Jereza toured PNNL capabilities that translate laboratory innovation into operational and industry impact.

Existing stream monitoring efforts capture some fire-affected regions, but most fires are in places without ongoing water quality monitoring.

A new modeling approach uses burn severity maps to test how reduced infiltration shifts surface water from soil penetration into streams after wildfire.

Model simulations in humid and semi-arid basins revealed distinct thresholds where wildfires begin to significantly alter river water flows and dissolved nutrient transport.

Scientists uncovered the molecular basis of nitric acid speciation across dilute and concentrated solutions and identified competing hydration-shell rearrangements around lanthanide ions at the dilute limit.

Across 47 sites in the Yakima River Basin of Washington State, faster oxygen consumption occurred with warmer water, more nutrients, and more suspended solids.

Researchers reveal how uncharacterized molecules affect the diversity and composition of dissolved organic matter in rivers.

Measurements show river flow volumes and seasonal timing have shifted; models project where flows will rise, fall, or shift in the future.

Artificial intelligence helps analyze images and reduce uncertainty for a key measure of watershed function.

Dynamic organic matter traits tied to reactions can surpass static descriptors in explaining decomposition rates and responses to environmental change.

Using an AI approach to combine outputs from microbial models and apply them as inputs to reactive-transport models reduces computational time by several orders of magnitude.

Establishing how electronic redistribution, protonation, and solvent rearrangement are coupled during a proton-coupled electron transfer process.

New software enables the study of nuclear quantum effects in large, condensed phase systems up to 10× faster than traditional methods.

Novel Applications for Synchronized Power Instrumentation seeks to improve electric grid resilience, reliability, security, and affordability.

PNNL has developed a next-generation electrical resistivity tomography system for DOE that uses E4D software and AI-enhanced modeling to produce real-time subsurface images that help guide environmental remediation decisions.

RemPlex 2025 Global Summit on Environmental Remediation attendees share knowledge about cleanup and monitoring of complex sites worldwide; more than 100 presentations are posted online.

Scientists provide a guide for the rational application of continuum descriptions of fluid flows based on interfacial chemistry.

The first direct molecular-scale evidence of the temperature-driven transformation of the coordination environment of ytterbium at geologically relevant conditions.

Delivering an integrated quantum-mechanical and experimental perspective on the effects of both intrinsic and externally applied electric fields at atomic-scale interfaces.

Isotopically layered water films and slow heating enable diffusion tracking.