EES Tools

Laboratories

Atmospheric Radiation and Cloud Station (ARCS) develops and tests parameterizations of important atmospheric processes, particularly cloud and radiative processes, for use in atmospheric models and is achieved through a combination of field measurements and modeling studies in three Pacific locations. (More - PDF File)

Exploratory Studies Facility at Yucca Mountain

The facility has tunnels that are 7.8 km in length and 2.8 km in length and include eight testing alcoves, five test niches, and various other locations within the drifts. Scientists conduct research throughout the facility to explore issues in moisture monitoring, air permeability, percolation, seepage, and rock mechanics. One alcove is dedicated to testing the changes that gas and water composition, rock mineralogy, rock mechanics, and hydrology experience during a long-term heating cycle to temperatures expected during repository operations. (Read more.)

Geochemistry and Geomaterials Research Laboratory (GGRL)

The GGRL houses analytical and experimental facilities for understanding earth materials and earth systems including solids (composition and mineralogy), fluids, gases, computational geochemistry and mineralogy, and laser ablation for looking at trace elements in solids at the 10 micron level. (Read more.)

X-ray Diffraction Laboratory
X-ray Fluorescence Laboratory
Light Stable Isotope Laboratory
Thermal Analysis Instrumentation
Electron Microscopy Laboratory
Scanning Electron Microscope
Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer
Gas Spectrometer
Gas Chromatographs
Optical Equipment
Wet Chemistry Laboratory

Geographical Information System Laboratory (GISLab)

GISLab designed to be a geospatial information resource for LANL and for external users of geospatial data, GISLab was established as an umbrella organization after the Cerro Grande wildfire in 2000 to include the Facility for Information Management, Analysis, and Display (FIMAD) and the Cerro Grande wildfire Rehabilitation Project (CGRP) GIS project.

Ecological Greenhouse
The EES Ecological Greenhouse currently houses experiments on tobacco growth and native plant survival in marginal soils, as well as studies of nutrient flow between plants and soils. These efforts are collaborations between EES and B Divisions. The greenhouse also houses a growth chamber for small-scale experiments that require control of light, temperature, and humidity. Future studies include research into the dynamics of rapid vegetation shifts that are expected throughout the southwest and are observed in various ecotones, the interfaces between ecosystems. Rapid ecosystem responses to drought, climate change, and/or other disturbances like fire are observed today in northern New Mexico's semiarid landscapes and throughout the world.

Infrasound Monitoring Laboratory
Los Alamos' acoustic-infrasound capabilities extend to frequencies as low as 0.02 Hz (at room temperature this corresponds to a wave length of approximately 10 miles). This capability is part of the Infrasound Calibration Laboratory a component of DOE's Ground-based Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Program. The heart of the infrasound laboratory is a unique chamber that performs calibrations over the passband of 0.02®4.0 Hzãsignal levels that could be affected by several minutes to variations in atmospheric pressure if microphone calibrations were done in isolation.

LA Dynamic Stress Stimulation Laboratory for Enhanced Porous Fluid Flow Studies (DSSL)
a unique facility designed to study the effects of low frequency stress waves on permeability and multi-phase fluid flow in rock core samples. If this phenomenon can be understood and harnessed it will lead to improved technologies for enhancing oil production and groundwater remediation.

LA Seismic Network Station (LASN)
aids in seismic verification research and monitors quakes for LANL; LASN station data is the only instrumental seismic data available for earthquakes that occur in northern New Mexico.

LIDAR Laboratory and Equipment (LIDAR) - Small-Scale Atmospheric Imaging Laser applications have a long history at LANL, and one of the more innovative of these has been the development of a mobile, scanning Raman lidar system, which unlike backscatter lidar systems, measures photons emitted by stimulated water vapor molecules in the atmosphere. The combination of these measurements with the simulation capabilities of HIGRAD presents an extremely powerful tool for understanding the behavior of the atmospheric surface layer and its interactions with the underlying vegetation or other surface characteristics.

