UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

Introduction to marine geochemistry: the global water cycle; processes governing the distribution of chemical species within the hydrosphere; ocean circulation; chemical mass balances, fluxes, and reactions in the marine environment from global to submicron scales; carbon system equilibrium chemistry and biogeochemistry of fresh and salt walter; applications of natural and anthropogenic stable and radioactive tracers; internal ocean processes.

This course offers multidisciplinary approach to begin answering the question “Why are oceans important to us?” Upon a physical, chemical, and geologic base, we introduce the alien world of sea life, the importance of the ocean to the global carbon cycle, and the principles of ecology with a focus on the important concept of energy flow through food webs. Lectures expand beyond science to include current topics as diverse as music, movies, mythology, biomechanics, policy, and trade.

Introduction to California geography, environment, and society, past and future climates, and the potential impacts of 21st-century climate change on ecosystems and human well-being. Topics include fundamentals of climate science and the carbon cycle; relationships between human and natural systems, including water supplies, agriculture, public health, and biodiversity; and the science, law, and politics of possible solutions that can reduce the magnitude and impacts of climate change.

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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.