Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Biological Monitoring and Abatement Program, or BMAP, is marking 40 years of helping steward the Department of Energy's 33,476 acres of land on which some of the nation's most powerful science and technology missions are carried out.
BMAP began in the mid-1980s as a program to monitor the effectiveness of environmental remediation work in aquatic systems across DOE's Oak Ridge Reservation as a result of legacy and ongoing operations. The program has evolved into an internationally respected case study in waterway biodiversity monitoring and restoration strategies, with its practices adopted by land managers at DOE and around the globe.
"By studying the changes in fish and invertebrate communities in response to water quality improvements, we gain insights to the impacts of various stressors, including contaminants, on aquatic ecosystems," said Teresa Mathews, who leads BMAP as well as ORNL's Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health group. "BMAP's work traverses multiple disciplines, from chemistry to biology, toxicology, geology, physics and data science."
The DOE program provides essential information to decision-makers, ensuring the reservation's environmental integrity as modern facilities such as proposed artificial intelligence-driven data centers and new power generation sources are sited on DOE lands in response to growing national demand for AI infrastructure.
"BMAP has enabled new approaches for an important area of science while ensuring the long-term vitality of the federal lands on which we carry out our research," said Paul Langan, associate laboratory director for ORNL's Biological and Environmental Systems Science Directorate.
Over the past 40 years, BMAP research has given rise to a community of scientists focused on mercury science at ORNL, which led to the lab's landmark discovery of the genes responsible for microbial transformation of inorganic mercury into the potent neurotoxin methylmercury. Follow-on science has been focused on the development of new methods and materials to prevent or remediate methylmercury.
Building on success with new innovations
BMAP has also helped identify contamination sources that inform remediation work such as siting and operation of water treatment facilities. Over time, BMAP data has shown a marked increase in water quality on the reservation, including the return of greater numbers of fish such as the vulnerable Tennessee dace and the blueside darter.
The program continues to innovate today, including the development of new approaches to assess waterway biodiversity such as environmental DNA sampling, and using robotics and machine learning for species identification. BMAP is known for its rigorous data management, and scientists are making improvements to data practices to facilitate the use of AI in their assessments.
One goal of the program is to use BMAP's extensive data resources to build a computational framework that can link the effects of stressors in the environment from the molecular up to the population level, accelerating environmental assessment and cleanup efforts.
"The wealth of information we have accumulated is a big strength of the program going forward as we develop new AI-derived methods to improve our work," Mathews said.
As someone who organizes and conducts field work for BMAP, Trent Jett enjoys the breadth of his research. "My background is fisheries science, but I enjoy the plant and bird surveys, the water quality sampling and analysis, and even maintaining our populations under study in the Aquatic Ecology Lab as part of BMAP," said Jett, aquatic ecology technician at ORNL. "We're also leading the way in areas like taxonomy with our environmental DNA work using genetics to quickly identify species from water samples."
Current and former ORNL scientists involved in BMAP discussed the program's legacy and its ongoing science and technology achievements at a March 25 symposium.
The gathering featured presentations by scientists working with BMAP on their latest research, including analysis of watershed biogeochemistry dynamics, deeper understanding of the accumulation of and prevention of methylmercury, and the program's innovative sampling and data analytic techniques.
"The meeting was a great opportunity for generations of scientists to meet and discuss how new data collection technologies are expanding our ability to understand biodiversity change in East Tennessee and beyond," Mathews said.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science . - Stephanie Seay
