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DOE OSTI2026

Comparative life cycle assessment of bioenergy in Japan from residual biomass-based wood pellets produced in the US Pacific Northwest

The US Pacific Northwest (PNW) faces an increase in wildfires due to forest overcrowding and climate change, posing significant environmental and public health risks. Traditional methods of managing surplus biomass, including prescribed burning, have increased air pollution and global warming. While in the PNW, residual woody biomass is being treated as waste, Japan’s growing demand for bio-based energy presents an opportunity to export value-added biomass as energy pellets. This study investigates whether producing wood pellets from the residual woody biomass from forest operations and sawmills for electricity generation in Japan is truly environmentally beneficial. Accordingly, we conducted a cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impact of residual pellets vs. coal for electricity generation. The assessment covered feedstock production, pellet processing, transportation, and combustion phases. Our findings indicate that replacing coal-based electricity in Japan with PNW residual pellet-based electricity can lower the Global Warming Potential (GWP) by about 90% for every unit of electricity displaced. Furthermore, the results show that repurposing the otherwise burnt harvest slash residues for pellet production would improve local air quality by reducing PM 2.5 and smog in the PNW. However, substituting coal with residual pellets marginally increased carcinogenic and ecotoxicity-related emissions. Based on these results, we conclude that substituting coal with residual wood pellets for electricity generation, particularly harvest-slash residual pellets, is environmentally beneficial across most impact categories, including the GWP. This research underscores how an export‑oriented pellet industry can help address the environmental challenges within the regional US wood products industry and global renewable energy supply.

Velappan, Hemalatha [Univ. of Washington, Seattle,↗

DOE OSTI2023

Modeling the effects of carbon payments and forest owner cooperatives on carbon storage and revenue in Pacific Northwest forestlands

The forestlands of the Pacific Northwest store a significant amount of carbon, provide wildlife habitat, generate revenue for forestland owners, and provide for sustainable generation of forest products. Promoting forest carbon storage is increasingly recognized as a key management objective to mitigate climate change. We developed an agent-based model to examine the effectiveness of current land management practices in sustaining forest carbon storage and revenue flows, and the utility of market-based carbon payments in improving carbon storage while also improving revenue generation in the Pacific Northwest. We find that while market based incentives can improve both forest carbon storage and revenue, they are limited in their benefit to small forest owners. Our results highlight the crucial need for additional policy interventions to reduce barriers to market access for small private owners and ensure sustainable forest management in this region. We further show that a forest owners’ cooperative, which aggregates small owners to reduce the costs of participating in a carbon market, can help overcome these barriers and result in both greater carbon storage and a more equitable benefit from carbon payments.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2025

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Facility Radionuclide Emission Points and Sampling Systems

Battelle–Pacific Northwest Division operates numerous research and development laboratories in Washington State. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contracts to Battelle at Richland facilities on both the DOE Hanford Site and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Richland campus. These facilities have the potential for radionuclide air emissions. The PNNL contract with DOE also includes operations at the PNNL-Sequim campus in Sequim, where there is also the potential for radionuclide air emissions. This document is a periodic update that describes current PNNL facility emission units and sampling systems. The National Emission Standard for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP [40 Code of Federal Regulations 61, Subpart H]) requires an assessment of all emission units that have the potential for radionuclide air emissions. Emission units are registered with the State of Washington. Potential emissions from emission units are assessed annually by PNNL staff. Sampling, monitoring, and other regulatory compliance requirements are designated based on the potential to-emit dose criteria, a graded approach to facility-identified potential impact categories, and regulatory requirements. The purpose of this document is to describe the facility radionuclide air emission sampling program and provide current and historical facility emission unit system performance, operation, and design information. For sampled emission units, the building, exhaust unit, control technologies, and sample extraction details are provided. Additionally, applicable configuration drawings, figures, and photographs are included. For non-sampled emission units, emission estimation and radionuclide source details are provided. Site-wide permits for the lowest potential impact category are described. Deregistered/transitioned emission unit details are also provided as necessary for at least 5 years post-closure/transition. Currently, five emission units are sampled continuously for particulate radionuclides at PNNL managed facilities on the PNNL-Richland campus (3 of the 5) and on the Hanford Site (2 of the 5). Four of these units have sampling systems that comply with the American National Standards Institute/Health Physics Society (ANSI/HPS) N13.1–2011 standard for sampling from stacks and ducts of nuclear facilities, and the fifth is grandfathered and compliant with the older ANSI N13.1–1969 standard. In addition, the PNNL-managed Hanford Site 325 Building EP 325-01-S stack is sampled continuously for emissions of tritium. No emissions sampling is required for the single licensed emission unit on the PNNL-Sequim campus.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2026

PNNL Sequim Campus Radionuclide Air Emissions Report for Calendar Year 2025 : Department of Energy – Office of Science Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Pacific Northwest Site Office has oversight and stewardship duties associated with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Sequim Campus. Facility operations include radiological operations with the potential-to-emit low levels of radioactive materials. This report is prepared to document compliance with the 40 CFR Part 61, National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, Subpart H, “National Emission Standards for Emissions of Radionuclides Other than Radon from Department of Energy Facilities,” and Washington Administrative Code Chapter 246-247, Radiation Protection–Air Emissions. The PNNL Sequim Campus is in compliance with the federal and state 10 mrem/yr standard for 2025 operations.

40 CFR 61 Subpart H↗

DOE OSTI2024

Leveraging Extremal Dependence to Better Characterize the 2021 Pacific Northwest Heatwave

Abstract In late June, 2021, a devastating heatwave affected the US Pacific Northwest and western Canada, breaking numerous all-time temperature records by large margins and directly causing hundreds of fatalities. The observed 2021 daily maximum temperature across much of the U.S. Pacific Northwest exceeded upper bound estimates obtained from single-station temperature records even after accounting for anthropogenic climate change, meaning that the event could not have been predicted under standard univariate extreme value analysis assumptions. In this work, we utilize a flexible spatial extremes model that considers all stations across the Pacific Northwest domain and accounts for the fact that many stations simultaneously experience extreme temperatures. Our analysis incorporates the effects of anthropogenic forcing and natural climate variability in order to better characterize time-varying changes in the distribution of daily temperature extremes. We show that greenhouse gas forcing, drought conditions and large-scale atmospheric modes of variability all have significant impact on summertime maximum temperatures in this region. Our model represents a significant improvement over corresponding single-station analysis, and our posterior medians of the upper bounds are able to anticipate more than 96% of the observed 2021 high station temperatures after properly accounting for extremal dependence. Supplementary materials accompanying this paper appear online.

Zhang, Likun (ORCID:0000000154584556)↗

DOE OSTI2025

Data and scripts associated with “Allometric scaling of hyporheic respiration across basins in the Pacific Northwest USA"

This data package is associated with the publication “Allometric scaling of hyporheic respiration across basins in the Pacific Northwest USA” submitted to JGR-Biogeosciences (Regier et al. 2025).This study used reach-scale modeled estimates of hyporheic aerobic respiration made by the River Corridor Model (Fang et al. 2020) and watershed characteristics across the Willamette and Yakima River basins to explore potential allometric scaling (i.e., power-law relationships between size and function) of cumulative hyporheic respiration across catchment-to-basin scales. Scaling was explored quantitatively via the R2, slope, and y-intercept of relationships between cumulative hyporheic respiration and watershed area, divided into hyporheic exchange flux (HEF) quantiles. We also explored relationships between allometric scaling and other watershed characteristics through linear regression, spatial patterns, and mutual information analyses. Our results also suggest variability of hyporheic respiration allometry for middle exchange flux quantiles, and in relation to land-cover. Our findings provide initial evidence that allometric scaling may be useful for predicting hyporheic biogeochemical dynamics across watersheds from reach to basin scales. This data package is associated with the GitHub repository found at https://github.com/peterregier/rc_wrb_yrb_scaling. The data package is organized into several key directories. The “data” folder contains multiple CSV files, including landscape heterogeneity, scaling analysis, and watershed boundary data. The “figures” folder has all figure files in both PDF and PNG formats. Core analysis scripts and figure generation scripts are in the “scripts” directory, systematically numbered for sequential execution. The root directory includes essential project files; please see the file ending in “flmd.csv” for a list and description of all files contained in this data package and the file ending in “dd.csv” for data dictionaries used to describe tabular column headers.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2021

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Facility Radionuclide Emission Points and Sampling Systems

Battelle–Pacific Northwest Division operates numerous research and development laboratories in Richland, Washington. U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contracts to Battelle include Richland facilities on the DOE Hanford Site and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) – Richland Campus that have the potential for radionuclide air emissions. The PNNL contract also includes DOE operations at the PNNL-Sequim Campus, in Sequim, Washington, where there is also the potential for radionuclide air emissions. This document is a periodic update that describes current PNNL facility emission units and sampling systems.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2024

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Facility Radionuclide Emission Points and Sampling Systems

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2024

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Annual Site Environmental Report for Calendar Year 2023

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), one of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science’s 10 national laboratories, provides innovative science and technology development in the areas of energy and the environment, fundamental and computational science, and national security. There are three DOE offices within the Richland area. Two are responsible for the Hanford Site, whereas the Pacific Northwest Site Office oversees PNNL. PNNL prepares an Annual Site Environmental Report to meet the requirements of DOE Order 231.1B, Environment, Safety and Health Reporting, and DOE Order 458.1, Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment, thus assuring that the public is informed of any PNNL-Richland campus or PNNL-Sequim campus event that could adversely affect the health and safety of the public, site staff, or the environment. The report provides a synopsis of ongoing environmental management performance and compliance activities for operations that occur at the PNNL-Richland campus in Richland, Washington, and at the PNNL-Sequim campus near Sequim, Washington. It describes the location of and background for each facility; addresses compliance with applicable DOE, federal, state, and local regulations, and site-specific permits; documents environmental monitoring efforts and their status; presents potential radiation doses to staff and the public in the surrounding areas; and describes DOE-required data quality assurance methods used for data verification. The ASER report describes Compliance with Federal, State, and Local Laws and Regulations in 2023, Environmental Sustainability, Environmental monitoring and dose assessment, Natural and Cultural Resource Management, and Quality Assurance activities that took place during Calendar Year 2023.

40 CFR 61 Subpart H↗

DOE OSTI2023

Renewable Energy Landscapes: Southwest and Pacific Northwest Workshops

To connect landscape architects and the energy sector, the University of Arizona and the University of Oregon hosted two virtual workshops with support from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in January 2023. These workshops were intended to co-create new principles and perspectives for designing renewable energy landscapes for the Southwest and Pacific Northwest, respectively, balancing place-based perspectives and at-scale deployment. Working across six design pathways through three phases, participants in the Southwest Workshop established and prioritized design opportunities by identifying relevant actions that are high impact, low effort; high impact, high effort; low impact, high effort; low impact, low effort. In contrast, participants in the Pacific Northwest Workshop produced a series of design options for the three sites to support broader efforts to visualize energy infrastructure deployment. The workshop outcomes reflect the current state of innovation in designing renewable energy landscapes. Collective understanding is largely focused on the practical—what is feasible in this moment—rather than pushing the boundaries on what might be possible. Achieving that next step requires that we first catch up to existing innovation in implementation and design since it is not yet commonplace. These workshops served as the first step in reimagining the potential of energy infrastructure across landscapes.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2023

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Annual Site Environmental Report for Calendar Year 2022 (Final Report)

