Our Environment at Berkeley: Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management
UC Berkeley | College of Natural Resources
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This market in Kuala Pilah, Peninsular Malaysia, shows an assortment of locally grown fruits and vegetables. Matthew Luskin and other Potts' lab students are working on quantifying the biodiversity impacts of producing that food through the Conservation of Biodiversity (CBioD) project. Matthew … [Read more...]
Tropical forests now cover less than 5% of the world’s surface but are home to the majority of species on land. The staggering expansion of oil palm agriculture has become a primary threat to biodiversity by fueling tropical deforestation in Southeast Asia. To date, scientific research and public … [Read more...]
In fieldwork in the U.S. and China, Professors Lynn Huntsinger and Li Wenjun of Peking University have noted efforts to restore or maintain some aspects of traditional systems in China and the U.S. at multiple scales. These adaptations may be those needed to retain or develop resilience and … [Read more...]
PhD student Katie Fiorella took this photo of her host mother Pamela while traveling on Lake Victoria from Mfangano Island, Kenya to the tiny fishing outpost called Remba. Pamela’s background as a community health worker has been useful for Katie, whose research focuses on the link between … [Read more...]
The Salton Sea is a shallow hypersaline lake located in the desert of southeastern California. The lake is maintained by runoff from agricultural irrigation, has no outlets and because of its location in an area of high evaporation, has been accumulating soluble salts and insoluble constituents in … [Read more...]
Diversified farming systems are a set of methods and tools developed to produce food sustainably by leveraging ecological diversity at plot, field, and landscape scales. Food crops are planted and animals are grazed in ways that replenish natural ecosystems. Diversified agriculture is critical to … [Read more...]
Diversified farming systems are a set of methods and tools developed to produce food sustainably by leveraging ecological diversity at plot, field, and landscape scales. Food crops are planted and animals are grazed in ways that replenish natural ecosystems. Diversified agriculture is critical to … [Read more...]
Fire plays an important role in many ecosystems. Our dependence on these fire-prone landscapes requires that we understand and reach a sustainable co-existence with wildfire. This is where scientists Scott Stephens and Max Moritz step in. Their labs study the science of fire from a holistic … [Read more...]
Which came first? The classic chicken/egg question is often asked when it comes to the co-evolution of plants and their pollinators. A new study in Science led by Santiago Ramirez, post-doctoral researcher in the Tsutsui Lab, has found that the orchid bee evolved at least 12 millions years … [Read more...]
Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in China and a Ramsar wetland conservation site, provides important wintering habitat for 300 bird species including a number of endangered waterbirds. Among them is the only surviving wild population of critically endangered Siberian White Cranes (Grus … [Read more...]
The 270,000-acre Tejon Ranch is the largest, contiguously privately owned parcel in California. It contains portions of five major ecological regions: the southern San Joaquin Valley, the Coast Ranges, the southern Sierra Nevada, the Tehachapi Mountains, and the Mojave Desert. In 2008, California … [Read more...]
In addition to studying anthrax in mega-herbivores, Getz lab member Steve Bellan is looking at how the behavior of scavengers, like the black-backed jackals shown above, contributes to the dynamics of infectious diseases. The striking difference between the mechanisms of rabies transmission … [Read more...]
Steve Bellan, a Ph.D. student in the Getz Lab, is interested in behavioral and spatial aspects of wildlife disease. He studies anthrax outbreaks on herbivores, like the zebra pictured above, and rabies outbreaks in jackals in Etosha National Park, Namibia. He uses a combination of dynamic … [Read more...]
Graduate student Sarah Reed of the Amundson Lab, explores the interplay between landscape and life by studying the exchanges and feedbacks between terra firma and the organisms that move and live within it. In particular, she is investigating a unique oscillating landscape in California’s … [Read more...]
Graduate student Thomas Azwell's research focuses on a better understanding of the environmental impacts of oil spills and innovating better technologies for oil spill response, remediation and restoration. After serving as the environmental lead for the Deepwater Horizon Study Group during the … [Read more...]
Graduate student Erica Spotswood's research investigates how the introduction of non-native frugivores and fruit-bearing plants on oceanic islands has altered seed dispersal relationships between birds and plants. The islands of French Polynesia have very small communities of seed dispersers and … [Read more...]
In Alashan, Inner Mongolia, a grandmother talks about her life as a herder and what it is like to move into town. As part of efforts to improve grassland conditions, many herding families have been encouraged to settle in town with subsidized housing and pensions. Like many elderly herders, this … [Read more...]
ESPM professor George Oster and colleagues presented a model to explain how the diversity of shell shapes and patterns amongst the marine mollusks arise from the neural net in their mantle—the secretory organ that constructs and paints the shell. A mathematical model of the neural net can … [Read more...]
The Atacama Desert of northern Chile is the driest place on Earth, completely devoid of plants, animals, and many microbes. ESPM scientist Ronald Amundson and his colleagues across the campus are using field research and chemical techniques to determine how old the desert is, how the landscape has … [Read more...]
California agriculture reaps $937 million to $2.4 billion per year in economic value from wild, free-living bee species that serve the critical function of pollinating crops, according to a new study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, published this week in the June issue of … [Read more...]
Graduate student Kathryn Fiorella of the Brashares Lab spent the summer of 2011 exploring links between human health and the environment in Western Kenya. Kathryn was one of eight students from four University of California campuses to receive a $5000 One Health Student Summer fellowship to … [Read more...]
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