News | Our Environment at Berkeley: Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management

ESPM Undergrad Wins University’s Top Honor

May 9, 2012

Eric Olliff, who is earning a B.S. in conservation and resource studies and a B.A. in Chinese language and literature, is the University Medalist, the annual award bestowed on Berkeley’s top graduating senior for the last 150 years. The prestigious award comes with a $2,500 prize and the chance to address the campus-wide graduation, Commencement Convocation 2012, on Saturday (May 12) at Edwards Track Stadium.

A 10th-grade trip to Tibet underscored Olliff’s developing interest in foreign language and culture, as well as the outdoors. When he arrived on campus in spring 2008, he already had taken four years of high school Mandarin and decided to major at UC Berkeley in Chinese language and literature.

But after attending CNR’s eight-week Forestry Field Camp in the Sierra Nevada in the summer of ’09, he experienced a shift.

There, he witnessed a 150-foot Ponderosa pine’s breathtaking crash to Earth and worked side-by-side with Distinguished Teaching Award winner Joe McBride, a professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning who researches the effects of urban forests on air pollution in China and fire’s role in the Sierra. Olliff also won the camp’s prize for the highest marks in plant-species recognition, and his “memorial chair” was placed 70 feet up in a towering Douglas fir.

Shortly after camp, Olliff decided to double major in conservation and resource studies — and he hasn’t looked back.

He went on to work on a Yunnan Province deforestation independent-research project while attending a six-month study abroad program in 2010. All courses were in Mandarin, and it was the only language spoken. At the program’s end, Olliff gave a 45-minute presentation on his project to others in the program — all in Mandarin.

Since China, he’s studied on the Polynesian island of Mo’orea, a field site closely associated with CNR research, and investigated the symbiotic relationship between the sea star shrimp and pin cushion sea star. In a memorable exchange, he discussed the project with George Roderick, UC Berkeley professor of population, chemical and molecular biology, while they sailed in a tropical lagoon.

Last summer, Olliff interned with the Waves of Hope nonprofit foundation in Northern Nicaragua, helping with sea turtle conservation, teaching English to local adults and children, and lending a hand in the community garden.

To qualify for the University Medal, students must have a GPA of at least 3.96 by the end of the semester before their graduation, and then submit an essay, a resume and several letters of recommendation if they wish to be considered. The medalist is chosen by the UC Berkeley Committee on Prizes.

Olliff, whose cumulative GPA was 3.99, credits his mother for teaching him time-management skills that help him work and play equally effectively and hard. But he says his soon-to-be alma mater, where he encountered a lifelong friend living a floor below him in the residence hall, gets its share of credit, too.

In the essay he submitted for University Medal consideration, Olliff wrote, “In my mind, Berkeley is synonymous with opportunity, and the students who take advantage of these opportunities represent the university’s highest ideals.”

Read the UC Berkeley Public Affairs story, from which this article is adapted.

CNR and the University Medal

University Medalists have come from across the campus, and CNR graduates appear six times in the distinguished roster.

2012: Eric Olliff, Conservation and Resource Studies & Chinese Language and Literature
1984: David Kin Cheung, Nutritional Sciences
1981: Joshua LaBaer, Nutritional Sciences
1979: Linda Spangler, Conservation & Natural Resources
1973: Kenneth Stumpf, Forestry
1950: Kenneth Leslie Babcock, College of Agriculture

Written by Ann Guy | Permalink

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

Diversified Farming Systems Center Receives $100K from Keck Futures Initiative

May 9, 2012

The Center for Diversified Farming Systems received its first research grant from the National Academy-Keck Future’s Initiative. The award of $100,000 goes to PI Claire Kremen and an interdisciplinary international team of scientists, to compare and contrast how how smallholder agricultural production versus large-scale agribusiness affect ecosystem services along commodity chains.

Creating sustainable food production systems requires mitigating environmental impacts of agriculture as food is produced, transformed, and distributed, and the team hopes that the results of their research will help to inform international policies to meet global food security needs without sacrificing the environment.

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

New Century, New Forestry Club Benches

May 8, 2012

The Forestry Club commemorative benches, in place less then a day, are already an appealing resting spot.

Six new carved redwood benches, weighing 1,500-2,000 pounds each, made the journey from UC Russell Reservation, a research facility in the hills of Contra Costa County, to their new home adjacent to Mulford Hall today (May 7) to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the UC Berkeley Forestry Club. The new 10-foot-long benches were carved by current forestry students, fire science associate professor Scott Stephens, and Tom Klatt, the environmental projects manager with the Vice Provost’s office

“This project has been in the works for two and half years,” said Stephens. “Maybe they will make it to the bicentennial of the Forestry Club. The historic club was created before the forestry major at UC Berkeley, and this early group was influential in the creation of the forestry major that is still in place today at the College of Natural Resources.

The new benches replace decomposing benches that have been sitting on campus since 1920, when “The Foresters’ Circle” was placed in the eucalyptus grove by the then-fledgling Foresty Club. They later migrated to several campus locations, including Mulford Hall. The plaques from the original benches will be placed in a case in Mulford Hall, where there is already an extensive wood exhibit on the first floor.

The logs for the new benches were donated by Humboldt Redwood Company and each bench has a plaque, some commemorating anniversary, and some bearing the same inscription as the original 1920 benches: “May the ideals fostered here play a worthy part in the conservation of the beauty and usefulness of our forests.”

Heavy chains secured the load on its journey to campus.

Tom Klatt drives the forklift as Scott Stephens makes adjustments.

The first bench is placed in a shady corner.

The inscription on the new plaque is the same as on the original 1920 benches.

Story and photos by Ann Brody Guy

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Forestry Club

Steelhead trout lose out when water is low in wine country

May 7, 2012

BERKELEY — The competition between farmers and fish for precious water in California is intensifying in wine country, suggests a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Research News Tagged With: agriculture, environment, water, wine industry

An Open Letter from Co-Directors of Diversified Farming Systems Center

May 7, 2012

The current controversy at the Gill Tract has led to the Center for Diversified Farming Systems at the University of California at Berkeley, or “DFS,” surfacing in campus and newspaper communications. Many refer to the potential role of the center in developing activities on sustainable agriculture at the tract.

As co-Directors of the Center for DFS, and as members of both the East Bay community and the University of California, Berkeley, we wish to comment on the developing situation at the Gill Tract and suggest three steps for finding common ground and moving forward in a peaceful, respectful, and positive fashion.

We share in the excitement that members of the East Bay community and members of the University alike have expressed regarding the potential use of portions of the Gill Tract to promote education, outreach, and research in sustainable urban agriculture. We are eager to be a part of future plans to promote metropolitan agriculture at the site, building off the long history and thoughtful planning of the original Bay Area Coalition for Urban Agriculture – a plan proposed by a consortium of NGOs, university faculty and extension staff, and community participants in the late 1990s. At the same time, we cannot condone the recent occupation of the Gill Tract by members of Occupy-the-Farm. While they have brought useful attention to the issue of preserving the property for agricultural use, should the occupation continue, it threatens to derail any progress towards a mutual goal of maintaining these farmlands and fostering a program for sustainable urban agriculture.

