Esther S. Parish

Principal Investigator leading interdisciplinary research projects funded by the US Department of Energy for over 7 years. PhD Environmental Scientist with 20 years of expertise in geospatial analysis to explore environmental, social, and economic costs and benefits of renewable energy resources and climate change mitigations. Prior experience includes college-level teaching and environmental consulting for multiple US agencies.

• Stanley I. Auerbach Award for Distinguished Achievement presented by ORNL Environmental Sciences Division “For creative scientific analyses and spatially explicit tools to help renewable energy stakeholders and the nation meet sustainability goals” (October 2022)
• Clean Energy Education & Empowerment (C3E) Finalist in the category of “Social, Economic, & Policy Innovation” (August 2021)
• UT-Battelle 2017 Award for “Science Communicator” (October 2017)

Here is a selected subset from over 40 peer-reviewed publications authored since 2009:

• Ghimire GR, Liu Y, Parish E, Gangrade S, Kao S-C, DeRolph C, Maguire K, Jager H (2025), Integrated Modeling Driven Evaluation of Opportunities for Climate-Resilient Perennial Biomass Crop Plantings in Flood-Prone Agricultural Landscapes. Journal of Flood Risk Management, 18: e70056.
• U.S. Department of Energy (2024) 2023 Billion-Ton Report: An Assessment of U.S. Renewable Carbon Resources. M. H. Langholtz (Lead). Oak Ridge, TN: Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ORNL/SPR-2024/3103.
• Parish ES, Karlen DL, Kline KL, Comer KS, Belden WW (2023) Designing Iowa Agricultural Landscapes to Improve Environmental Co-Benefits of Bioenergy Production. Sustainability 15: 10051.
• Jager HI, Nair SS, Efroymson RA, DeRolph CR, Parish ES, Wang G (2023) Ecosystem services from partially harvested riparian buffers can offset biomass production costs. Science of the Total Environment 889: 164199.
• Levine A, Pracheil B, Curtis T, Smith L, Cruce J, Aldrovandi A, Brelsford C, Buchanan H, Fekete E, Parish E, Uria-Martinez R, Johnson M, Singh D (2021) An Examination of the Hydropower Licensing and Federal Authorization Process. Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-6A20-79242.
• Kreig J, Parish E, Jager HI (2021) Growing grasses in unprofitable areas of US Midwest croplands could increase species richness. Biological Conservation 261: 109289.
• Parish E, Dale V, Davis M, Efroymson R, Hilliard M, Kline K, Jager H, Xie F (2021) An Indicator-based Approach to Sustainable Management of Natural Resources. Chapter 12 of Data Science Applied to Sustainability Analysis. Elsevier. 310 pages. Co-edited by Jennifer Dunn and Prasanna Balaprakash.
• Aldrovandi MSP, Parish ES, Pracheil BM (2021) Understanding the Environmental Study Life Cycle in the United States Hydropower Licensing and Federal Authorization Process. Energies 14(12): 3435.
• Omitaomu OA, Kotiikot SM, Parish ES (2021) Planning green infrastructure placement based on projected precipitation data, Journal of Environmental Management 279: 111718.
• Langholtz M, Busch I, Kasturi A, Hilliard M, McFarlane J, Tsouris C, Mukherjee S, Omitaomu O, Kotiikot S, Allen M, DeRolph C, Davis M, Parish E (2020) The economic accessibility of CO2 sequestration through bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS) in the US. Land. Land 9: 299.
• Ha M, Wu M, Tomer M, Gassman P, Isenhart T, Arnold J, White M, Parish E, Comer K, Belden B (2020) Biomass production with conservation practices for two Iowa watersheds. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 1–15.
• Parish E, Baskaran L, Dale V. (2020) Framework for assessing land-management effects on at-risk species: Example of SE USA wood pellet production and gopher tortoise (Gopherus Polyphemus). WIREs Energy and Environment 10(1):e385.
• Dale VH, Kline KL, Parish ES, Eichler SE (2019) Engaging stakeholders to assess landscape sustainability. Landscape Ecology 34(6):1199-1218.
• Parish ES, Pracheil BM, McManamay RA, Curd SL, DeRolph C, Smith B (2019) Review of environmental metrics used across multiple sectors and geographies to evaluate the effects of hydropower development. Applied Energy 238:101-118.
• Sylvester L, Omitaomu OA, Parish ES, Bhaduri BL (2019) Evaluating the Implications of Climate Projections on Heat Hardiness Zones for Green Infrastructure Planning. Current Environmental Engineering 6:55-73.
• Parish ES, Herzberger A, Phifer C, Dale VH (2018) Telecoupled transatlantic wood pellet trade provides benefits in both the sending and receiving systems. Ecology and Society 23 (1):28.
• Parish ES, Dale VH, Kline KL, Abt RC (2017) Reference scenarios for evaluating wood pellet production in the Southeastern United States. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews, e259. doi:10.1002/wene.259
• Dale VH, Parish ES, Kline KL, Tobin E (2017) How is wood-based pellet production affecting forest conditions in the southeastern United States? Forest Ecology and Management 396: 143-149. doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2017.03.022
• Dale VH, Kline KL, Esther S. Parish, Annette L. Cowie, Robert Emory, Robert W. Malmsheimer, et al. (2017) Status and prospects for renewable energy using wood pellets from the southeastern United States. GCB Bioenergy 9(8):1296-1305.
• Nugent PJ, Omitaomu OA, Parish ES, Mei R, Ernst K, Absar M, Sylvester L (2017) A Web Based Geographic Information Platform to Support Urban Adaptation to Climate Change. Advances in Geocomputation, Springer.
• Parish ES, Dale VH, English BC, Jackson SW, Tyler DD (2016) Assessing multimetric aspects of sustainability: Application to a bioenergy crop production system in East Tennessee. Ecosphere 7(2):e01206.
• Dale VH, Parish ES, Kline KL (2015) Mapping risks to global biodiversity: Comparing biofuel to fossil fuel production. Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining 9(2):177-189.
• Parish E, Kline K, Dale V, Efroymson R, McBride A, Johnson T, Hilliard M, Bielicki J (2015) Comparing Scales of Environmental Effects from Gasoline and Ethanol Production. Environmental Management 51(2): 307-338.
• Parish ES, Hilliard M, Baskaran LM, Dale VH, Griffiths NA, Mulholland PJ, Sorokine A, Thomas NA, Downing ME, Middleton R (2012) Multimetric Spatial Optimization of Switchgrass Plantings Across a Watershed. Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining 6(1):58-72.
• Parish ES, Kodra E, Steinhaeuser K, Ganguly AR (2012) Estimating future global per capita water availability based on changes in climate and population. Computers & Geosciences 42:79-86.
• McBride A, Dale VH, Baskaran L, Downing M, Eaton L, Efroymson RA, Garten C, Kline KL, Jager H, Mulholland P, Parish E, Schweizer P, Storey J (2011) Indicators to support environmental sustainability of bioenergy systems. Ecological Indicators 11(5): 1277-1289.
• Ganguly AR, Steinhaeuser K, Erickson III DJ, Branstetter ML, Parish ES, et al. (2009) Higher trends but larger uncertainty and geographic variability in 21st century temperature and heat waves. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(37):15555-15559.