UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

This course introduces the arts of Asia, premodern to modern-contemporary, in relation to the ecocritical humanities. It surveys specific visual and material objects, structures and sites, and performances in Asia in interrelationship with planetary geo/biological systems, culture, and the politics of Humanity and Nature. Its topics include the fundamental materiality of artworks and responses to water, geology, and biology as much as ideas and beliefs; hand and machine-working of earthly material; nonhuman species in human cultures, in terms of ecology as well as representation; responses to the accelerating climate cataclysm; and the meeting of the sciences and the arts in recognition of our multispecies planetary inter-reliance.

Presents concept and practical approaches to public and private natural resource management decision making. The focus is on goals, criteria, data, models, and technology for quantifying and communicating the consequences of planning options. A range of contemporary air, soil, wetland, rangeland, forest, social, economic, and ecosystem management problems is addressed.

Identification and ecology of aquatic insects, including their role as indicators of environmental quality.

Natural history and evolutionary biology of island terrestrial and freshwater organisms, and of marine organisms in the coral reef and lagoon systems will be studied, and the geomorphology of volcanic islands, coral reefs, and reef islands will be discussed. Features of island biogeography will be illustrated with topics linked to subsequent field studies on the island of Moorea (French Polynesia).

This course focuses on a survey of physiological approaches to understanding plant-environment interactions from the functional perspective. Lectures cover physiological adaptation; limiting factors; resources acquisition/allocation; photosynthesis, carbon, energy balance; water use and relations; nutrient relations; linking physiology; stable isotope applications in ecophysiology; stress physiology; life history and physiology; evolution of physiological performance; physiology population, community, and ecosystem levels.

Course focuses on principles and applications of stable isotope chemistry as applied to the broad science of ecology. Lecture topics include principles of isotope behavior and chemistry, and isotope measurements in the context of terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecological processes and problems. Students participate in a set of laboratory exercises involving preparation of samples of choice for isotopic analyses, the use of the mass spectrometer and optical analysis systems, and the anlaysis of data.

Changing patterns of agriculture in relation to population growth, the biology and social impact of plant disease, genetic engineering of plants: a thousand years of crop improvement and modern biotechnology, interactions between plants and the environment, and effects of human industrial and agricultural activity on plant ecosystems. Knowledge of the physical sciences is neither required nor assumed.

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.

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

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.

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.

The UC Berkeley Superfund Research Center is an NIEHS-funded program studying the toxic effects of Superfund chemicals (including drinking water contaminants) on human health and innovative approaches to environmental remediation. Our Center has been continuously funded for over 30 years. In our current funding cycle, we have identified four complex problems associated with hazardous waste sites that have proven intractable to current methods. These problems are how to better assess: 1) cumulative impacts from multiple environmental stressors (e.g. chemical exposures, stress and obesity); 2) past exposures, especially early-life exposures and their contribution to risk; 3) the effects of chemical mixtures and their impact on remediation efforts; and, 4) the complex transformation of chemicals to reactive intermediates and their ability to act through multiple mechanistic pathways. Our six interactive projects (4 biomedical and 2 engineering) and 5 cores, are addressing these issues through original research, translation to appropriate end-users and community engagement efforts.

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who work with a Center PI on a Superfund-related project are considered Superfund Trainees. The Trainee Core, under the leadership of Professor Luoping Zhang, offers trans-disciplinary mentorship, education, and training in environmental health, environmental toxicology, environmental engineering and data science as well as professional development and leadership opportunities. Trainees have hosted a booth at CalDay for the past two years and have presented their work at the NIEHS Superfund Research Program Annual Meetings each year.