UC Berkeley Water Research and Opportunities Portal

Hands-on design course in applied fluid mechanics, hydrology and water resources. Course goes beyond basic examples of fluid flow to develop environmental engineering solutions to real-world problems. A class team project is used to (1) explore the design process and project management; and (2) to integrate concepts from hydrology and fluid mechanics with structural, geotechnical and/or transportation engineering for a holistic design approach. Specific project topics vary with offering. Example topics include: engineering for air quality, design for sea-level rise mitigation, and development of alternative water supplies to address scarcity and post-disaster management.

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.

Fluid mechanics of the natural water and air environment. Flux equation analyses; unsteady free surface flow; stratified flow; Navier-Stokes equations; boundary layers, jets and plumes; turbulence, Reynolds equations, turbulence modeling; mixing, diffusion, dispersion, and contaminant transport; geophysical flows in atmosphere and ocean; steady and unsteady flow in porous media. Application to environmentally sensitive flows in surface and groundwater and in lower atmosphere.

Application of fluid mechanics to transport and mixing in the environment. Fundamentals of turbulence, turbulent diffusion, and shear dispersion in steady and oscillatory flows and the effects of stratification. Application to rivers, wetlands, lakes, estuaries, the coastal ocean, and the lower atmosphere.

Course addresses topics of surface water hydrology, such as processes of water in the atmosphere, over land surface, and within soil; advanced representation and models for infiltration and evapotranspiration processes; partition of water and energy budgets at the land surface; snow and snowmelt processes; applications of remote sensing; flood and drought, and issues related to advanced hydrological modeling. Students will address practical problems and will learn how to use the current operational hydrologic forecasting model, and build hydrological models.

Transport and mixing of solutes in water. Focus on rivers, lakes, estuaries, and wetlands, with some discussion of groundwater and the atmosphere. Basic equations of fluid motion will be used to contextualize and/or derive applied empirical equations for use in specific cases of applied environmental engineering practice. Example applications include outfalls, total maximum daily loads, residence time, and longitudinal dispersion.

A quantitative introduction to the hydrology of the terrestrial environment including lower atmosphere, watersheds, lakes, and streams. All aspects of the hydrologic cycle, including precipitation, infiltration, evapotranspiration, overland flow, streamflow, and groundwater flow. Chemistry and dating of groundwater and surface water. Development of quantitative insights through problem solving and use of simple models. This course requires one field experiment and several group computer lab assignments.

An overview of the processes that control water supply to natural ecosystems and human civilization. Hydrologic cycle, floods, droughts, groundwater. Patterns of water use, threats to water quality, effects of global climate change on future water supplies. Water issues facing California.

Urban demand for water; water supply and economic growth; water utility economics; irrigation demand; large water projects; economic impacts of surface water law and institutions; economics of salinity and drainage; economics of groundwater management.

This course considers the formation, implementation, and impact of public policies affecting agriculture and the environment. Economic approaches to public lawmaking, including theories of legislation, interest group activity, and congressional control of bureaucracies. Case studies include water allocation, endangered species protection, water quality, food safety, drainage, wetlands, pesticides, and farmworker safety. Emphasis on examples from California.

This course introduces the fundamental physical principles that are necessary to understand the distribution and dynamics of water near the Earth’s surface. A quantitative approach will provide mathematical descriptions of hydrolgical phenomena that will be used for a variety of hydrological applications to river flow hydraulics, flood frequency analysis, ecapotranspirtation from terrestrial ecosystems, groundwater flow, and ecohydrological dynamics. This course will provide an introduction to hydrological processes and data analysis. The purpose of the laboratory is to illustrate in an experimental setting the principles and applications introdcuted in lecture.

A quantitative introduction to the hydrology of the terrestrial environment including lower atmosphere, watersheds, lakes, and streams. All aspects of the hydrologic cycle, including precipitation, infiltration, evapotranspiration, overland flow, streamflow, and groundwater flow. Chemistry and dating of groundwater and surface water. Development of quantitative insights through problem solving and use of simple models. This course requires one field experiment and several group computer lab assignments.

Wastewater, Water Reuse, Water Systems, Drinking Water, Sanitation, Pollution, Rural, South Asia, Asia, China, India, North America, California, Water Security, Technology, Nutrient Management, Civil Society, Government, Economy, Development, Resource Distribution

Multi-barrier concept; groundwater hydrology, mathematical modeling of mass transport in heterogeneous media, source term for far-field model; near-field chemical environment, radionuclide release from waste solids, modeling of radionuclide transport in the near field, effect of temperature on repository performance, effect of water flow, effect of geochemical conditions, effect of engineered barrier alteration; overall performance assessment, performance index, uncertainty associated with assessment, regulation and standards.

