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Laurence G Miller

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Mono Lake is a hypersaline (~85 ppt), alkaline (pH 9.8), closed-basin lake located in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, USA (38°N, 119°W). Water enters the lake primarily from snowmelt and exits by evaporation (~1 m/yr). This hydrological condition, plus weathering reactions in the lake’s tributaries, produce the uniquely high salinity and pH characteristic of Mono Lake (Garrels & MacKenzie, 1967). These properties also tightly tie lake levels and water chemistry to climate, with modern and Pleistocene high stands correlated with wet Sierra Nevada conditions (Benson et al. 1998). Mono Lake is typically monomictic, with thermal-driven summer stratification that is disrupted by winter, wind-driven...
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Mono Lake is a hypersaline soda lake rich in dissolved inorganic arsenic with its primary production currently dominated by Picocystis str. ML. We set out to determine if this picoplankter could metabolize inorganic arsenic, and in doing so form unusual arsenolipids (e.g., methylated arsinoyl ribosides) as reported in other saline ecosystems and by halophilic algae. We cultivated Picocystis str. ML on an inorganic seawater-based medium with either low (37 µM) or high (1,000 µM) phosphate in the presence of arsenite (~0.4 mM), arsenate (~0.8 mM), or without arsenic additions.
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Optical Petrography, Bulk Chemistry, Micro-scale Mineralogy/Chemistry, and Bulk/Micron-Scale Solid-Phase Speciation of Natural and Synthetic Solid Phases Used in Chromium Sequestration and Re-oxidation Experiments with Sand and Sediment from Hinkley, CA
This data release contains macro and microscale datasets describing the abundance, valence states, and mineral residence(s) of chromium, iron, and manganese in natural and synthetic mineral mixtures used in laboratory experiments designed to simulate dynamic conditions in an engineered aquifer system [see Izbicki and Groover (2018) and Miller and others (2020)]. The landing page contains primary metadata about this release and an overview "sample information" table containing descriptions of samples, their analyses, and their methods of preparation and preservation. As there is not a one-to-one correlation between samples and types of analyses performed, the overview table is an important navigation tool to locate...
To advance understanding of the factors controlling the environmental fate of elements which may be toxic or of other concern (e.g. greenhouse gases). For instance, microbes influence the partitioning of group 15 and 16 elements (Phosphorus, Arsenic, and Antimony; Sulfur, Selenium, and Tellurium) between dissolved and adsorbed phases, strongly affecting the quality of drinking water in aquifers around the world. On another topic, it is well known that methane and nitrous oxide are strong absorbers of IR radiation and act as greenhouse gases near the Earth’s surface. Bacteria in lakes, wetlands, and soils both facilitate and mitigate the flux of these gases and in so doing, shape our world. The primary goal of the...
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Cr(VI) contaminated groundwater at Hinkley is undergoing bioremediation using added ethanol as a reductant in a volume of the aquifer defined as the In-situ Reduction Zone (IRZ). This treatment effectively reduces Cr(VI) to Cr(III) which is rapidly sequestered by sorption to aquifer particle surfaces and by co-precipitation within iron or manganese bearing minerals forming in place as reduction proceeds. Successful mitigation of the extant Cr(VI) plume is projected to require 90 to 220 years, at which time ethanol loading will likely cease. This projection assumes that Cr(VI) removal is permanent and that no Cr(III) will oxidize back to Cr(VI) in the event of changing hydrological conditions resulting in oxygen...
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