UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

Introduction to principles of groundwater flow, including steady and transient flow through porous media, numerical analysis, pumping tests, groundwater geology, contaminant transport, and design of waste containment systems.

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.

Current problems in fluid flow, heat flow, and solute transport in the earth. Pressure- and thermal-driven flow, instability, convection, interaction between fluid flow and chemical reactions. Pore pressure; faulting and earthquakes; diagenesis; hydrocarbon migration and trapping; flow-associated mineralization; contaminant problems.

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.

Structure and coordination chemistry of natural adsorbent particles in aqueous systems; solute adsorption mechanisms and theoretical models; interparticle forces and colloidal phenomena; applications to biogeochemistry and contaminant hydrology.

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.

Although often unseen, microbes are everywhere! This course covers the role that microbes, including archaea, bacteria, protists and fungi, play in terrestrial, marine and extreme environments and their effect on the geochemistry of the earth. In addition, we will explore the profound effects of microbes on human and plant health and how microbes have changed the course of human history.

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

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 Bay Area Water Quality Fellowship is open to graduate students whose studies are related specifically to water quality issues that affect the San Francisco Bay. It is intended to support scientific research in the following topics:
-the exposure or effect, if any, of organisms within the San Francisco Bay estuary to selenium, metals, and/or organic chemicals through food chain transfer
-the degree, if any, to which sediments are a source of exposure for organisms within the San Francisco Bay estuary to selenium, metals, and/or organic chemicals
-other research that involves the effect of pollution on the San Francisco Bay estuary and/or its ecosystem.

Applications are due at the beginning of Spring semester. Recipients will receive $15,000 for the following Fall semester. The award can be used as a payment for registration fees and/or stipend.

The Center for Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry (CSIB) on the University of California, Berkeley campus, is an analytical facility established as a University education, research, training and service unit beginning in January 2000. Facility operations are overseen by an operations manager and spectroscopist (Wenbo Yang), the faculty director (Todd Dawson), an associate researcher (Stefania Mambelli), and a steering committee. Student assistants help in daily operations and administrative support is provided by the Department of Integrative Biology.