Ellen Bruno focuses on policy issues relevant to California’s agriculture and natural resources. Her work is motivated by climate change and the need for strategies that mitigate the economic costs of drought.

Her current projects include:
1) Potential and effectiveness of water-related policies, which includes understanding how farmers respond to changes in water prices.
2) Functionality of groundwater markets in California
3) Impacts of groundwater quality and salinity on coastal groundwater dependent regions

Kara Nelson focuses on addresses innovative strategies to improve the sustainability of urban water infrastructure, including technologies for potable and non-potable water reuse, nutrient recovery, decentralized systems, intermittent water supply, household water treatment, and affordable sanitation. In particular, Dr. Nelson’s research focuses on the control of waterborne pathogens, including mechanisms of pathogen inactivation and new detection methods.

Her projects include:
1) A WASH project looking at impact of improved sanitation interventions on transmission of enteric pathogens from human and animal sources through a randomized controlled trial in rural Bangladesh
2) Influence of intermittent water supply (IWS) on the diversity and dynamics of the IWS microbiome.
3) The impacts of DPR systems on microbial water quality through research on methods of advanced microbial water quality assessment.

Roger Bales focuses on California’s efforts to build the knowledge base and implement policies that adapt our water supplies, critical ecosystems and economy to the impacts of climate warming. He works with leaders in state agencies, elected officials, federal land managers, water leaders, non-governmental organizations, and other key decision makers on developing climate solutions for California.

His projects include:
1) Director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, which focuses on researching rapid population growth, competition for natural resources, air and water and soil pollution, climate change and competing land uses in the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Nevada region.
2) Director of the Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory, which looks at research on critical zone processes with ongoing investigations and measurements at several sites on the western slope of the southern Sierra Nevada.
3) Director of the UC Water Security and Sustainability Research Initiative which focuses on strategic research to build the knowledge base for better water source management.

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.

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

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).

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.

Michael Kiparsky focuses on water resources policy and management; science-policy interface; translational research and synthesis

His projects include:
1) Evaluating and Improving the Relationships Between Regulation and Innovation in the Wastewater Sector
2) Developing Water Data Systems to Improve Decision Making
3) Recharge Net Metering to Enhance Groundwater Sustainability
4) Addressing Institutional Vulnerabilities in California’s Water Allocation Institutions
5) Evaluating the Benefits for and Pathways to Small Water System Consolidations

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 Berkeley Water Center seeks to create more resilient, equitable, and sustainable water systems with access to safe water for all by
leveraging Berkeley research to accelerate groundbreaking solutions for
the world’s water problems.

The Berkeley Water Center cultivates, facilitates and supports a broad range of interdisciplinary research projects to address local and global water challenges; builds connections among academia, policy-makers, and practitioners to enable research-driven solutions to emergent water problems; translates and promotes research results for a wide audience to better inform decision-making about water system planning and development; and empowers UC Berkeley students with opportunities, skills and a research community to develop innovative ideas and to become water leaders.

The Berkeley Water Center is supported by the College of Natural Resources and the College of Engineering. Its affiliates work across the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and have a broad range of research interests and expertise, spanning engineered infrastructure and technology development; planning, monitoring and understanding of natural and engineered water systems; understanding of social, institutional and political contexts of water systems; equitable access to water; water law and policy; economics of urban and agricultural water systems; and public health.

CERCH is a world leader in researching and highighting key aspects of environmental health risks, especially as they impact pregnant women and their children. To accomplish this mission, CERCH investigates exposures to future parents and children and evaluate long term effects on child health, behavior, and development. We work to help key stakeholders translate our research findings into sustainable strategies to reduce environment-related childhood disease, directly involving local communities in the process. CERCH prioritizes engaging communities to inform study design, implementation, and dissemination and helping to identify key solutions to pressing environmental issues.

Currently CERCH is investigating drinking water and birth outcomes with attention to drinking water data involving nitrates and arsenic.

CERCH plans to expand research into:
-Nitrates in Salinas Valley water
-Use of produced water in agriculture
-Pharmaceuticals in potable or irrigation water from recycled wastewater

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.

ReNUWIt (Re-Inventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure) is an interdisciplinary, multi-institution engineering research center. Our goal is to change the ways we manage urban water.

ReNUWIt is the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Re-inventing the Nation’s urban Water Infrastructure. Launched in 2011, ReNUWIt is the first ERC dedicated to civil infrastructure and water systems. ReNUWIt encompasses a diverse team of researchers who collaborate with entrepreneurs and practitioners on innovative solutions for urban water infrastructure challenges.

The Wheeler Water Institute contributes robust analysis and forward-looking policy recommendations to directly inform decision-making. Anchored by our unique blend of legal, policy, and technical expertise, we bring clarity and actionable research to a famously challenging field. Established in 2012 at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) at Berkeley Law, the Institute conducts projects at the intersection of law, policy and science.