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), one of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science’s 10 national laboratories, provides innovative science and technology development in the areas of energy and the environment, fundamental and computational science, and national security. There are three DOE offices within the Richland area. Two are responsible for the Hanford Site, whereas the Pacific Northwest Site Office (PNSO) oversees PNNL. PNNL prepares this Annual Site Environmental Report to meet the requirements of DOE Order 231.1B, Environmental, Safety and Health Reporting, and DOE Order 458.1, Radiation Protection of the Public and the Environment, assuring that the public is informed of any PNNL-Richland Campus or PNNL-Sequim Campus event that could adversely affect the health and safety of the public, site staff, or the environment. The report provides a synopsis of ongoing environmental management performance and compliance activities for operations that occur on the PNNL-Richland Campus in Richland, Washington, and at the PNNL-Sequim Campus near Sequim, Washington. It describes the location of and background for each facility; addresses compliance with applicable DOE, federal, state, and local regulations, and site-specific permits; documents environmental monitoring efforts and their status; presents potential radiation doses to staff and the public in the surrounding areas; and describes DOE-required data quality assurance methods used for data verification. The ASER summarizes site compliance with federal, state, and local environmental laws, regulations, policies, directives, permits, and Orders, and provides environmental management performance benchmarks and their status to the public, regulatory agencies, community officials, Native American tribes, and public interest groups.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2026

Data and script associated with “Shifts in Rain-Snow Partitioning Drive Faster Water Transit Times in the US Pacific Northwest”

This data package contains the data and code to use and run the Water Tracer enabled version of the Weather Research and Forecasting Hydrologic model (WT-WRF-Hydro) with the Sequential Precipitation Input Tagging (SPIT) framework. It is associated with the publication “Shifts in Rain-Snow Partitioning Drive Faster Water Transit Times in the US Pacific Northwest” published in Scientific Reports (Butler et al., 2026; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-46539-1). We use the Continental U.S. (CONUSII; Rasmussen et al., 2021) dataset to force the model with an historical climate (2006–2013) and a future climate (2086–2093) with a representative carbon pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario. We use the model to calculate water transit times in five headwater catchments within the U.S. Pacific Northwest. We also show key hydrologic and environmental variables that affect water transit times and changes in the future. Finally, we use observed data to validate the model such as stream water isotopes, snowpack characteristics, and stream discharge. For details on how to navigate data packages generated by this project, see https://data.ess-dive.lbl.gov/portals/PNNLRiverCorridorSFA/About. In addition to a readme, this data package also includes a file-level metadata (FLMD) file that describes each file and a data dictionary (DD) that describes all column/row headers and variable definitions. The data package consists of 11 folders: (1) "Figures" contains the exported figures used in the manuscript; (2) "Model_Isotope_Date" contains the WT-WRF-Hydro isotope date used in model validation; (3) “Model_Outputs_Future” contains the WT-WRF-Hydro future climate outputs; (4) “Model_Outputs_Historical” contains the WT-WRF-Hydro historical climate outputs; (5) “Model_Outputs_Weights_Areas” contains the WT-WRF-Hydro weights per catchment used to calculate water transit times and isotopes in stream water; (6) “MODIS_data_scripts” contains data used to validate snow conditions in the study area; (7) “Observed_Flow_Data” contains the observed streamflow data used in model validation; (8) “Observed_Isotope_Data” contains the observed stream water isotope data used in model validation; (9) “Scripts” contains the Python scripts used to general results and the figures; (10) “Statistic_Outputs” contains the water transit time statistical outputs reported in this manuscript; (11) “Validation_SNOTEL” contains the SNOTEL data used in model validation. The files in this data package have the following file extensions: .tif, .txt, .csv, .pdf, .py, .jpg, and .png.

