UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

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.