Featured Articles

Prescribed fire in the UC Blodgett Forest Research Station. Photo by Scott Stephens

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 perspective, ranging  from the current and historical roles of wildland fires, to learning the dynamics of fire regimes for ecosystem management, to understanding the interaction of global climate change and wildfires, to assisting in the development and review of fire policies both in the United States and abroad.

Their research has far-reaching implications, ultimately changing our relationship to fire and the environment.

To learn more, visit:

• The Mortiz Lab
• The Stephens Lab
• Center for Fire Research and Outreach

Adult and juvenile Siberian Cranes at one of the sublakes of Poyang Lake in January 2011 after heavy snowstorms. These cranes are human intolerant and difficult to photograph in the wild. Photo by Iryna Dronova

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 leucogeranus).

Various threats on the ecological integrity of the Poyang Lake system and its habitat come from hydrological dam projects, land use changes, and other human activities, creating an urgent need to improve the scientific understanding of this unique wetland environment.

Professor Peng Gong and PhD student Iryna Dronova are applying remote sensing, GIS, and field surveys to study the seasonal variation in plant functional types that not only provide critical habitat but are key players in Poyang lake’s biogeochemical cycles. They are also using waterbird survey data to further examine how wetland vegetation and non-vegetated features, including human land uses, are related to habitat characteristics, waterbird diversity and the presence of critically endangered species such as the Siberian White Crane.

Learn more:

• Dam proposal for Poyang Lake causes wave of controversy [News article from China Daily]
• The International Crane Foundation’s Poyang Lake Ecology Study

Michele Hammond, Staff Research Associate of the Range Ecology Lab, is using a 10-point frame to measure the vegetation on a plot in the Mojave Desert in April 2010. Photo by Rebecca Wenk

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 conservation leaders and the Tejon Ranch Company signed the Tejon Ranch Conservation and Land Use Agreement, which protected 240,000 of the 270,000 acres from development and created the Tejon Ranch Conservancy to manage the conserved Ranch lands for native species and biodiversity.

California grasslands change dramatically over space and time, seasonally, annually, and from one ecological region to another. Because of its size and location, Tejon Ranch is an optimal laboratory in which to study spatial and temporal variation in California grasslands. PhD student Sheri Spiegal and the UC Berkeley Range Ecology Lab, under the leadership of Professor James Bartolome, are measuring vegetation change across space and time in Tejon Ranch’s grasslands and isolating environmental factors driving the change. The Lab’s findings will inform the science-based management of the Tejon Ranch Conservancy.

Black-backed jackals in Etosha National Park, Namibia. Photo by Steve Bellan

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 (direct host-host contact) and anthrax transmission (consumption of bacterial spores) highlights the role of behavior in determining disease dynamics.

Rabies outbreaks reflect the territorial structure of jackal populations–a disease front quickly moves through the landscape. In contrast, anthrax outbreaks are episodic in nature reflecting poorly understood interactions between foraging behavior, environmental conditions, and spore dispersal.

Learn more about Steve’s research

In this photo, taken about ten miles north of Merced, CA, the foreground shows the landscape of one of the oldest formations in the soil chronosequence: the approximately 1 million year-old North Merced Gravels formation. Large granitic cobbles and many unique plant and animal species are found in the vernal pools, which are directly adjacent to the small (~1m high and 10m in diameter) Mima mounds (not clearly shown in photo). The background shows the oldest formation in the chronosequence, the ~2 million year-old Laguna formation, which bears the largest and densest mounds in the chronosequence. Photo by Sarah Reed

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 Central Valley: uplands called Mima mounds and swales called vernal pools. The vernal pools are seasonal wetlands that support a bounty of rare and endangered plant and animal species. Despite the biologic importance of these landscapes, the question of their origin is still not understood. [Read more...]

Photo by Thomas Azwell

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 investigation of the Gulf spill, Thomas has begun developing environmentally sound approaches to remediating and restoring the marshes of Louisiana.

Learn more on Thomas’s Research Page

Below is a short video produced by the California Academy of Science featuring Thomas’s response to the Gulf spill:

Oil in the Gulf, One Year Later

A Tahiti Kingfisher (Todiramphus veneratus), one of the few native land birds in French Polynesia. Photo taken by Erica Spotswood on Tahiti

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 large numbers of endemic fruit-bearing plants. The highly invasive fruit-bearing tree Miconia calvescens is widespread on the islands of Tahiti and Moorea, but the extent of invasion is much greater on Tahiti.

Erica’s dissertation research is studying how the abundance of a highly invasive tree influences frugivore foraging and the potential for dispersal of native and introduced plants.

Visit Erica’s Research Page.

A sheepherder and her granddaughter in Inner Mongolia. Photo by Lynn Huntsinger

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 woman has set up her yurt in the yard of the home she now lives in with her children and grandchildren, and sleeps in it to remember the herding life on the vast grassland.

Professor Li Wenjun of Peking University and Professor Lynn Huntsinger of ESPM have collaborated on studies of the impacts of policies that seek to reduce sand storms and improve the lives of herders in Inner Mongolia. Part of that effort involves changing land tenure to more privatized, individual forms and reducing the number of livestock on the grasslands.

In addition, irrigation has brought farming to previously uncultivated areas. These changes have profound impact on herder lives and the grasslands.

Their work has recently been published in the journal Ecology and Society. Read the paper here.

The figure shows pairs of real shells and simulated shells simulated by the model. Image by George Oster

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 reproduce the shell shapes and patterns. The figure shows pairs of real shells and simulated shells created by the model.

Boettiger, A., B. Ermentrout, G. Oster (2009). The neural origins of shell structure and pattern in aquatic mollusks. PNAS 106:6837-6842.

Paper Abstract:

We present a model to explain how the neurosecretory system of aquatic mollusks generates their diversity of shell structures and pigmentation patterns. The anatomical and physiological basis of this model sets it apart from other models used to explain shape and pattern. The model reproduces most known shell shapes and patterns and accurately predicts how the pattern alters in response to environmental disruption and subsequent repair. Finally, we connect the model to a larger class of neural models.

Read the paper online.

A Berkeley scientist scales a deep riverbank in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile to sample volcanic ash that will be chemically analyzed to determine the age of the ancient river deposit it is part of. Photo by Ronald Amundson

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 evolved during millions of years of near-lifelessness, and how microbial life has adapted to these harsh conditions.

For more information:

• History of the Atacama Desert
• Atacama Desert and Mars Soils