We call on the University leadership to immediately set a date for a ‘Gill Tract Workshop’ to be held in the near future, open to any interested community members, NGO’s, University members, etc. with the purpose of developing plans to maintain these lands for agriculture and to foster development of a center for urban agriculture at the site. We further ask the University to take immediate steps in organizing and hosting this workshop, with independent facilitation, and then to act in good faith to implement these plans. We note that the University stated in a recent letter, that it is “more than willing to discuss opportunities for a metropolitan agriculture program affiliated with the campus.” We ask the University to make good on this statement by setting up this workshop as soon as possible. The Center for DFS would be happy to work with the University administration and an independent facilitator to organize such a workshop.
We call on the Occupy-the-Farm activists to leave the Gill Tract site of their own accord and permit the Plant & Microbial Biology (PMB) researchers to plant their corn, which must happen next week. As long as the Occupy-the-Farm group maintains an encampment on the Gill Tract, a situation of conflict will be maintained, impeding any action towards developing the collaborative processes needed to establish sustainable urban agriculture at the site. Although located remotely from campus, the Gill Tract is the property of UC Berkeley, and University researchers from the College of Natural Resources are utilizing these plots for their research. The Occupy-the-Farm movement is harming these researchers by preventing them from planting their corn. For these students and faculty, the situation will soon become a crisis, because the corn must be planted soon. The University’s mission is to promote research and higher education – and it is therefore clear that it cannot stand by when work by its own faculty and staff is interrupted. The Occupy-The-Farm movement would do more to promote its own long-term mission by standing down now.
We call on the University and the Plant & Microbial Biology corn researchers to respect the seeds and seedlings that the Occupy-the-Farm movement have recently planted, and to ensure that the harvest that will result from this impressive community effort be returned to the community, for example, as donations to homeless shelters and/or school lunch programs. From our productive conversations with the PMB corn researchers, we understand that the PMB corn researchers can restrict their corn plantings this year without harming their research effort, and may therefore be able to leave the community garden intact. We also understand that they are in fact favorable towards maintaining these plantings. Our understandings were echoed in the Open Letter from UC Berkeley sent out on May 2 from the Office of the Vice Chancellor: “In concert with our researchers, we have determined that not all of the Gill Tract acreage is needed for research projects in the current growing season. There is potentially room for both research and metropolitan farming.” By caring for the significant investment made by community members, the University can symbolize its good faith and its intent to work towards an equitable solution that simultaneously respects the prior rights of the PMB researchers to work at the Gill Tract, while promoting community interest in use of the site also for metropolitan agriculture, education, and outreach.

We hope that this letter will find receptive ears amongst the University administration, the PMB corn researchers, and the Occupy-the-Farm movement alike. We further hope that the steps we have proposed will be taken so that tensions can be diffused and the entire community can begin to progress towards goals that many on all sides of the Gill Tract issue share. We see much potential for identifying common ground among the interests of the Occupy-the-Farm movement, the PMB researchers, and the University. In particular, the Center for Diversified Farming Systems would be very excited to work in partnership with all of the interested stakeholders to develop a long-term, sustainable plan for establishing a center for metropolitan agriculture at the Gill Tract that conducts agro-ecological research, education and outreach. We urge the Occupy-the-Farm group and the University administrators to follow our recommendations and to diffuse the tensions that only endanger our common goal: moving constructively forward with a sustainable urban agriculture center.

–Claire Kremen, Director, Environmental Science, Policy, & Management (ESPM)

–Alastair Iles, Deputy Director, ESPM

Filed Under: News Tagged With: DFS, Gill Tract

Story of Stuff’s Annie Leonard to Keynote Gradfest Symposium

May 1, 2012

When a 20-minute lecture about the economic supply chain goes viral, spawning a stunning 12 million views, a non-profit organization with a slate of multimedia offerings, and a vibrant online community of hundreds of thousands of citizens eager to make the world a better place, one has to wonder: what secret force is behind it?

The Story Of Stuff creator Annie Leonard is quick to tell you that a staff of six full-time people create the magic mixture of cartoons and intelligently and wryly distilled information, but it started with just her deep knowledge and commitment to the issue, and an infectious fire in the belly that jumps through the camera.

Leonard will be on the UC Berkeley campus this Friday, May 4, to give the keynote address for the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management’s (ESPM’s) annual Gradfest event, where graduating Ph.D.’s show off the department’s depth and diversity with spirited mini-talks on their dissertation research on topics, which this year include topics as wide-ranging as biodiversity in Caribbean coral, sudden oak death at Point Reyes National Seashore, and Conservation policy in Bottswana.

Leonard has been on campus a lot lately, for only-at-Berkeley intellectual swap. Her videos are shown in several different ESPM classes and are now so widely used by educators as teaching tools that a majority of students arrive at college already having seen them. But with all the travel and lectures since the video blew up in 2008, Leonard wanted to make sure her information was up to date. “Over the past four years I spend more time learning about social media, and less about the issues that really turn me on, which is how stuff is made and used and thrown away, and how we can do it better,” she said. “That’s what my passion is. “

So she signed up for professor Dara O’Rourke’s graduate seminar ESPM 260, Towards Sustainable Consumption and Production, which focuses on governance strategies for global supply chains—that is, where the opportunities for improvement lie along the supply chain of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal.

Despite being a source for millions of people on these supply-chain issues, and having interviewed O’Rourke extensively as part of the research for her book, The Story of Stuff, Leonard is keenly aware of the need to keep learning. A lot of the learning came from her classmates, she said, whose various backgrounds included city and regional planning, business, and environmental science. “It helped me so much to think about how I frame my ideas, how other people are thinking and talking about these issues, most of which the Story of Stuff Project addresses every day.”

Lobbyists vs, taxpayers, from The Story of Broke

And stepping back from the work helped her clarify a few issues she and her staff had been struggling with. “In many ways this class was like the grown-up academic explanation of my cartoon,” she said.

For example, learning the term “non-informational barriers to change” gave her and her staff the language to address an issue they’d identified, but didn’t really know how to talk about. The past 40 years, Leonard says, the environmental movement has been operating on the primary assumption that if you give people information about an issue, like climate change or waste, they will then change. “The theory of change was: give information; change will happen. It didn’t work.”

Leonard says they had figured out that making change was more complex than just providing information, and the class helped her organization to ask: what are the non-information barriers to change? “Is it that people have forgotten how to engage as citizens? Is it that people have no hope because they think corporations have taken over democracy? Is it that people are working too many hours in this country so they don’t have the leisure time to engage in civil society?” Before O’Rourke’s class, The Story of Stuff Project had already put out videos addressing these deeper drivers of society’s consumption issues—on the Citizens United decision about “corporate personhood,” and on cracking the illusion that that the government is broke. But now they had a way to talk about it more directly.

In addition to the classroom, Leonard thinks universities can play a role beyond just education, strengthening the ties between nonprofit organizations and communities. O’Rourke, who is known for his Good Guide website, is the model she thinks others should look to. He has made himself available to advocacy groups and organizations for 20 years, she said. “A lot of academics I know think their value is in the production of knowledge abstractly, and Dara really sees his value is in producing knowledge that then can be used to help make the world better.”

But scientists have to rise above partisanship and agendas for particular outcomes, and must adhere to the highest academic standards and peer review processes. Leonard agrees, but she thinks those reports and articles academics generate should then be placed in the hands of activists. “The activists can change policies that will make children healthier and the environment cleaner.

The Story Stuff Project, once just a single passionate activist’s lecture, has become one of those activist groups with the power and visibility to create change. “We absolutely believe we can turn things around in this country and globally,” Leonard said. “And we absolutely believe that we can have an economy that is healthy and sustainable and fair. It’s totally possible—there is no technical reason we cannot have that.”

Annie Leonard’s talk and Q&A take place Friday, May 4, from 11 a.m. to noon in East Pauley Ballroom. All Gradfest events are open to the campus community, but pre-registration is required, even if just attending Leonard’s talk.

Written by Ann Guy | Permalink

Filed Under: News

Public can help track sudden oak death

April 27, 2012

Sudden oak death has become a major concern for the East Bay Regional Park District, other public agencies, and private landowners who are responsible for open space land management in the greater Bay Area.

The disease has caused extensive tree mortality in Marin County, and seems to be spreading slowly into Contra Costa and Alameda Counties.

It is caused by a plant pathogen called Phytophthora ramorum, which is a growth that chokes off the vascular system in several kinds of trees. Coastal evergreen and redwood-tanoak forests are especially vulnerable.

Bay laurel trees are a major vector. The growth seems to start in the bays, then spread to tan oak, coast live oak and several other oak varieties.

Prof. Matteo Garbelotto of UC Berkeley is heading up an annual monitoring program in which citizen volunteers are trained to identify symptoms of sudden oak death, then venture into local woodlands to collect samples for laboratory examination. The program, called “SOD Blitz,” is funded by the U.S. Forest Service.

The next training session will be from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, April 28, in the Garden Room of the Orinda Community Center. Afterward, volunteers will visit wooded areas during the weekend to survey for infected trees.

To sign up for the Orinda training, contact William Hudson at wllhh@ymail.com. If you’re interested, but can’t make the session on Saturday, information about future sessions and the Sudden Oak Death program in general is available at Prof. Garbelotto’s website.

Written by Ned MacKay, San Jose Mercury News | Read at the source

Filed Under: News

Gradfest 2012: ESPM’s Graduate Research Symposium

April 20, 2012

A one-day extravaganza celebrating the graduate program of UC Berkeley’s top-ranked Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management.

Featuring graduate student talks and posters, keynote address from Annie Leonard founder of the Story of Stuff Project and creator of the Story of Stuff web film, career development and networking mixer, and the ESPM graduate awards ceremony.

Learn more

Filed Under: News

ESPM Faculty and Students Receive Notable Campus Awards

April 17, 2012

The Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service

Each year, the Chancellor recognizes students, staff, faculty and community partnerships that embody UC Berkeley’s proud tradition of public service and commitment to improving our local and global community.

Two recipients of this year’s Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service are members of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management: Associate Professor Rachel Morello-Frosch for Research in the Public Interest, and PhD Candidate Lara Roman for the Graduate Student Award for Civic Engagement.

The Awards Ceremony will take place on April 30, 2012, 3-5:30pm in the Sibley Auditorium. More information can be found here.

Jenna Cavelle, CRS Major, Receives The Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize

Conservation and Resource Studies major Jenna Cavelle was named a recipient of the 2012 Judith Lee Stronach Prize. The prize supports intellectual and creative pursuits that heighten awareness of issues of social consciousness and the public good. The award gives bright, ambitious students the opportunity to extend and reflect upon their undergraduate work at Berkeley by undertaking a special project after their graduation. Winning projects are creative in the broadest sense, explore themes of significant interest to holders of the Prize, and strive to further understanding of what constitutes humane and effective participation in our worldwide community.

Ten ESPM Graduate Students Receive Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award

The Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award gives campus-wide recognition to those GSIs who have demonstrated excellence in teaching. In addition to certificates of distinction and a celebratory ceremony in the spring, award recipients will receive a $250 stipend, sponsored by the Dean of the Graduate Division to applaud outstanding GSIs.

Congratulations to ESPM’s Outstanding GSIs:

Laura Dane
Virginia Emery
Shasta Ferranto (Discovery Course Program)
Ted Grudin
Matt Hughes
Alice Kelly
Ellen Kersten
Misha Leong
Albie Miles
Seth Shonkoff

The awards ceremony and reception will take place on Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at the International House, Chevron Auditorium, 3:30- 5:00 pm.

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

Professors Peluso and Iles Honored for Mentoring

April 9, 2012

Nancy Peluso, a professor in the Department of Environment Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM), has won the Graduate Division’s 2012 Sarlo Graduate Student Mentoring Award for Senior Faculty.

Alastair Iles, also of ESPM, has won the Graduate Assembly’s Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award.

“Nominated by inspired colleagues and graduate students, the award recipients have excelled both at encouraging UC Berkeley graduate students to pursue new ideas creatively and at helping them to succeed academically and professionally,” said an email signed by  faculty vice provost Janet Broughton,  Graduate Division dean Andrew Szeri, and Graduate Assembly president Bahar Navab.

A full list of the winners can be found here. They will be honored at a public awards ceremony from 4 to 6 p.m. April 18 in Tan Hall.

The Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Awards recognize UC Berkeley faculty for their vital role in mentoring graduate students and training future faculty. The awards are sponsored by a grant from The Sarlo Foundation, a supporting foundation of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties.

The UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly Faculty Mentor Award, now in its eighth year, honors members of the Berkeley faculty and teaching staff who have shown an outstanding commitment to mentoring, advising, and generally supporting graduate students.

Written by Ann Brody Guy

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

Towards a 21st Century Soil Science: The Hans Jenny Memorial Lecture, April 23, 2012

April 2, 2012

This year’s Hans Jenny Memorial Lecture will be given by Dr. Pedro Sanchez, Director of the Tropical Agriculture and the the Rural Environment Program, Senior Research Scholar, and Director of the Millennium Villages Project at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. [Read more...]

Filed Under: News

Professor Huntsinger Wins Grant Promoting Chinese Collaboration

February 23, 2012

Environmental Science, Policy, and Management professor Lynn Huntsinger won a $25,000 research grant from the Li Ka Shing Foundation for Women in Science. The award was announced February 15, 2012, and must be spent during the 2012 calendar year.

The program is funded by the Chau Hoi Shuen Foundation in honor of Hong Kong entrepreneur and philanthropist Li Ka Shing to support the advancement of women in science in China, and to foster scientific and scholarly collaboration between scientists in the United States and China. The grant supports educational and research projects that have a collaborative counterpart with a female scientists from China.

Huntsinger will collaborate with Peking University professor Li Wenjun, researching how herders in northwest China experience and cope with climate and ecosystem change. One focus will be on the difference between the experiences of men and women. Huntsinger’s research goals are to learn how long-term, sustainable management of rangelands can be created, and to contribute to the growing body of literature and theory surrounding the concept of socio-ecological systems.

Li Ka Shing’s generous support of the UC Berkeley campus was acknowledged with the prestigious Berkeley Medal in October, 2011, at the formal dedication of the Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences. The new center, which was propelled forwarded by Li’s lead donation of $40 million, is the nexus for a wide variety of multidisciplinary research at Berkeley that pursues ways to prevent the root causes of diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, HIV, and tuberculosis.

Written by Ann Guy

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

Graduate student Thomas Azwell’s research spurred by Gulf oil spill

February 8, 2012

Thomas Azwell is testing bagasse-filled growth tubes as a clean medium for marsh plants in the Bay Jimmy Restoration Project in Louisiana. (Photo by Gavin Garrison)

BERKELEY — A graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources, deeply influenced by the Deepwater Horizon disaster, is helping to restore the Gulf’s blackened marshes with a project that could also aid threatened ecosystems nationwide, including in Northern California. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Research News Tagged With: environment, Gulf Oil spill, oil spills

Berkeley Initiative in Global Change receives $1.5M from Keck Foundation

January 5, 2012

The Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology (BiGCB) has been awarded $1.5 million by the W.M. Keck Foundation to develop a Predictive Biosystems Informatics Engine (PBIE), the informatics infrastructure needed to access, visualize, and analyze rich data, and provide the foundation for building the next generation of models of the biotic response to global change.

The PBIE will innovate with cutting-edge technologies, and once operational, will enable cross-disciplinary exploration of the vast and disparate data sources required to understand biotic response to global change.

Our Environment collaborators include Rosemary Gillespie and Maggi Kelly.

More information can be found here.

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

UC wildlife research team wants your gently-used socks

December 15, 2011

A University of California wildlife research team working in the Sierra Nevada near Oakhurst, Calif., is asking the public to donate clean, gently used socks for research on a rare weasel called the Pacific fisher. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Research News Tagged With: fisher, Sierra Nevada, SNAMP, wildlife research

Professor Carolyn Merchant elected a Fellow of the AAAS

December 14, 2011

Professor Carolyn Merchanthas been named a 2011 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

Professor Merchant was named for her distinguished contributions to the field of history and philosophy of science, particularly for the history of the scientific revolution and gender and science.

This honor is bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers in recognition of their distinguished efforts to advance science or its application. The list of 2011 fellows will appear in the Dec. 23 issue of Science.

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

Climate change blamed for dead trees in Africa

December 12, 2011

BERKELEY — Trees are dying in the Sahel, a region in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, and human-caused climate change is to blame, according to a new study led by a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Research News

Can ‘Carbon Ranching’ Offset Emissions In California?

December 7, 2011

Professors Whendee Silver and Dennis Baldocchi speak with NPR correspondent Christopher Joyce about ‘carbon ranching’. [Read more...]

Filed Under: In the News, Research News

Scientists Propose Thinning Sierra Forests to Enhance Water Runoff

December 5, 2011

Scientists believe thinning forests could enhance water runoff from the Sierra Nevada.

Runoff from the Sierra Nevada, a critical source of California’s water supply, could be enhanced by thinning forests to historical conditions, according to a report from a team of scientists with the University of California, Merced, UC Berkeley and Environmental Defense.

The team proposes to test the hypothesis that forest-management strategies that use thinning to reduce fire risk and maintain the historical mix can also increase water yield and extend the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada.

Scientists believe thinning forests could enhance water runoff from the Sierra Nevada. They suggest that by selectively reducing the number of trees — which use large amounts of the water received through precipitation — the amount of water that is released from the forest as runoff could increase. This enhanced runoff could make things easier for farmers and water managers statewide.

As part of the Sierra Nevada Watershed Ecosystem Enhancement Project (SWEEP), the scientists plan to reduce forest density in test areas and examine the impacts on water runoff, forest health and other ecosystem services, and provide a template for broader forest management in the Sierra Nevada.

The thinning of forests, which are much denser now than in past centuries, is already a common practice to reduce the risk of wildfires. The scientists also believe thinning can be done in ways that enhance the forests’ overall ecological health.

“It is critical to test these thinning prescriptions in well-controlled, well-monitored experimental areas to evaluate and verify the effects before applying them statewide,” said lead author Roger Bales, a UC Merced professor and director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. “Reductions in forest density to enhance runoff have been attempted in past experiments, but never over a sustained period of time, and never under the conditions that currently exist in the Sierra Nevada.”

California’s water supply has been diminished by drought in recent years, and climate change is only exacerbating the problem, the researchers said. Warmer temperatures mean more rain and less snow, which leads to runoff that comes earlier in the year. Warming can also lengthen the growing season for trees and other plants, reducing runoff, and the warmer, drier conditions have been shown to increase the frequency and severity of wildfires.

Reducing forest density can help counter the effects of climate warming on runoff, they said, in addition to enhancing the runoff directly.

“Climate change is having and will have direct effects on the water supply and storage capacity of the Sierra Nevada forests,” said UC Berkeley Professor John Battles, one of the researchers on the project. “Management with an eye toward the water balance provides one potentially important mitigation tool.”

Other researchers on the project include Yihsu Chen, Martha H. Conklin and Philip Saksa of UC Merced; Kevin L. O’Hara and William Stewart of UC Berkeley; and Eric Holst of Environmental Defense.

Written by James Leonard, UC Merced | Read it at the source.

Filed Under: Research News

Taking bushmeat off the menu could increase child anemia

November 21, 2011

BERKELEY — A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that consuming bushmeat had a positive effect on children’s nutrition, raising complex questions about the trade-offs between human health and environmental conservation.

The red-tinted hair and bloated abdomens of these three young girls in Madagascar are typical signs of kwashiorkor, a type of malnutrition that occurs when there is not enough protein in the diet. (Photo by Christopher Golden)

They further estimated that a loss of access to wildlife as a source of food – either through stricter enforcement of conservation laws or depletion of resources – would lead to a 29 percent jump in the number of children suffering from anemia. Among children in the poorest households, the researchers added, there would be a three-fold increase in the incidence of anemia. Left untreated, anemia in children can impair growth and cognitive development.

The findings are to be published the week of Nov. 21 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“When thinking of creating protected areas for diversity, policymakers need to take into consideration how that will impact local people, both in livelihoods and from a health perspective,” said study lead author Christopher Golden, who did the research while a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management and at the School of Public Health. “We need to find ways to benefit the local population in our conservation policies, not hurt them.”

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide consume bushmeat a key source of bio-available iron, particularly for those living in rural communities. But when the menu includes endangered species, the researchers said, human nutritional needs must contend with efforts to manage wildlife resources.

Because bio-available iron is primarily sourced from meat, the researchers hypothesized that increased consumption of wildlife would result in a reduced incidence of clinical anemia. They tested their theory by monitoring the diet and hemoglobin levels of 77 children every month for a year.

The children, all under 12 years old, lived in the Makira Protected Area of Madagascar, one of the most critical biodiversity hotspots in the world. The Makira region is located in a remote part of eastern Madagascar, and its inhabitants rely heavily upon local wildlife – such as lemurs and bats – for food.

A man prepares an aye-aye, a rare type of lemur found only on the island of Madagascar, as his younger brother walks by. These primates are a source of food for local inhabitants, despite being critically endangered. (Photo by Christopher Golden)

Children there who ate more bushmeat had higher levels of hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein in red blood cells, even after factoring in such variables as consumption of domesticated meat, household income, sex, age and nutritional and disease status, the researchers found.

Eating domesticated meat is prohibitively expensive for many households, while wildlife is free, the authors noted. They found that, among impoverished people, bushmeat accounted for up to 20 percent of overall meat consumption. While many of the wildlife species are illegal to hunt, enforcement in the protected areas can often be lax.

“It is clearly not environmentally sustainable for children to eat endangered animals, but in the context of remote, rural Madagascar, households don’t always have a choice,” said Lia Fernald, UC Berkeley associate professor in the School of Public Health, who worked with Golden to design the study. “In places where a diverse range of nutritious food is unavailable, children rely upon animal-source foods – milk, eggs and meat – for critical nutrients like fats, protein, zinc and iron. What we need for these children are interventions that can provide high-quality food sources that are not endangered.”

The authors of the study, which received its primary support from the National Geographic Society Conservation Trust and the National Science Foundation (NSF), emphasized the need for site-specific and culturally relevant solutions.

“In our study area, domesticated meat is actually desirable, but unaffordable, so one possible solution is to support programs that allow the people there to raise chickens or goats,” said Golden, now a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Center for the environment and a visiting scientist at Harvard’s School of Public Health. “But in places like Africa’s Gabon or Equatorial Guinea, bushmeat is a desirable luxury item, so simply offering people there domesticated chicken meat as an alternative may not be successful. The sustainability of any type of conservation project relies upon local buy-in.”

Shown is a stew of fruit bats, a typical source of bushmeat for the inhabitants of rural Madagascar. (Photo by Christopher Golden)

In addition to Fernald, Golden was advised at UC Berkeley by associate professors Claire Kremen and Justin Brashares in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. All are co-authors of the study.

The intersection of human health, household income and wildlife populations has become an increasingly important focus of research at UC Berkeley, they said. For instance, the NSF recently awarded a five-year grant for a project led by Brashares to understand the links between human health, household wealth and natural resource use. Kremen, Fernald, Golden and other colleagues are also part of this project, which will take place at nine rural sites in Ghana, Kenya and Madagascar.

B.J. Rodolph Rasolofoniaina, a seven-year member of Golden’s research team and a research associate at the Wildlife Conservation Society in Madagascar, was another co-author of the study.

Written by Sarah Yang, UC Berkeley Media Relations | Read at the source

Filed Under: Research News Tagged With: bushmeat, child health, child nutrition, conservation, wildlife

Land Donation to Double UC Research Forestlands

November 17, 2011

BERKELEY – The University of California will add 4,584 acres of Northern California mixed-conifer forest to its research lands, doubling the size of UC’s research forests, as a result of a land donation approved yesterday (November 16) in Sacramento. The transfer is the largest single acquisition of forestland in the University’s history.

The donation was approved at a meeting of the Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council, a private foundation that was established in 2004 as part of a Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) bankruptcy settlement to ensure that over 140,000 acres of California’s pristine watershed lands are conserved for the public good and to serve California’s young people.

“This four-and-half-thousand acres is a tiny portion of the total PG&E lands, but it’s an enormous boon to UC’s research and outreach capabilities,” said J. Keith Gilless, a professor of forestry and dean of the UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources, which houses the UC Center for Forestry.

The UC proposal focused on learning how California’s working forests in key watersheds can be managed to sustainably provide essential ecosystem and climate benefits over the next century.

The new lands will enable researchers to:

• Learn how different components of forest ecosystems will respond to climate change, increasing fire risks, and invasive species;
• Use and measure a range of forest-management approaches, including reserves, to better understand all the forest ecosystem components;
• Broaden outreach to K-12, community college and university students; researchers; and the public.

“The University’s goal is to harvest knowledge, not timber,” Gilless said.

UC’s proposal received widespread support from the research community, including Yale University, Cornell University, Oregon State University, Northern Arizona University, and the University of British Columbia.

John Battles, a professor of forest ecology at UC Berkeley, said that UC shares the goals expressed in many public comments, which stressed the value of intact forests, tall trees and wildlife habitats. But Battles also noted the importance of research.

“Conservation in this era of change is confronted by the reality that no ecosystem, no matter how remote or wild, is protected. We want to be proactive by learning how to build resilient forests under a changing and stressful climate,” he said.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the Stewardship Council board of directors also approved a donation of 7,016 acres to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Calfire) for a new state demonstration forest that will be located adjacent to the new UC forest parcel near the Pit River in Shasta County. The Stewardship Council also committed to funding a shared research and outreach facility that would be shared by the two public entities.

Together, the UC and Calfire donations significantly expand the existing research and demonstration state forests owned and operated by state entities and will complement the forest research currently conducted on US Forest Service and National Park Service lands.

“The addition of new forest types and locations broadens the ability of UC Center for Forestry to collaborate with a range of public and private forest owners to conduct critical research and education on forestry management, climate change and other issues affecting the Sierra and Cascade ranges,” Gilless said.

The donation comprises two locations: 3,100 acres near the Pit River in Shasta County, on the west side of the Pit-McCloud watershed, and 1,484 acres in the Lake Spaulding area in Nevada County, near the top of the Yuba-Bear River watershed. Before this donation, the UC Center for Forestry held 5,131 acres over four research sites in Contra Costa County, Plumas, Tulare and El Dorado counties.

Due to land survey work and the state’s detailed land-transfer process, the Stewardship Council estimates that UC will take possession of the new lands in approximately one year.

Sources:

John Battles, Professor of Forest Ecology, UC Berkeley
510-643-0684

J. Keith Gilless, Dean, UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources; Professor of Forestry, UC Berkeley
510-642-7171

Bill Stewart, Director, UC Center for Forestry; Cooperative Extension Forest Management Specialist
510-643-3130, 510-318-0377 (cell)

Written by Ann Guy | Read at the source

Filed Under: News Tagged With: forestry, forests, land donation, watersheds

Study: Without Action, SF Bay Tidal Marshes Will Disappear

November 16, 2011

An alarming 93 percent of San Francisco Bay’s tidal marsh could be lost in the next 50 to 100 years with 5.4 feet (1.65 meters) of sea-level rise and low sediment availability, according to a new study led by PRBO Conservation Science (PRBO). These figures represent the high-end sea-level rise scenario, which researchers say is increasingly likely.

The study, published this week in the journal PLoS ONE, assesses impacts of sea-level rise, suspended sediment availability, salinity and other factors on San Francisco Bay’s tidal marshes.

Tidal marshes are vital to migratory birds, commercial fisheries, other wildlife and people. Marshes act like giant sponges, protecting highways, businesses, homes and other structures by reducing flood impacts in large storm events and as sea levels rise. Tidal marshes also filter out pollutants and sequester carbon.

PRBO’s study indicates that not all marshes will be lost and that society’s actions today can keep more marshes intact as sea levels rise.

“Tidal marshes are incredibly resilient to changes in sea level, depending on how fast seas rise and how much sediment is available. Unfortunately, marshes cannot keep up with the high-end sea-level rise predictions on their own. They will need our help,” said Diana Stralberg, the study’s lead author.

Lisa Schile and Maggi Kelly, of the University of California, Berkeley, were co-authors on the study.

Read the PRBO press release.

Written by Ann Brody Guy

Filed Under: Research News Tagged With: conservation, San Francisco Bay, sea-level rise, tidal marsh

Feeding the world: It’s all about starting small

November 8, 2011

When American families sit down to dinner, often the concern is to avoid eating too much. Yet in 2010, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that more than 900 million people around the world were undernourished. By 2050, the world’s population is projected to rise to somewhere around 9 billion — and more people will likely be eating more meat, which takes more resources and energy to produce than most crops.

How on earth will our agricultural systems feed all those mouths, especially while coping with climate change, soil degradation and erosion, water shortages, and rising energy prices? And can it be done without increasing the environmental damage attributed to industrial farming practices?

Maybe, if we can learn to see landscapes through the eyes of a bee. That may seem a tall order for such a tiny insect, but Claire Kremen believes that understanding what is good for bees is a first step toward shaping agricultural ecosystems, or “agroecosystems,” that can sustain both humans and natural biodiversity, without the need for the huge inputs of chemicals and energy that have made industrial farming practices so damaging.

Kremen, a conservation biologist and associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM), was studying the effects of natural habitat on the crop pollination services of wild bees when she made an observation that would alter the focus of her research. The farms in her study that were more biodiverse, growing multiple crops with organic techniques, interspersed with natural habitat, seemed able to “grow their own bees,” providing sufficient food and nesting resources to act as oases for wild pollinators in the midst of otherwise intensively farmed landscapes. These farms could rely to a large degree on wild bees to pollinate their crops, while farms growing only one crop had to import European honeybees for pollination.

This discovery put Kremen on the road to realizing that most or even all of the inputs that modern commercial farms require — chemical pesticides and fertilizers, wasteful amounts of water and energy, imported pollinators — were needed only because the monoculture-dominated landscapes created by industrial agriculture lacked biodiversity.

Animals integrated within a diversified farming system

“From studying the pollinators, I realized that the way we conduct agriculture has basically required us to replace all of the ecosystem services that used to be in the agricultural ecosystem with substitutes,” she says. If farmers could bring back many of the traditional practices that supported biodiversity, enhanced by the application of modern ecological science, Kremen believes that the world could produce more food while reducing agriculture’s harmful effects, making it more sustainable over the long term.

A growing number of policy-makers and researchers are thinking along the same lines. A 2008 report released by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, a multinational effort spearheaded by the World Bank and the FAO, concluded that modern agriculture would have to shift rapidly away from industrialized systems and toward sustainable, small-scale, diversified farming systems in order to meet the challenges of population growth, hunger, environmental degradation, and climate change.

Kremen and a group of UC Berkeley colleagues from a variety of disciplines are leading the charge, establishing a new Berkeley Center for Diversified Farming Systems to bring together researchers, writers, and practitioners from many fields to focus on feeding the world’s growing population through diversified, multifunctional agriculture that also addresses the poverty and lack of access to land that are the root causes of hunger. Thanks to support from the Neckowitz Family Foundation, the Berkeley Institute of the Environment has already hosted a series of roundtables and presentations on topics related to diversified farming systems, with more to come. up agroecological practices.

In addition to Kremen, affiliated faculty include Altieri, Lynn Huntsinger (ESPM), Nathan Sayre (Geography), Alastair Iles (ESPM), Christy Getz (a Cooperative Extension specialist in the College of Natural Resources), David Zilberman (Agriculture and Resource Economics), and Justin Brashares (ESPM).

Berkeley is uniquely positioned to host this interdisciplinary research and education center, Kremen says, because of its world-renowned faculty in the fields of agroecology, science, technology, society, agricultural economics, and rural sociology. Notes Huntsinger: “That’s the beauty of our College, that we can bring all these things together.”

Promoting Biodiversity Across Scales

Generally speaking, a diversified farming system is one that promotes biodiversity across spatial scales, from plot to field to landscape. Crops are planted and livestock raised in combination, resulting in interactions that sponsor the functioning of the farming systems in ways that replenish natural ecosystems. Methods employed within a diversified farm may include minimal soil tillage, growing multiple crops together, planting cover crops, and interspersing trees and shrubs with crops and livestock.

These practices also provide pollination, pest and disease control, water purification, and erosion control. They help to build healthy, productive soil and reduce water use, as demonstrated by research conducted in both the Altieri and Kremen labs on farms in Napa, Sonoma, and Yolo counties (see On the Ground). “Diversified farming systems produce and regenerate the ecosystem services that the agricultural system needs,” Kremen says. This allows farmers to forgo the harmful inputs and practices required in industrial farming, which is beneficial for the biodiversity that in turn produces the services. “I see it as a cycle.” At the landscape scale, diversified farming practices include coordination among land managers to protect wildlands in and around agricultural areas, and the support of ecological practices on rangelands and in forests. “In California, 35 million acres of rangelands are providing all kinds of services, from habitat for pollinators to livestock products to viewsheds,” says Huntsinger, a range ecologist and manager (see “Preserving Rangeland Biodiversity”).

Some heritage systems, like the Ifugao rice terraces of the Philippines, maximize the use of mountainous terrain for rice production while incorporating stands of managed forest and a variety of aquatic and terrestrial wildlife. Other systems combine traditional farming techniques with modern ecological science and innovative marketing and distribution methods; Kremen points to Full Belly Farm in California’s Capay Valley, which successfully raises more than 80 different crops, wresting a huge amount of produce from a small area. Even industrial farms can become more biodiverse through the application of improved techniques. Monocrops such as vineyards, for example, can be broken up with flowering cover crops, hedgerows, and corridors that help control pests without chemical inputs.

How to Feed 9 Billion?

For all their potential benefits, the question remains: Can diversified farming systems feed a growing, changing world? Perhaps a better question might be, can we feed the world without them? Despite the tremendous crop yields made possible by industrial farming and the technologies of the Green Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, 900 million people still do not get enough to eat, and starvation has become a recurrent feature of life in sub-Saharan Africa. Increasing the food supply is not enough; that food needs to get to those who can least afford it.

“The Green Revolution didn’t solve world hunger; it solved the number of calories,” Kremen says.

Most of the food consumed in developing nations is produced by small farmers, many of them still using subsistence methods. Their farms are where the productivity gains must come from, and the question, Kremen says, is whether countries will adopt policies that favor industrial intensification, or sustainable intensification based on agroecological principles.

One of the key reasons that the Green Revolution bypassed the world’s poorest farmers is that they couldn’t afford its technologies. In his report to the UN, De Schutter pointed to evidence that agroecological methods outperform chemical fertilizers in boosting the amount of food produced by subsistence farmers. Many of these methods are inexpensive but require more labor — which could create more rural jobs and help to alleviate poverty.

“We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations,” De Schutter said in a statement accompanying the report’s release. “The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”

Industrial agriculture isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, and many experts believe that any solution to the twinned problems of hunger and resource depletion will require some combination of industrial and sustainable methods. Some, like agricultural economist Zilberman, argue that modern industrial technologies, particularly genetic engineering, could have a crucial role to play in helping agriculture to wean itself from the worst of its chemical abuses, through pest-resistant crop varieties, and to adapt to climate change by developing heat- and droughttolerant varieties.

“Diversified farming systems are crucial to the future of the University, California, and even to global food production, but the concept really has to be inclusive of modern biotechnologies,” Zilberman says. “It has to take the best of science that’s sustainable and combine it with environmentalism.”

Kremen says that, while the economics perspective is a key one for this growing interdisciplinary group, she is skeptical about the ultimate value of genetic engineering, arguing that genetically modified organisms are just another variety of the reductionist, high-tech approach that has led to so many of industrial agriculture’s worst abuses.

“People love technological fixes,” she says. “But spending so much effort to produce these engineered varieties that then have severe vulnerabilities or cause new problems is not, I think, a very good strategy. I’d rather see that effort put into coming up with agroecologically designed communities that do the same thing — that use water and nutrients really efficiently.”

Altieri, who calls agroecology “the antithesis of transgenic technology,” says that “there is not one acre of transgenics that feeds the one billion poor people. Transgenic corn and soybean are produced to feed cattle that the poor cannot afford, and for biofuels, canola, and cotton that don’t feed anybody.”

Investing in Research

Creating and supporting diversified agricultural systems, both in developing and developed countries, will require a substantial investment in research, and not just in the natural sciences. Work in fields like economics, sociology, and public policy can help societies grow a sustainable, biodiverse system of food production and distribution that allows farmers to not merely survive, but thrive.

“Structurally, one of the biggest challenges to truly sustainable agriculture is the push to do everything as cheaply as possible,” says Christy Getz, who studies farm labor conditions and other societal factors (see “The People Behind Our Food”). “Most profits in the organic sector go to the largest players in the food chain; very few small organic farmers make significant profits. Continued industrialization, concentration, and consolidation are changing the face of organic agriculture.”

Another challenge is to identify the best methods for encouraging farmers in developed countries to switch from industrial to diversified farming practices, research that Iles, whose field is environmental law and policy, is pursuing (see “Getting the Policies Right”). Among the questions he’s investigating are: How can farmer motivations be better linked to the science of agroecology? Through setting rules, or through creating economic incentives, or by creating peer pressure? How can we evaluate the effectiveness of different types of policies?

The goal of establishing the Center for Diversified Farming Systems is to close some of these research gaps — by providing a venue where scholars can share their work, and by helping to train future leaders in the field who in turn will translate agroecological scientific advances into practice. Ultimately, the aim of Kremen and her Berkeley colleagues is to create a place where ideas about how to create a sustainable future for human agriculture can be debated, and the best winnowed from the crop.

Written by Eileen Ecklund | Farm photography by Paul Kirchner Studios | Read at the source

Filed Under: In the News, Research News Tagged With: agriculture, agroecology, diversified farming systems, farming, food crisis

Oak killing mold spreads in East Bay

October 28, 2011

By Mike Taugher, Contra Costa Times

The tiny culprit behind a deadly oak disease has spread in the East Bay and appears to have crept closer to residential areas in parts of Oakland and Berkeley, according to the latest survey.

“It may be an early warning sign,” said Matteo Garbelotto, who heads UC’s Forest Pathology and Mycology Laboratory.

Whether it was the rainy weather or the fact that surveys this year were much more intensive than previous years, it appears that the funguslike pathogen that causes sudden oak death is showing up more frequently at lower elevations in the Oakland hills. That means it could further spread next year, particularly if we have another wet winter, Garbelotto said.

“The jump was higher than we expected,” Garbelotto said

Sudden oak death, which has killed millions of trees along the Northern California coast since it was first detected about a decade ago, is established in several of the East Bay Regional Park District’s properties in the hills. But the disease remains patchy there and has not spread as aggressively as it has in infected areas closer to the ocean.

But the latest survey results show for the first time that the pathogen is much more widespread in the East Bay.

“We’re still looking at what is likely the early stage,” Garbelotto said.

Sudden oak death has not been a major threat for East Bay homeowners, since most of the infections have been in more forested areas. But if it takes hold in residential areas it could force homeowners to consider expensive treatment options or other measures.

“It’s not going to happen everywhere, but locally it may become a problem,” Garbelotto said.

One of the volunteers who collected infected samples this spring in Dimond Canyon near Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland, signed on because two large oaks anchor the hillside on which her house sits.

“I asked an engineer and he said it’s $50,000 to shore up the hillside if those oaks go,” said Kathleen Harris, who lives slightly more than a mile from the infected bay laurel tree she found. “I’m very interested in sudden oak death prevention.”

The infected tree Harris found is in a redwood-studded canyon and is one of three positive samples found west of Highway 13.

Sudden oak death was first noticed in the mid- to late-1990s with large numbers of tanoaks dying in Marin and Santa Cruz counties.

It was given its name in 2000 after majestic oaks were found dying and scientists identified the cause of the disease — a previously unknown water mold they named Phytophthora ramorum.

Researchers feared it would devastate large swaths of coastal oak woodlands, but so far the spread has not been as bad as initially thought. Still, Garbelotto said the pathogen has spread through about 10 percent of its potential range in California, meaning it could become more much widespread.

“It is better to be prepared and cautious and assume the epidemic can reach its highest levels, rather than assume nothing is going to happen and be wrong,” Garbelotto said.

It favors cool, moist and foggy climates and is less common east of the Oakland hills, though it has been found in Orinda, Moraga and in Briones Regional Park, said Brice McPherson, an associate specialist at UC’s department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management.

Last spring’s volunteer survey was the largest since it began in 2008, with nearly 500 volunteers collecting 10,000 samples from 2,000 trees from Humboldt County to Carmel.

Bay laurels spread the disease but are not killed by it. Finding infected bay laurels is a sign that the disease could appear in surrounding oaks or other trees, which is why the volunteer survey focuses on bay laurels.

The survey turned up “epidemic” levels of the mold along Skyline Boulevard in Los Gatos and Saratoga, and in general higher levels of infection than in previous years, which may be attributable to the wet year.

The only good news: there was no evidence the pathogen spread beyond a single infected tree in San Francisco’s Presidio.

“It’s the first time we have a real extensive survey of the East Bay,” Garbelotto said.

SUDDEN Oak death meeting
Sausal Creek watershed area residents can learn more about sudden oak death treatment options and prevention at a meeting from 7 to 9 p.m. Nov. 16 at the Dimond Library, 3565 Fruitvale Ave. For information about the meeting, visit www.sausalcreek.org.
For more information about sudden oak death go to: http://nature.berkeley.edu/garbelotto/ and http://www.suddenoakdeath.org/.

Read at the source

Filed Under: In the News, Research News Tagged With: East Bay, oak trees, sudden oak death

Professor Gordon Frankie Contributes to Art and Science Installation at Botanical Garden

October 27, 2011

By Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan, Special to The Chronicle

A garden of mouthings. Purple, scarlet-speckled, black
The great corollas dilate, peeling back their silks.”

A yellow-faced bumblebee (Bombus vosnezenskii). Photo: Rollin Coville

Sylvia Plath’s poem “The Beekeeper’s Daughter” is about as cheerful as most of what she wrote concerning her (or her narrator’s) father – which is to say: not at all – but its setting, a garden peopled with bees, is dizzyingly lush. Landscape artist Shirley Watts’ “Mouthings” installation in the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden, a happy confluence of art and science, takes the poem as a step into context, the human emotion evoked by the natural world and woven within it, part of a barely seen whole.

Watts pays homage to the natural shapes of honeycombs, and UC Berkeley entomologist Gordon Frankie and insect photographer Rollin Coville contributed signage about the unsung ecosystem services of native bees. The result is both visually stunning and thought-provoking.

The structure was originally created for the “Late Show” exhibition at Sonoma County’s Crossroads garden in 2009. Watts says her inspiration was a photograph of a wild beehive, with the comb draped and folded like flowstone in a cave. “The shape of the thing is just amazing,” she said. “Honeybee hives are amazing architecture.”

She caught that look in the curves of the installation’s canopy. Instead of beeswax, Watts used Nomex sandwiched between layers of bronzed window screen. The whole structure shimmers in the autumn sun. Hexagonal cast-concrete seats echo the shape of individual cells; resin poured onto them drips like honey. The text of the Plath poem is etched onto a gilded tabletop.

“There’s something so engaging about bees,” Watts said. “It’s hard to love flies, but bees – you can find them sleeping in flowers in the morning. There’s a photo of a dahlia with a whole gang of male bees in it. It’s like a bee dorm.” Her ideas dovetailed with Frankie’s campaign to publicize the role of native bees in California’s botanical gardens.

Survey of bees

“We’ve been surveying gardens throughout the state to find out what kinds of native bees are in each garden,” said Frankie, a longtime advocate of urban bees who supervises a bee-friendly garden at UC’s Oxford Tract in downtown Berkeley. “We saw very little mention in any of them of plants’ evolutionary history and relation to pollinators.” So far, in addition to the UC garden, he’s approached gardens in Redding, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara and Palm Desert, offering to tailor signage for each.

Most of us know only honeybees and bumblebees; Frankie says there are 1,600 native bee species in California alone, the highest number of any state. They’re one reason for our diversity of flowering plant species, at least 5,000.

Bees have co-evolved intimate links with native plants: “Although 90 to 95 percent of all plant material in the state is nonnative, native bees prefer native plants. Eighty percent of native plant species attract bees at measurable levels, versus 8 percent of nonnatives. Native bees don’t like plants from South Africa and Australia and have little interest in South American plants.” Some native bees pollinate crop plants, although agriculture relies mostly on honeybees: “You can’t put a native bee in a box.”

Book collaboration

Frankie, who’s collaborating with Coville on a book on urban bees, says the photographer has set a new standard for bee imagery. For the garden exhibit, Coville provided a portrait gallery of natives: longhorns, wool-carders, burly black carpenter bees, metallic-green sweat bees.

“Shirley is a natural fit for this garden, with her plant and natural orientations,” said Associate Director Chris Carmichael. “It was her vision, and we knew it was right. We’re thrilled to carry this out.”

Watts is looking forward to more collaboration with the Botanical Garden. Her plans for next year include an exhibit, “Natural Discourses: Artists, Scientists and Poets in the Garden,” featuring the poetry of Hazel White and others, the photography of Deborah O’Grady and the hand-knit fog catchers of Nami Yamamoto.

“Mouthings” will be up for the next six months. It’s in the garden’s Mediterranean section, surrounded by the shrubby thistles of the Canary Islands and the giant geraniums of Madeira – plants that, in September, swarmed with hardworking bees.

University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley: 9 a.m.- 5 p.m. daily. Closed holidays and the first Tuesday of every month. 200 Centennial Drive, Berkeley. botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu.

Learn more

Shirley Watts Design

Gordon Frankie’s Urban Bee Gardens.

Rollin Coville Photographs

Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan are naturalists and writers in Berkeley. E-mail comments to home@sfchronicle.com.

Read it at the source.

Filed Under: In the News Tagged With: art and science, art exhibit, Botanical Garden, science exhibit

Berkeley Initiative awarded $2.5 million from Moore Foundation

October 18, 2011

The Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology (BiGCB) was recently awarded a $2.5 million dollar grant by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The grant funds seven major projects and involves the participation of faculty members in eight departments including ESPM faculty George Roderick, John Harte, Vince Resh, Patrick O’Grady, Nick Mills, Rosemary Gillespie, Todd Dawson, Neil Tsutsui, and Adina Merenlender. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Honors and Awards Tagged With: biosphere, climate change, ecosystem, environment

ESPM Undergraduate a Finalist in International Competition

October 6, 2011

Conservation and resource studies senior Devin Richards is one of four UC Berkeley students to place among the top students in an international competition for undergraduates.

