Lindberg received master's and doctorate degrees in chemical oceanography and geochemistry from Florida State University. He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Duke University. Before joining ORNL in 1974, Lindberg taught at the Upper Grade Center in Antioch, Ill.
Lindberg collaborated with Gary Lovett, Dan Richter and Dale Johnson to produce the paper, Atmospheric Deposition and Canopy Interactions of Major Ions in a Forest. Lovett, a post doctoral research fellow at ORNL, is now with the Institute for Ecosystem Studies in New York. Richter is at Duke University and Dale Johnson works at Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev. The article was published as the cover article in Science in January 1986. It ranked sixth in total citations and it tied for second in average citations per year since its first publication date.
The study describes how dry deposition of coarse particles on a forest canopy and direct uptake of gaseous nitrogen and sulfur by tree leaves are a major source of atmospheric nutrients and pollutants to forests. Nearly 40 percent of the nitrogen and 100 percent of the sulfur required for the annual wood growth were derived from direct foliar uptake. Lindberg's unique methods showed that the bulk precipitation measurements traditionally used in biogeochemical cycling studies grossly underestimated the amount of atmospheric deposition entering forested watersheds.
In addition, Lindberg has been invited to serve a three-year term on the editorial board of the journal, The Science of the Total Environment, an international journal for scientific research into the environment and its relationship with man. He currently is serving his second three-year term as the associate editor for Environmental Reviews, the journal of the National Research Council of Canada.
Lindberg lives in Kingston, Tenn., with his wife, Kay, and their daughter, Kristina.
ORNL, one of DOE's multiprogram national research and development facilities, is managed by Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, which also manages the Oak Ridge K-25 Site and the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant.