UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

Paolo D’Odorico investigates the role of water in the dynamics of ecosystems (ecohydrology) and societies (social hydrology). His research focuses on the nexus existing among water, food, and energy and investigates patterns of globalization and inequality in the distribution of natural resources that are crucial to meet food and energy needs.

His projects include:
1. Food-energy-water nexus: investigating multiple components of the food-energy-water nexus, the resilience of the global water and food systems, and the options humanity has to meet food and energy security with the limited renewable water resources of the planet
2. Dryland ecohydrology: evaluating the role of ecohydrological processes in biotic-abiotic interactions in dryland ecosystems
3. Desertification: investigating feedback mechanisms and their possible enhancement by interactions with socio-economic drivers.

Ellen Bruno focuses on policy issues relevant to California’s agriculture and natural resources. Her work is motivated by climate change and the need for strategies that mitigate the economic costs of drought.

Her current projects include:
1) Potential and effectiveness of water-related policies, which includes understanding how farmers respond to changes in water prices.
2) Functionality of groundwater markets in California
3) Impacts of groundwater quality and salinity on coastal groundwater dependent regions

David Zilberman focuses on looking at the adoption of irrigation technology, how climate change increases variability of water supply, and the value of weather and irrigation information.

His projects include:
1) Adoption of drip irrigation technology in California. Showing that it gradually moved from high value to low value crops from areas with a low water holding capacity to high water holding capacity. Droughts and high water prices enhanced diffusion. Public-private collaboration in technology development enabled expanding the uses and value of the technology.
2) Climate Change-water storage and conservation. Identifying conditions when water conservation and storage complement each other, and other situations when they are substitutes.
3) The costs and benefits of the use of California’s irrigation management information system-CIMIS.

Christine Hastorf focuses on social life, political change, agricultural production, foodways, and the methodologies that lead to a better understanding of the past through the study of plant-use. She mainly focuses in the Andean Region of South America

Her current projects related to water include:
1) Implications of changing water levels in Lake Titicaca on surrounding communities
2) An ethnographic study on importance of hail and rain to farmers in the Andean Region

Maximilian Auffhammer focuses on forecasting greenhouse gas emissions, impacts of air pollution on agriculture, microeconomic theory, economics of climate change and econometrics.

His projects includes:
1) Adverse Reproductive Outcomes in a Population Exposed to Perfluorinated Compounds in Drinking Water (with Martha Rogers, Gina Waterfield, Philippe Grandjean, and David Sunding, 2018);
2) Turning water into jobs: The impact of surface water deliveries on farm employment and fallowing in California’s San Joaquin Valley (with Dina Gorensteyn and David Sunding, 2018);
3) Forecasting Urban Water Consumption in California: Rethinking Model Evaluation (with Steven Buck, Hilary Soldati, and David Sunding, 2018).

Tomas McKay focuses on the process of design and how architecture is able to transfer information between different scales; working with the site, the client, the budget and the environment. He has been lately involved in building stronger and long-lasting relationships between Chile and California, in conservation and urban planning issues throughout private and public institutions. His main research interest is in water and climate change adaptation.

His projects includes:
1) Interdisciplinary Studio ARCH 202, Living with Water which focuses on adapting to climate change in Hong Kong
2) Pachacamac Park, a recycling water project for a public park in Lima, Peru

Kristina Hill focuses on urban ecology and hydrology in relationship to physical design and social justice issues, adapting urban districts and shore zones to the new challenges associated with climate change, adaptation and coastal design.

Her projects include:
1) Urban water system design that supports salmon health
2) Potential for designs to help protect coastal communities as sea levels rise internationally
3) Adaptation and coastal design in the San Francisco Bay Area

Junko Habu focuses on using a theoretical framework of historical ecology to investigate the importance of food and subsistence diversity, social networks and local autonomy for understanding the resilience of socioeconomic systems.

Her projects include:
1. Mountains, Rivers and the Ocean: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Environmental Education in the Hei River Valley
2. Ethno-historical and ethnographic research of small-scale fishing communities in northern Japan

Charisma Acey focuses on access to drinking water and sanitation, environmental justice, poverty reduction, food security, collaborative governance and participatory research methods.

Her projects include:
1) The human rights to water paradigm in urban and peri-urban governance
2) Water utility customers in Kenya and their willingness to pay more to improve sanitation in low-income communities
3) Infrastructure imaginaries, informal urbanism, creativity and ecology in Lagos, Nigeria

Ronald Cohen focuses on developing and applying new experimental and modeling strategies for understanding the chemical composition of the Earth’s atmosphere now and in the past and for predicting future changes. He explores the chemical formation of aerosol within the atmosphere and the kinetics of cloud formation.

His projects include:
1) The relationship between evaporation kinetics and the formation of cloud droplets
2) Chemical effects on the speed of cloud droplet growth
3) Role nitrogen oxides (NOx) play in the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA)

“Zachary Lamb is an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning. His research focuses on the role of urban planning and design in shaping uneven vulnerability and resilience in the face of climate change.

In 2018, Professor Lamb completed his PhD at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. His dissertation focused on the role of design in shaping urban flood infrastructure and the changing spatial politics of urban flooding through two case study cities, New Orleans, Louisiana and Dhaka, Bangladesh. His current book project, Making and Unmaking the Dry City, focuses on the historical evolution and contemporary problems of flood mitigation in these two cities.

Project Areas include: urban spatial politics, ecological design, uneven vulnerability to climate hazards, affordable housing, and alternative land and housing ownership”

G. Mathias Kondolf focuses on fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, river restoration, environmental planning, environmental science, managing flood-prone lands, urban rivers, and sediment in rivers and reservoirs.

His projects include:
1) The social connectivity of urban rivers, analyzing the city-river relationships over time and current urban river revitalization efforts
2) The social life of the sediment balance, examining river-basin impacts of dams on downstream rivers and deltas from both geomorphological and environmental history perspectives
3) Strategic dam planning for improved tradeoffs between hydropower generation and environment.

Dr. Pickering’s research combines tools from multiple disciplines (engineering, economics, microbiology, epidemiology) to identify low-cost and scalable interventions to interrupt disease transmission in low-income countries. Dr. Pickering has 15 years of experience collaborating with partners in Benin, Kenya, Tanzania, Mali, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India on research to improve human health and well-being.

Projects include:
1) Using environmental sampling (surfaces, sewage, soil) to monitor trends in infectious disease in communities
2) Leveraging human-centered design to co-create water, sanitation, and hygiene technologies with community partners

Professor Athanasopoulos-Zekkos’s research focus and expertise is on assessing and mitigating the impact of multi-hazard stressors on geotechnical engineering infrastructure, with particular emphasis on challenges due to age-related deterioration, population growth and densification, natural and human-made hazards, and new demands from climate change.

Particular areas of research include
(1) the response of flood protection systems such as levees that are old and rapidly deteriorating as well as threatened by increasing demands due to increasing water levels, (2) the performance of critical systems such as ports during earthquakes, (3) the effects of man-induced vibrations from pile driving in dense urban environments and near critical infrastructure such as bridges and retaining walls, and (4) the use of new materials, advanced sensing and next-generation laboratory and field testing to inform us on efficient and sustainable mitigation of aging systems.

Arpad Horvath focuses on life-cycle environmental and economic assessment of products, processes, and services. He is particularly interested in answering important questions about civil infrastructure systems and the built environment: transportation systems, water and wastewater systems, biofuels, pavements, buildings, and construction materials.

His projects include:
1) Environmental implications of various products, processes and services, in particular, transportation systems, water and wastewater systems, biofuels, pavements, buildings, and construction materials.

Boaxia Mi focuses on physicochemical processes emphasizing nanomaterials and membrane science/technology for drinking water purification and wastewater reuse. Her lab is developing sustainable membrane processes for emergency water supply, water reuse, desalination, and sustainable energy harvesting

Her projects include:
1) Nanomaterials to target removal of materials such as heavy metals.
2) Graphene oxide (GO) nanomaterials to synthesize a fundamentally new class of water filtration membranes for emerging water contaminants.
3) Nanotechnology to collect solar power for desalination process

Ashok Gadgil focuses on novel technologies for producing affordable safe drinking water by removing various harmful contaminants. Current focus contaminants are: arsenic, fluoride, lead, TDS, Emerging Organic Contaminants, and silica.

His projects include:
1) Prevention of drinking water contamination from lead pipes.
2) Reduction of toxic concentrations of fluoride in groundwater to safe levels
3) Creation of safe drinking water from groundwater contaminated with high levels of arsenic

Kara Nelson focuses on addresses innovative strategies to improve the sustainability of urban water infrastructure, including technologies for potable and non-potable water reuse, nutrient recovery, decentralized systems, intermittent water supply, household water treatment, and affordable sanitation. In particular, Dr. Nelson’s research focuses on the control of waterborne pathogens, including mechanisms of pathogen inactivation and new detection methods.

Her projects include:
1) A WASH project looking at impact of improved sanitation interventions on transmission of enteric pathogens from human and animal sources through a randomized controlled trial in rural Bangladesh
2) Influence of intermittent water supply (IWS) on the diversity and dynamics of the IWS microbiome.
3) The impacts of DPR systems on microbial water quality through research on methods of advanced microbial water quality assessment.

David Sedlak focuses on environmental chemistry, water recycling, contaminant fate in receiving waters, natural treatment systems, and reinvention of urban water systems.

His projects include:
1) The Fate of Trace Organic Compounds in Treatment Wetlands
2) In Situ Chemical Oxidation of Persistent Organic Contaminants

Prof. Gerlein-Safdi is an ecohydrologist interested in understanding water-carbon relations within the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. She uses an array of methods, from satellite data to process-based modeling, from stable isotopes lab experiments to field measurements.

1) Satellite-based mapping of wetlands to improve methane emissions modeling
2) Understanding the effects of soil warming on vegetation water and carbon fluxes
3) Dew and fog as a water resource for vegetation

Dr. Maya Carrasquillo (pronouns: she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley and the PI of the JEDI (L)ab. Her research interests include sustainable and equitable urban water infrastructure, food-energy-water systems (FEWs), community-engagement and citizen science in decision-making, and environmental/social justice.

Her projects include
1. Culturally-relevant and multifunctional green infrastructure in coastal Bay area communities
2. Exploring opportunities to envision climate justice scenarios for adaptation using AR/VR with Bay Area youth
3. Exploring anti-racism and social justice in environmental engineering curriculum

Lisa Alvarez-Cohen focuses on environmental microbiology and ecology, biotransformation and fate of environmental and wastewater contaminants, and innovative molecular and isotopic techniques for studying microbial ecology of communities involved in wastewater treatment and bioremediation communities. Specifically, her research focuses on the application of omics-based molecular tools and isotopic techniques to understand and optimize the bioremediation of emerging and conventional environmental contaminants by naturally occurring microorganisms and to facilitate beneficial nutrient removal from wastewater.

Her projects include:
1) Trichloroethene Remediation, specifically investigating how dichlorination communities respond to the changes in these conditions by constructing various Dhc-containing consortia in batch and completely mixed flow reactors.
2) Characterization of the fate and biotransformation of fluorochemicals in aqueous film forming forms (AFFF)
3) Nitrogen Removal from Wastewater by Anammox

Sally Thompson focuses on ecohydrology, surface hydrology, and nonlinear dynamics.

Her projects include:
1) Eel River Critical Zone Observatory
2) Effects of reversing fire suppression on Sierra Nevada hydrology – Illilouette Creek Basin
3) Unmanned Aerial Systems for Water Observations
4) Reconstructing 50 years of human-induced hydrologic change in the Arkavathy Basin, Karnataka, India
5) Exploring land use impacts on hydrology in the Cerrado-Amazon transition zone, Brazil

Roger Bales focuses on California’s efforts to build the knowledge base and implement policies that adapt our water supplies, critical ecosystems and economy to the impacts of climate warming. He works with leaders in state agencies, elected officials, federal land managers, water leaders, non-governmental organizations, and other key decision makers on developing climate solutions for California.

His projects include:
1) Director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, which focuses on researching rapid population growth, competition for natural resources, air and water and soil pollution, climate change and competing land uses in the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevada region.
2) Director of the Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory, which looks at research on critical zone processes with ongoing investigations and measurements at several sites on the western slope of the southern Sierra Nevada.
3) Director of the UC Water Security and Sustainability Research Initiative which focuses on strategic research to build the knowledge base for better water source management.

Slav Hermanowicz focuses on biological water and wastewater treatment processes, biofilms and their development, analysis of full-scale treatment reactors, nutrient control, and sustainable development.

His projects include:
1) Deammonification of anaerobic sludge digestate
2) Better drinking water quality in storage
3) Solar optics-based active pasteurization for greywater reuse and integrated thermal building control
4) Physics of foaming in anaerobic digesters
5) Sustainable development: physical and moral issues
6) New sources of water; toward a definition of sustainability

Jill focuses on geomicrobiology and environmental microbiology where her group studies how microorganisms shape, and are shaped by, their natural environments. The research group studies microbial communities, primarily using cultivation-independent approaches such as genomics (metagenomics) and community proteomics. They work on microbial dissolution and precipitation of minerals, the structure, properties, and reactivity of nanoparticles (many of which are formed by microorganisms), microbial ecology, and microbial evolution. Their current projects are tied to location studies in aquatic environments at:

1) Iron Mountain, California
2) Angelo Reserve, California
3) Rifle and East River sites, Colorado
4) Crystal Geyser, Utah

Inez Fung focuses on climate change and atmospheric science with particular attention towards geophysical fluid dynamics and large-scale numerical modeling, remote sensing of earth systems, atmosphere-ocean interactions, and atmosphere-biosphere interactions. Additionally, she is the co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment.

Her current projects center around:
1) Changes in East Asian monsoon precipitation
2) Subsurface water dynamics and tree resilience/mortality to droughts

Steven Glaser focuses on laboratory earthquakes and nanoseismology, wireless sensors networks, snow water hydrology, internet of water, geophysics and wave propagation, geothermal energy, rock mechanics.

His projects include:
1) Forest hydrology of snow melt and water balance in the Sierra Nevada.
2) Berkeley Mote to monitor the seismic safety of wood-frame houses to measuring the seismic response of the Masada mountain in Israel
3) Environmental hazards at Chinese historical sites such as Dunhuang

William Boos’ research group focuses on Earth’s tropical climate. They work on a range of problems involving atmosphere-ocean dynamics, land surface processes, radiative transfer, and thermodynamics. In their work, they combine theory, observational analyses, and numerical models, paying particular attention to the treatment of phase changes of water, as the interaction of precipitating clouds with planetary-scale flow is one of the central unresolved problems of planetary science.

His projects include:
1) A project centered on monsoon circulations, which deliver water to billions of people living in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and northern Australia; tracking monsoon winds is a major component, which also constitute a major component of the global circulation of Earth’s atmosphere.

Michael Manga focuses on a variety of topics across the Earth and Planetary Department including hydrogeology and human-induced earthquakes, groundwater, rivers, geysers, woody-debris flow in water systems, and extra-planetary sources of water.

His projects include:
1) An extra-planetary project that studies planets made of ice that have oceans under them and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, as well as past water-systems and current water on Mars.
2) A project on studying the effects of wood on water systems, looking into the effect woody debris has on the flow of systems and how it alters river channels. The Pacific North-West is a main study area for the research, while it is in the early stages of research in California.
3) An ongoing project to study the effects of earthquakes on water systems. His study on human-induced earthquakes and fracking includes looking at the amount of water used to achieve the desired products, as well as how the wastewater is disposed of. Additionally, he has been monitoring earthquake activity within the East Bay where he measures the fluctuations and increases on the flow of water at the Alum Rock springs.

Bill Dietrich’s research focuses on the processes that underlie the evolution of landscapes. His research group and collaborators are developing geomorphic transport laws for soil production, weathering and transport, and river and debris flow incision into bedrock. They are exploring the processes that control the sorting of sediment on river beds, the transport of sediment in steep, coarse bedded channels, the routing of sediment through river networks, the influence of sediment supply on river morphodynamics, the entrainment of sediment to form debris flows, and the dispersion and deposition of sediment across floodplains.

Isha Ray focuses on water, sanitation and development; water and gender; technology and development; and common property resources. Her research projects focus on access to water and sanitation for the rural and urban poor, and on the role of technology in improving livelihoods.

Her projects include:
1) Governance of Wastewater Reuse systems in India with an emphasis on the institutional aspects of water reuse in rural regions.
2) Central Valley of California projects focuses around assessing the affordability of drinking water in rural communities and best methods for supplying drinking water. Additionally, a separate project is conducting field-trial arsenic mitigation methods and systems implementation in historically marginalized, rural communities.
3) A Joint ongoing project in collaboration with China CDC and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University conducting microbial bacteriology studies on rural drinking water along with behavioral interventions of safe drinking water methods. Emphasis is on evaluating key vulnerabilities of water systems and expanding safe drinking water methods from rural to institution (hospitals, schools) settings.

Dr. Jones’s research uses quantitative Earth system science tools –computer models, uncertainty quantification techniques, etc. – to gain decision-relevant insight into how humans affect the climate and vice versa. Major themes include the “usability” of regional climate projections for adaptation planning, the resilience of energy, water, and food systems to multiple stressors, the role of land use change in efforts to both reduce and adapt to climate change, and the tightly coupled interactions among people, built infrastructure, and environmental processes in urban contexts.

Projects include:
1) Project Hyperion, within which he leads a stakeholder engagement process with water management professionals in four case study basins across the US aimed at evaluating and improving the decision-relevance of high-resolution climate projections for long-range water system planning
2) Efforts to understand urban environmental processes (heat waves, vegetation dynamics, hydrologic flows and their implications for energy and water resources) in the context of changing climate, land use, and demographics.

Justin Remais focuses on advancing methods for estimating the dynamics and spread of infectious diseases in changing environments, such as those associated with rapid urbanization, industrialization, changes in water resources, and an increasingly variable climate. His Interests lie in: Environmental dynamics of infectious diseases, Global environmental change and health, Methodological issues in the projection of infectious disease risks in response to environmental change, Optimizing infectious disease surveillance in low- and middle-income countries, Mathematical and statistical modeling of infectious disease transmission, and Dynamics of waterborne and vector-borne infections in rapidly changing environments

His current projects include:
1) Hydroclimatic determinants of waterborne diseases in tropical settings
2) Influence of drought and extreme rainfall on dust-borne infections in California
3) Hydroclimatology’s role in determining the epidemiology and ecology of vector-borne diseases in urban areas.

Meg Mills-Novoa is an assistant professor with a joint appointment to the Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy , and Management and the Energy and Resources Group. As a human-environment geographer, her research focuses on the enduring impact of climate change adaptation projects. To study these initiatives, she uses a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, from spatial analysis and quantitative surveys to archival research and interviews. She collaborates closely with communities and practitioners to improve the design, implementation, and outcomes of adaptation projects that promote inclusion and equity.

1) Sustainability of Water Sector Adaptation Projects across the Andes
2) Efficacy of Climate Change Adaptation Interventions in the Water Sector
3) Social Movements and the Emerging Hydropower Boom

Dennis Baldocchi focuses on biometeorology, biosphere-atmosphere trace gas fluxes, ecosystem ecology and climate change. One of the “big questions” he aims to address is what are the influences of weather and climate, the structure and function of plants and ecosystems, biological, physical and chemical properties of soils, and land management and land use change on the trace gas (H2O, CO2, 13CO2, CH4, C5H10) exchange of ecosystems?

His projects includes:
1) Coordinated use of experimental measurements and theoretical models to understand the physical, biological, and chemical processes that control trace gas fluxes between the biosphere and atmosphere and to quantify their temporal and spatial variations. The spatial scales of this work ranges from the dimension of a leaf through the depth of plant canopies and the planetary boundary layer and the horizontal extent of landscapes.

Albert Ruhi focuses on understanding how freshwater communities and food webs respond to global change, with a special emphasis on the effects of hydrologic alteration and drought.

His projects include:
1) 2019-23 Collaborative Proposal: NSF MSB-FRA: Scaling Climate, Connectivity, and Communities in Streams
2) 2019-20 California Institute for Water Resources (CIWR) Water Research Program. Towards a Mechanistic Understanding of the Multi-Scale Effects of Drought on Riverine Biodiversity
3) 2019-20 California Department of Fish and Wildlife Awards. Reconnecting Delta food webs: evaluating the influence of tidal marsh restoration on energy flow and prey availability for native fishes
4) 2019-20 Subaward from the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, University of Maryland. Advancing quantitative methods to understand causal pathways and feedbacks within complex socio-hydrological systems.

Manuela Girotto focuses on hydrologic data assimilation and remote sensing.

Her projects include:
1) Hydrologic response and interaction between natural and human driven processes
2) Land Surface remote sensing and muti-senor, -spectrum, -resolution data assimilation
3) Hydrology contribution to sea level change
4) Snow hydrology

Maggi Kelly’s lab group’s motto is “mapping for a changing California”, and they use a range of geospatial data and analytics – from spatial modeling, remote sensing, drones, lidar, historical archives, surveys, participatory mapping, and the field – to gain insights about how and why California landscapes are changing, and what that change means for those who live on, use, and manage our lands.

Luke Macaulay focuses on rangeland planning & policy; wildlife management; range management; geospatial analyses; water management.

His projects include:
1) Drilling in Drought: How Farm Size and Crop Mix Correlate with Groundwater Exploration During California’s 2012-2016 Drought
2) Why is the California’s lowest value crop the third largest user of the state’s agricultural water? The case of irrigated pasture
3) Using remote sensing to monitor remote surface water ponds in the Kingdom of Jordan

Michael Mascarenhas focuses on water access and environmental justice, water charity and affordability, Indigenous water rights, and human right to water.

His projects include:
1) Thirsty for Environmental Justice. Flint, Detroit, and the War over Michigan’s Water.
2) Previous Projects:
a. Where the Waters Divide. Neoliberalism, White Privilege, and Environmental Racism in Canada (Lexington Books, 2015)
b. New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity: Good Intentions on the Road to Help (Indiana University Press, 2017)

Mary Firestone’s research involves the fundamental understanding of soil microbial ecology, and applications to problems such as global change, sustainability and biodegradation. Current research interests include: bacteria/soil interactions and interactions between plant roots and soil microorganisms.

Ted Grantham focuses on freshwater ecology, surface water hydrology, water resources management.

His projects include:

1) Eco-hydrology of intermittent streams
2) Water Management for the environment
3) Freshwater ecosystem vulnerability to climate change
4) Environmental impacts of cannabis production

Susan Hubbard focuses on development and use of advanced characterization approaches to provide new insights about terrestrial hydrological and biogeochemical functioning relevant to contaminant remediation, carbon cycling, water resources, and subsurface energy challenges.

Her projects include:
1) Watershed Function Scientific Focus Area – Developing a predictive understanding of how mountainous watersheds retain and release water and the implications for downgradient water discharge and biogeochemical cycles, particularly in response to floods, droughts and other episodic through decadal perturbations. The project is focused in a headwaters catchment in the Upper Colorado River Basin.
2) Next Generation Ecosystem Experiment (NGEE) -Artic (Improved prediction of ecosystem feedback to climate in vulnerable Arctic systems through iterative and multi-scale observations, experiments and simulations).

Stephanie Carlson focuses on freshwater fish ecology, evolutionary ecology, and conservation of freshwaters. The research aims to illustrate how evolution and ecology interact to shape wild populations and influence their persistence, particularly those exposed to anthropogenic (human) influences.

Her projects include:
1) Evolution (and loss) of biodiversity among salmon populations
2) Ecological and evolutionary impacts of management (water, fishery, hatchery, protected area)
3) Impacts of drought and climate change on streams

My research efforts emphasize environmental change of polar regions, with a focus on glaciologic problems. The choice of polar glaciology reflects the unique and powerful contributions that this subdiscipline makes to environmental change research. Ice core reconstructions of environmental history offer the most comprehensive, varied, and high-resolution view yet achieved of past environments. The ice sheets themselves are a major control on global sea level and albedo, and on high-latitude atmospheric and oceanic circulations, and on physical landscape characteristics. No other topographic features of this size and importance are changeable on such short time scales.

I use a quantitatively rigorous and novel blend of geophysical and geochemical techniques to address questions that are important in this context: How have climatic temperature and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations covaried in the past? What is the tempo and magnitude of climate changes in polar regions? What determines the isotopic composition of precipitation? How have the great ice sheets changed in the past, and how will they change in the future? How do they flow? How are microphysical processes in ice manifest at the scale of whole glaciers and ice sheets?

Vincent Resh focuses on aquatic biology, water pollution, modeling, and entomology.

His projects include:
1) Berkeley Water Center Berkeley/China-CDC Program for Water & Health Advisory Board
2) Approaches that can be used for biological monitoring and assessment of water quality in developing countries and by volunteer monitoring groups
3) Evolutionary biology and ecology of aquatic insects, crustaceans, and mollusks in stream and river habitats
4) Evaluation of habitat manipulations for use in environmental restoration or enhancement, control of water-borne disease vectors of humans, and the use of manipulations in examining underlying influences of ecological interactions
5) Techniques for the biological assessment of water quality.

Nathan Sayre focuses on semi-arid rangelands, especially in the southwestern United States: how they have changed, how they have been understood and managed, and the politics and economics surrounding land use change, fire restoration, and endangered species conservation. His interests include ranching and pastoralism, rangeland ecology and management, history of range science, endangered species, scale, the state, Western environmental history, local ecological knowledge, conservation and urbanization/land use change

One of his projects includes:
1) The California megaflood of 1861-62 and the subsequent drought

The puzzles that motivate me are: What makes landscapes evolve distinct patterns? How can we restore or manage landscapes to optimize particular functions? How do physical-biological interactions control large-scale geomorphology and biogeochemical processing? Water flows as a theme through this research as one of the components of the environment most critical to life and, indeed, perhaps the single most dominant factor sculpting the geography of Earth’s natural and human landscapes. Water is also one of the features of the physical environment most sensitive to global climate change and human management. In my research I try to tease apart the direct and indirect ways in which hydrologic changes impact ecosystems, and, conversely, how those ecological changes impact hydrology. It is only through a firm understanding of these dynamic interactions that we can predict future change in the hydrological and ecological components of landscapes.

Todd Dawson focuses on the interface between plants and their environment. Specifically trying to use plant ecophysiology, ecohydrology, and stable isotope ecology to investigate how aspects of plant form and function combine to permit adaptation to environmental variation, whether naturally or anthropogenically imposed, and how plants and their unique traits influence the structure and function of the communities and ecosystems they compose.

His projects include:
1) Detecting changes in water and vegetation under rapid climatic challenges
2) The roles of plants in the critical zone
3) Coupling plant hydraulics to ecohydrological fluxes

Current research in the Ackerly lab is focused on studies of climate change impacts on California biodiversity, including distribution modeling, long-term vegetation dynamics and focal studies of selected plant species. Our primary field site is the Pepperwood Preserve, Santa Rosa, CA. Graduate students and post-docs are working on evolution of physiological traits, demography of alpine plants, and species distributions on fine-scale spatial gradients.

David Levine focuses on how industrialization has affected children in newly industrializing nations, particularly Indonesia. He has also conducted evaluations in Cambodia, Ghana, Kenya, and Senegal, exploring the impacts of programs promoting micro-health insurance, hunger alleviation, safe water, and solar ovens.

His projects include:
1) School health curriculums for India
2) Causes and effects of investments in health and education
3) Obstacles to good management

Iryna Dronova focuses on diverse aspects of landscape ecology and its potential to inform sustainable, multi-functional landscape-designs, and decision-making in environmental planning. Her research looks into wetlands, wetland restoration, remote sensing, GIS & spatial analysis.

Her projects include:
1) Using remotely-sensed phenology to monitor biodiversity and ecosystem services in wetlands
2) Cost-effective tools for wetland restoration monitoring from local to regional scales

Danielle Zoe Rivera is Assistant Professor in the department of Landscape Architecture + Environmental Planning. Her work examines environmental planning, urban design, and community development, including an extensive focus on flooding. Within these spaces, she focuses on issues of environmental justice and climate equity affecting low-income communities. Her current work leverages community-based research and design methods to identify and address environmental injustices affecting low-income communities throughout South Texas, the Bay Area, and Puerto Rico. She has conducted past research in Southeast Michigan, the Philadelphia region, and the Denver region. Rivera directs the Just Environments Lab, which seeks to center concerns of social justice and equity in discussions of the future of our environment.

As an early career global and regional climate modeler, I have a keen interest in understanding how mountainous water cycle processes are influenced by climate change, how those changes might influence water resource management, and how the scientific community might better help water managers preemptively adapt to these changes. My focus is primarily on the mountains of the western U.S. across long-term (hydroclimate) and short-term (hydrometeorological extremes) timescales.

Holly Doremus focuses on environmental law, natural resource law, and law and science. Eight of Doremus’s articles in the legal literature have been selected for reprinting in the Land Use and Environment Law Review, an annual compilation of the year’s leading works. Her recent publications include Water War in the Klamath Basin: Macho Law, Combat Biology, and Dirty Politics (Island Press, 2008) (with A. Dan Tarlock); “Scientific and Political Integrity in Environmental Policy,” Texas Law Review (2008); “Data Gaps in Natural Resource Management: Sniffing for Leaks Along the Information Pipeline,” Indiana Law Journal (2008); and “Precaution, Science, and Learning While Doing in Natural Resource Management,” Washington Law Review (2007).

One of her projects includes:
1) Hydropower relicensing in California

Jenn’s research focuses on the economic and environmental implications of complex infrastructure systems. For over 15 years, she has studied innovative and integrated water systems, specifically evaluating tradeoffs and synergies between different water-related functions (conveyance and treatment of potable water, recycled water, wastewater, and stormwater) and understanding their interdependencies with other economic sectors, such as energy and food. She is an expert in conducting life-cycle cost assessment (LCCA) and life-cycle assessment (LCA). She has also worked as an engineering consultant, gaining experience designing, operating, and managing construction of environmental remediation systems.

Alexis Kaminski is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Alexis received her BSc (2010) and MSc (2012) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta, and her PhD (2016) in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining UC Berkeley in 2021, she worked as a postdoc in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University and at the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory. Her research interests include stratified flows, hydrodynamic instabilities, transition to turbulence, mixing and entrainment, internal waves, non-normal stability, upper-ocean dynamics, physical oceanography, geophysical and environmental fluid dynamics.

Michael Kiparsky focuses on water resources policy and management; science-policy interface; translational research and synthesis

His projects include:
1) Evaluating and Improving the Relationships Between Regulation and Innovation in the Wastewater Sector
2) Developing Water Data Systems to Improve Decision Making
3) Recharge Net Metering to Enhance Groundwater Sustainability
4) Addressing Institutional Vulnerabilities in California’s Water Allocation Institutions
5) Evaluating the Benefits for and Pathways to Small Water System Consolidations

Reza Alam’s research currently pertains to Theoretical Fluid Dynamics, Nonlinear Wave Mechanics, Ocean and Coastal Waves Phenomena, Ocean Renewable Energy (Wave, Tide and Offshore Wind Energy), Nonlinear Dynamical Systems, and Fluid Flow Control

Hannah Stuart focuses on electromagnetical design, skin contact conditions, dexterous manipulation, field robotics and tactile sensing and haptics. .

Her projects include:
1) Human-portable ROV tool development for remote coral tissue sampling
2) Robotic marine systems inspired by fish and arthropods
3) Robotic skin design for grasping and manipulation in wet environments

Peggy Lemaux focuses on both basic and applied research focused primarily on cereal crops, like sorghum, wheat, rice and barley. The objectives of these studies are to better understand crop plants and to use that knowledge to improve their performance and quality. More recently efforts with colleagues have focused on bioenergy – especially in the versatile feedstock, sorghum.

One of her projects includes:
1) “Epigenetic Control of Drought Response in Sorghum” (EPICON)
A $12.3 million Department of Energy Biological and Environmental Research-funded project to examine how the drought-tolerant cereal crop, sorghum, survives water loss.
Researchers expect to develop better predictions about how sorghum and other cereal crops are affected by future climate scenarios, leading to approaches to improve crop growth and production under water-limiting conditions.

Dr. Peter S. Fiske is the Director of the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI). NAWI is the U.S. Dept of Energy’s 5-year, $110M early-stage applied research program to drive down the cost and energy associated with desalination and water reuse. Fiske also oversees the Water-Energy Resilience Research Institute (WERRI) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. WERRI’s goal is to orient and align the water-related research programs at LBNL to address critical gaps in the reliability, efficiency and sustainability of water-energy systems in California and the nation.

Charlotte Smith focuses on impact assessment and evaluation of water systems and public health in urban and rural Mexican and Central American communities. She studies microbial ecology of waterborne pathogens and bacterial endosymbionts of free-living protozoa with a focus on microbial and chemical contamination of water.

Her projects include:
1) A joint Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara (ITESO)/UCB project exploring the environmental, occupational, and behavioral factors that are associated with diarrheal and kidney diseases in rural communities on the bank of Lake Chapala. Three UCB MPH students fulfilled their MPH practicum requirement and launched the project with interdisciplinary ITESO collaborators and local NGOs.
2) A joint project with REACH in Tanzania working on improved water quality and assessing public health relations.

Alison Post focuses on a variety of water related research agendas that includes analyzing water distribution in Latin America, urban planning, and water politics in India. Post’s current research is looking at the ways in which water resources as a political entity and how it intersects with urban planning at the human level.

Her projects include:
1) Water intermittency in India with Professor Isha Ray. A field experiment into the effects of text message alerts to individual community members about when they can expect water services. Related research into the role of street-level bureaucrats in operating/prioritizing water service and their relationship to the communities they serve.
2) Implications of how infrastructure and utility agencies manage competing risks (including earthquakes, wildfires, cyberattacks) and how they prioritize their address of risk.
3) Political implications for rapid urbanization in the developing world; particularly how policy-making operates in small- and medium-size cities where the bulk of population growth is occurring in the developing world. Looking into why small towns and medium-sized cities are spending much more money on public health and education in comparison to water security and distribution.

Jack Colford focuses on waterborne infectious diseases in domestic, developing country and recreational water settings. He specializes in large-field randomized control trials at the individual and community level.

His projects include:
1) WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hand Washing) Intervention analysis. Interventions have been carried out in rural Kenya and Bangladesh which include the implementation of chlorine based water treatments, hand washing stations with community training, double pit latrines, and Enov’Nutributter supplements.
2) Recreational water studies on gastrointestinal disease transmission and infection among users including swimmers, surfers, and beach use.