American River↗

DOE OSTI2025

Prospects for silvicultural enhancement of fire resistance in mesic westside forests of the Pacific Northwest

Increasing wildfire activity in mesic, temperate Pacific Northwest forests west of the Cascade Range crest has stimulated interest in understanding whether alternative forest management practices could reduce risk of stand-replacing fire. To explore how management can enhance fire resistance in these forests and assess tradeoffs among resistance enhancement, carbon sequestration and storage, and economic returns, we conducted 40-year simulations of stand development with BioSum, a framework for conducting landscape analysis with the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS), utilizing a statistically representative and spatially balanced sample of Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots. Simulation outcomes under business-as-usual silviculture were contrasted with fire-aware silviculture, and treatment optimization logic was developed and applied to represent landscape-scale outcomes under business-as-usual and fire-focused management scenarios. Simulation results indicate that fire-aware prescriptions and fire-focused management can meaningfully enhance stand- and landscape-scale fire resistance of westside forests under less than extreme fire weather, but at the cost of lower economic returns and reduced net carbon storage and sequestration over the 40-year analysis window. Shifting from business-as-usual regeneration harvests with short rotations to fire-aware, episodic selection harvest improved fire resistance the most, especially in young privately-owned forests, and with only modest tradeoffs in carbon and economic outcomes. While fire-aware treatments generally reduced net present value from forest operations over business-as-usual, most treatments still generated positive net present value and could be implemented without subsidy. Fire-aware prescriptions that removed and utilized non-merchantable harvest residues instead of burning them, via either pile or broadcast burning, partially mitigated carbon emissions associated with fire-aware treatments, with about the same improvement in fire resistance. Given the currently limited institutional and financial capacity to implement fire resistance enhancing treatments at scale, the insights from this analysis may aid managers seeking to elevate fire resistance to prioritize where and how to manage.

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗

DOE OSTI2026

Shifts in rain-snow partitioning drive faster water transit times in the US Pacific Northwest

Water transit times strongly influence water quality, temperature, and seasonal hydrologic response of river systems. How water transit times may shift under future climates remains unconstrained, especially in mountainous regions experiencing rapid snowpack declines. Here, we estimated historical (2006–2013) and future (2086–2093) water transit times in five headwater catchments within the U.S. Pacific Northwest using sequential precipitation input tagging within the Water Tracer enabled version of the Weather Research and Forecasting Hydrologic model. Our results indicate water transit times are 18% (35–64 days) faster on average under the Representative Carbon Pathways (RCP) 8.5 climate scenario due to shifts in rain-snow partitioning, with higher fractions of younger water in the wet season and older water in the dry season. These results suggest shifts in rain-snow partitioning in snowmelt dominated catchments of the Pacific Northwest will shorten water transit times leading to likely impacts on regional water quality, temperature, and hydrologic seasonality.

Butler, Zachariah [Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, ↗

DOE OSTI2025

Investigating Particle Phase State Dependencies during a Historic Pacific Northwest Wildfire Event

The function and lifetime of an atmospheric particle are greatly dependent upon its phase state. Studying particle phase states from specific ambient source types is often challenging due to uncontrolled environmental conditions and multiple source contributions. However, a historic Pacific Northwest wildfire event occurred in September 2020, providing a rare opportunity to study a pseudo-single particle type ambient sample (i.e., wildfire) over time. Sampling was performed in Richland, Washington, capturing aged particles from shifting wildfire sources. In addition to source variability, temporal variation in wildfire particle phase state was observed from single particle analyses. Despite this, single particle elemental compositions were homogenous over time (=87% carbonaceous) with no significant temporal variation in organic functional group abundances within individual particles either (e.g., 4% relative standard deviation in alkene contributions). While particle composition is indeed known to affect phase state, water uptake appeared to be the most significant contributor to phase state variability amongst single particles here, as particle aspect ratios (related to phase state) linearly correlated with ambient relative humidity during sampling (R2 = 0.65). Therefore, while limited to a case study, meteorological considerations are found to convey greater comparative importance than particle composition for aged particle phase state predictions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

DOE OSTI2025

Elevated Forest Canopy Loss After Wildfires in Moist and Cool Forests in the Pacific Northwest

Wildfire frequency, intensity, and rate of spread are increasing across the Western U.S, resulting in more severe ecosystem impacts. Significant tree mortality can occur years after fire events, but this has received little attention compared to the immediate tree loss during a fire. We overlapped forest cover loss data with burn severity maps in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and quantified the total and delayed forest canopy loss after fires. We found that wildfires resulted in total canopy loss fraction (CLF) of 84%, 53%, and 22% within 3 years in areas burned at high, moderate, and low severity, respectively. The delayed canopy loss accounted for approximately 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3 of the total canopy loss for high, moderate, and low severity burns. Delayed canopy loss was greater in moist and cool areas than in dry and warm areas, likely because tree species in wetter environments were less adapted to survive when fires did occur. Across all forests, delayed CLF doubled as temperature increased from the climatological mean to a hot anomaly and tripled as vapor pressure deficit increased from a wet anomaly to a dry anomaly. Fire impacts on forest ecosystems are likely to intensify under future climate scenarios as wildfires expand into areas that historically experienced infrequent fires. The impacts can also be exacerbated by more frequent compound extreme events, such as droughts, heatwaves, and fires. These findings highlight the urgent need for targeted forest management strategies, particularly in mesic forests, to mitigate future fire impacts.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2024

The Pacific Northwest Heat Wave of 25–30 June 2021: Synoptic/Mesoscale Conditions and Climate Perspective

Abstract An unprecedented heat wave occurred over the Pacific Northwest and southwest Canada on 25–30 June 2021, resulting in all-time temperature records that greatly exceeded previous record maximum temperatures. The impacts were substantial, including several hundred deaths, thousands of hospitalizations, a major wildfire in Lytton, British Columbia, Canada, and severe damage to regional vegetation. Several factors came together to produce this extreme event: a record-breaking midtropospheric ridge over British Columbia in the optimal location, record-breaking midtropospheric temperatures, strong subsidence in the lower atmosphere, low-level easterly flow that produced downslope warming on regional terrain and the removal of cooler marine air, an approaching low-level trough that enhanced downslope flow, the occurrence at a time of maximum insolation, and drier-than-normal soil moisture. It is shown that all-time-record temperatures have not become more frequent and that annual high temperatures only increased at the rate of baseline global warming. Although anthropogenic warming may have contributed as much as 1°C to the event, there is little evidence of further amplification from increasing greenhouse gases. Weather forecasts were excellent for this event, with highly accurate predictions of the extreme temperatures. Significance Statement This paper describes the atmospheric evolution that produced an extreme heat wave over the Pacific Northwest during June 2021 and puts this event into historical perspective.

Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences↗

DOE OSTI2025

Allometric Scaling of Hyporheic Respiration Across Basins in the Pacific Northwest United States

Abstract Hyporheic zones regulate biogeochemical processes in streams and rivers, but high spatiotemporal heterogeneity makes it difficult to predict how these processes scale from individual reaches to river basins. Recent work applying allometric scaling (i.e., power‐law relationships between size and function) to river networks provides a new paradigm for understanding cumulative hyporheic biogeochemical processes. We used previously published model predictions of reach‐scale hyporheic aerobic respiration to explore patterns in allometric scaling across two climatically divergent basins with differing characteristics in the Pacific Northwest, United States. In the model, hydrologic exchange fluxes (HEFs) regulate hyporheic respiration, so we examined how HEFs might influence allometric scaling of respiration. We found consistent scaling behaviors where HEFs were either very low or very high, but differences between basins when HEFs were moderate. Our findings provide initial model‐generated hypotheses for factors influencing allometric scaling of hyporheic respiration. These hypotheses can be used to optimize new data generation efforts aimed at developing predictive understanding of allometries that can, in turn, be used to scale biogeochemical dynamics across watersheds.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