Light Stable Isotope Laboratory
EES 14 has a new Micromass IsoPrime Continuous-Flow Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer. This instrument is a highly automated, high throughput system that represents the cutting edge in continuous-flow light stable isotope mass spectrometry, which can gather various measurements on oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen isotopes in waters, carbonates, soils, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), bulk organic materials, etc. This system assists in studies of carbon sequestration, water cycles, and the support of ocean modeling efforts, as well as biogeochemical studies, potentially for threat reduction, for contaminant tracing, and potentially to measure isotopically labeled compounds used in biological studies.

Luminescence Geochronology Laboratory (LGL)

The LGL currently is the only facility in the North America to have single-grain OSL measurement capacity. It also is capable of drawing on the vast resources and expertise at LANL in environmental radiation monitoring and dosimetry. EES houses the following specialized equipment, which is used to date geologic materials and help to understand natural processes and their rates of evolution.

o Riso DA-15 Automated TL/LGL Reader with on-board Sr-90 beta source and single-grain measurement subsystem. The DA-15 is a self-contained, automated instrument for luminescence dating and retrospective dosimetry research.

o Riso GM-25-5 multi-sample low-level beta counter. The GM-25-5 is used to determine beta dose rate from soil samples in the lab in support of luminescence dating research.

o Eberline E-600 and various probes. The E-600 is used for in-situ field assessment of beta and gamma dose rates in support of luminescence dating research.

Non-Linear Elastic Laboratory

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

Yucca Mountain Characterization Site

YMP is the nation's first long-term geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

Analytical Instruments Highlights

Chemin

CHEMIN, a combined CHEMical and MINeralogic analyzer, will play an important role in space exploration; after further miniaturization, it will be included in future space probes to determine the elemental composition and minerology of planets and other extraterrestrial bodies. (Read more.)

Light Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometer System

This instrument is a highly automated, high throughput system that represents the cutting edge in continuous-flow light stable isotope mass spectrometry, which can gather various measurements on oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen isotopes in waters, carbonates, soils, dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), bulk organic materials, etc. This system assists in studies of carbon sequestration, water cycles, and the support of ocean modeling efforts, as well as biogeochemical studies, potentially for threat reduction, for contaminant tracing, and potentially to measure isotopically labeled compounds used in biological studies. (Read more.)

Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS)

Scientists can now point a flashlight-sized laser device at a soil sample in the field or taken from the ground and determine how much carbon the sample contains. LIBS works by firing a brief, very intense pulse of laser light at a surface. The laser beam vaporizes a spot on the target sample that's roughly the size of a pencil point. A small spotting scope mounted near the laser source captures light emitted from the vaporized area and directs it to a spectral analyzer. (Read more.)

Software and Visualization Tools

HIGRAD and FIRETEC

Recent advances in numerical modeling of small-scale phenomena in the atmosphere are based on two models, the HIgh GRADient applications model (HIGRAD), and a physics-based wildfire-behavior model (FIRETEC). These codes have allowed simulations of atmospheric phenomena at very high spatial resolution on LANL's supercomputers. Results from the application of HIGRAD/FIRETEC have greatly increased the physical understanding of atmospheric flows in the presence of strong heat sources and topographic obstacles. (More - PDF File)

Mesh Generation for Geological Applications - LaGriT

LaGriT is a software tool for generating, editing and optimizing multi-material unstructured finite element grids (triangles and tetrahedra); it also maintains the geometric integrity of complex input volumes, surfaces, and geologic data and produces an optimal grid (Delaunay, Voronoi) elements, and has many unique features. (Read more - HTML or PDF)

MC3D - Mantle Convection in Three Dimensions

MC3D is a computational fluid dynamics code for solving the equations associated with convection in Earth's mantle.

MC3D solves the momentum and energy equation for an incompressible, zero Reynolds number, infinite Prandtl number fluid in three dimensional Cartesian geometry. The momentum equation is solved using a spectral decomposition and relaxation on each spectral component.

The energy equation is solved using finite difference methods with a tensor diffusion correction. MC3D is parallel and runs on Unix and Linux cluster computers.

A unique feature of MC3D is an implementation of mobile surface plates which allows one to study the dynamic interaction of mantle convection and plate tectonics.

Finite-Element Heat and Mass-Transfer Code (FEHM)

FEHM originally was developed at Los Alamos in the early 1980s to simulate geothermal and hot dry rock reservoirs. This code has been used to model other contaminant transport problems at over 100 sites around the world. (Read more.)