UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

This course will examine emerging trends in environmental planning and policy and the basic regulatory framework for environmental planning encountered in the U.S. We will also relate the institutional and policy framework of California and the United States to other nations and emerging international institutions. The emphasis of the course will be on regulating “residuals” as they affect three media: air, water, and land.

An introduction is given to the science and technologies of producing electricity and transportation fuels from renewable energy resources (biomass, geothermal, solar, wind, and wave). Students will be introduced to quantitative calculations and comparisions of energy technologies together with the economic and political factors affecting the transition from nonrenewable to sustainable energy resources. Mass and energy balances are used to analyze the conversion of energy resources.

This course will familiarize students with the complex infrastructure used to meet human water demands; competing uses and demands; water and wastewater infrastructure; technologies to enable recovery of water, energy, and other resources from wastewater; supply planning; trends and forecasting; costs, pricing and financing; environmental justice; methods to assess sustainability; regulatory, policy and institutional challenges; and water’s contribution to other sectors (e.g., energy, food, buildings). Innovation, both barriers and opportunities, will be highlighted. California and the U.S. will be emphasized but global challenges will be discussed. Students will study, critique, and recommend improvements for a real-world system.

Geosystem engineering design principles and concepts. Fundamental aspects of the geomechanical and geoenvironmental responses of soil are applied to analyze and design civil systems, such as earth dams and levees, earth retention systems, building and bridge foundations, solid-waste fills, and tailings dams. Students form teams to design geotechnical aspects of a civil project and prepare/present a design document. Field trip to a project site.

This course is organized around five real-world large-scale CEE systems problems. The problems provide the motivation for the study of quantitative tools that are used for planning or managing these systems. The problems include design of a public transportation system for an urban area, resource allocation for the maintenance of a water supply system, development of repair and replacement policies for reinforced concrete bridge decks, traffic signal control for an arterial street, scheduling in a large-scale construction project.

The course provides a framework to address contemporary water-resources problems, and to achieve water security for local areas and broader regions. Students will become aware of critical water-resources issues at local, national and global scales, and learn to formulate solutions for water-resources problems using engineering, natural-science and social-science tools. The main focus is on California and the Western United States, with comparative analysis for other regions.

Design problems from an ecological perspective. Design studies of relationships among ecosystem, energy, and resource flows, human social and cultural values, and technological variables as they interact to produce the built environment.

This course is intended to provide students with an overview of current thinking about cities and their components (buildings, parks, streets) as ecological and cultural systems. It will provide an introduction to methods for investigating the dynamics of flows and relationships in the built environment and students will gain experience constructing their own narratives as ways of asking and answering questions about human habitat that could shape the future.

This course is an introduction to issues of sustainability in the designed landscape and in our cities. It includes environmental history as well as contemporary social, environmental and political issues surrounding sustainable design and activism. The course stresses motives and values expressed through environmental design at various scales – from neighborhood to global and examines problems affecting healthy environments and their solutions. Students study the need for protection and restoration of healthy ecological systems within the design of cities and landscapes and discuss ways to enable these systems to thrive. Readings and discussions focus on means to evaluate, create and advocate for healthy, sustainable environments.

This course presents an overview of relevant hydrologic, hydraulic, and geomorphic processes, to provide the planner and ecologist with insight to incorporate these processes into the planning process and coordinate with specialists in the field of hydrology. Relevant government regulations and policies are also reviewed. The course is not intended to duplicate more specialized courses offered in such fields as engineering hydrology, coastal engineering, or geology, but rather to provide an integrated understanding. The course takes a process- and field-based approach to hydrology, and emphasizes interdisciplinary perspectives.

With the increasing popularity of river and stream restoration in the US and abroad, restoration has attracted supporters and practitioners from a variety of fields. However, river and stream restoration is not a distinct discipline in itself, but rather involves the application of sound geomorphological, hydrologic, and ecological science to the problem of restoring ecosystem functions to a river system. The purpose of this course is to explore the field of river and stream restoration, with particular emphasis on geomorphic, hydrologic, and ecological processes essential to the healthy functioning (and thus ecological restoration) of river systems, the role of scientific information in project planning and design, and the post-project evaluation of project performance.

Environmental planning intersects with many other disciplines and incorporates a very wide array of sub disciplines. Ranging from city planning, land use planning, landscape architecture, forest management, waste water management, wilderness preservation, urban sustainability and many more.

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

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

“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. 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

BEACN is a student-run, nonprofit consulting organization that works with clients both on and off campus on projects that encourage environmental responsibility each semester. BEACN’s mission is “to provide comprehensive strategies to our clients that integrate environmental, social, and economic factors in business decision-making processes” while offering students the opportunity to implement sustainable practices in a real world setting, while offering businesses quality consulting services and research based on up-to-date environmental and business data.

The Canadian Studies Program is involved in research and investigation on the renewal terms of the Canadian-American Columbia River Treaty and the management of the river system. The project is focused on science requirements and needs for a modernized treaty. The research looks into how water is managed throughout the river system through dams and river flows, and also looks into how environmental impacts are assessed and how to promote ecological sustainability throughout the system.

There are great academic and funding opportunities for any students looking to join the research on the Columbia River Treaty project.

The Center for Resource Efficient Communities is a research center at the University of California, Berkeley devoted to the study of ecologically sustainable urban environments. Our work focuses on:

The effects of existing and potential urban land use patterns, transportation systems, and building design and management practices on levels of greenhouse gas emissions;
The planning, financing, regulation and public acceptance of innovative urban water infrastructure;
The evaluation of existing and potential municipal, regional, state and national policy mechanisms for advancing urban sustainability