This year, for the first time, the Undergraduate Awards of Ireland, historically an all-Ireland awards competition, was opened to seven of the United States’ leading institutions, including Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, the California Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago, as program organizers sought to foster collaborative paths among students across subjects and international borders. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

Fishing for aquaculture answers

October 5, 2011

Tilapia at the fish market

If you buy fresh fish with any regularity you’ve likely come across tilapia as an offering. A relative newcomer to American fish markets, the mild, flakey white fish originated in Africa and was introduced to American markets about 10 years ago, sometimes accompanied by favorable sustainability ratings from markets like Whole Foods. Most farmed tilapia consumed in the U.S. currently comes from fish farms in Central America. [Read more...]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: aquaculture, farmed fish, sustainability

Bay Area Sudden Oak Cases Jump, Survey Says

October 4, 2011

Peter Fimrite, San Francisco Chronicle

The deadly pathogen known as sudden oak death is spreading throughout the Bay Area, infecting more trees in more places than have ever been seen before, according to scientists tracking the disease. [Read more...]

Filed Under: In the News, Research News Tagged With: Bay Area, sudden oak death, trees, urban trees

Robert Van Steenwyk Appointed to Invasive Species Advisory Committee

September 28, 2011

Bob Van Steenwyk, a Cooperative Extension Specialist, has been appointed by the US Secretary of the Interior to serve on the Invasive Species Advisory Committee (ISAC). As a member of the committee, he will provide advice to the National Invasive Species Council (NISC) on a broad array of issues, including preventing the introduction of invasive species, providing for their control, and minimizing the economic, ecological, and human health impacts that invasive species cause.

Read the press release from the Entomological Society of America

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

Care2.com Interviews Dara O’Rourke: Empowering Consumers To Shop Their Values

September 23, 2011

Dara O'Rourke Care2.com’s Trailblazers for Good, a Q&A series of interviews “with the most world shaking individuals leading the movement to align impact, profit and purpose”, interviewed professor Dara O’Rourke about his company GoodGuide.

Read the full interview

Filed Under: News

Bees outpace orchids in evolution

September 22, 2011

BERKELEY — Orchid bees aren’t so dependent on orchids after all, according to a new study that challenges the prevailing view of how plants and their insect pollinators evolve together.

A male orchid bee collects fragrance compounds from flowers of a Notylia orchid. Female orchid bees choose mates based upon the mix of these chemical compounds. (R. B. Singer photo)

A long-standing belief among biologists holds that species in highly specialized relationships engage in a continual back-and-forth play of co-evolution.

“What we found was that this reciprocal specialization did not exist for orchid bees and orchids,” said study lead author Santiago Ramirez, post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Neil Tsutsui, associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. “The bees evolved much earlier and independently, while the orchids appear to have been catching up.”

The bond between specific bees and the orchid plants they visited has been well-documented by botanists and naturalists, including Charles Darwin. Biologists discovered that male bees needed the specific perfume compounds produced by the flowering plants in order to mate with female bees.

In the study, published in the Sept. 23 issue of the journal Science, the researchers screened more than 7,000 individual male bees and sequenced DNA from 140 orchid pollinaria, which are small packages that contain all the pollen grains produced by a single flower. The researchers were able to infer the evolutionary history of both bees and orchids, and establish which species of bee pollinates what species of orchid. The researchers also quantified and analyzed the perfumes collected by orchid bees and compared them with the compounds produced by orchid flowers.

To their surprise, the scientists found that the bees evolved at least 12 million years earlier than their orchid counterparts. Additionally, they found that the compounds produced by the orchids only accounted for 10 percent of the compounds collected by their pollinators. The remaining 90 percent could be coming from other sources, including tree resins.

Male orchid bees can find the fragrance compounds they need for mating from decaying logs, as shown here, as well as from orchids. (B. Jacobi photo)

“It appears that the male bees evolved a preference to collect these compounds from all kinds of sources, and the orchids converged on that chemical preference millions of years later,” said Ramirez.

In essence, orchids need their bee pollinators more than the bees need them.

The findings have implications in conservation biology, particularly because of the alarming decline over the past 15 years of bee pollinators worldwide.

“Many plant species are extremely dependent on their pollinators,” said Ramirez, who began this work while he was a Ph.D. student in the lab of Naomi Pierce, Harvard University professor of biology. “If you lose one species of bee, you could lose three to four species of orchids. Many of these orchids don’t produce any other type of reward, such as nectar, that would attract other species of bee pollinators.”

“Our study is consistent with the emerging theory that insect sensory biases have played a major role in driving reproductive adaptations in flowering plants,” said Ramirez. “It highlights the ecological and evolutionary inter-dependence of flowering plants and their specialized pollinators, suggesting that new threats to insect pollinators may have profound effects on the ecosystems they inhabit.”

Written by Sarah Yang, UC Berkeley Media Relations | Read at the source

Filed Under: Research News Tagged With: bees, conservation, evolutionary biology, plant biology

ESPM Graduate Students Receive EPA STAR Fellowships

September 22, 2011

ESPM Students who recently attended the EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship Conference in Washington, DC. From L to R: Juan Villa-Romero, Dan Sarna-Wojcicki, Freyja Knapp, Gabriel Isaacman, Jeremy Andersen, Kauaoa Fraiola, & Ellen Kersten

Congratulations to ESPM students Dan Sarna-Wojcicki, Freyja Knapp, Kauaoa Fraiola, and Ellen Kersten, 2011 recipients of the EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowships. Jeremy Andersen and Gabriel Isaacman were awarded STAR Fellowships in 2010.

Learn more about the EPA STAR Fellowship

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

Miller Fellow joins ESPM

September 20, 2011

This year the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science awarded a research fellowship to Dr. Adam Retchless, who has joined ESPM this fall to study bacterial population genomics alongside Professor Rodrigo Almeida. The prestigious three-year fellowship is awarded to young scientists of great promise who have recently received their PhDs.

Dr. Retchless defended his dissertation in 2010 at the University of Pittsburgh, and subsequently worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Genomic Sciences at Allegheny General Hospital.

At Berkeley, much of Dr. Retchless’ research will involve the plant-pathogenic bacterium Xylella fastidiosa. Using this model system, he intends to investigate the process of adaptation by examining the genomic differences among strains that infect different host plants, resulting in host specificity and the emergence of new diseases.

Full list of Miller Fellows

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

PhD Student Kendra Klein named Switzer Fellow

September 14, 2011

Kendra Klein of the Winickoff Research Group has been named a Switzer Environmental Fellow by the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation.

Kendra works at the nexus of public health and sustainable agri-food systems. In collaboration with Health Care Without Harm’s “Healthy Food in Health Care” campaign, she is researching the supply chain obstacles and opportunities for increasing hospital procurement of local, organic, fair trade, and other sustainably produced foods nationwide. She is involved in pilot trainings organized by Health Care Without Harm to educate health professionals on an ecological approach to nutrition and to inspire them to advocate for a healthier, more sustainable food system within their health practices, communities, and at the federal level.

Klein also teaches the class Environmental Problems and Solutions at San Francisco State University. Her commitment to an ecological approach to food and health is rooted in her non-profit and academic work as well as her farming experience. As a community organizer at Breast Cancer Action, Kendra worked on a variety of environmental health campaigns including chemical policy reform, corporate accountability related to “pink ribbon” fundraising, and Precautionary Principle implementation.

Her career goal is to remain entrenched in food movements working to create ecologically resilient, economically viable, and socially just food systems, with a particular focus on the development of food hubs and mid-scale food system infrastructure that allows small and mid-sized farmers to reach larger markets.

This year, the Switzer Foundation awarded 20 fellowships for emerging environmental leaders who are pursuing graduate degrees and are dedicated to positive environmental change in their careers.

Read the UC Berkeley Graduate Division story.

Read the Switzer Foundation press release.

Written by Ann Guy

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

New paper co-authored by Damian Elias describes how hummingbird feathers ‘sing’ during courtship

September 9, 2011

When males perform courtship dives for females, neighboring fluttering tale feathers produce interaction frequencies. In some species, four or five species may interact with one another to produce sounds. Credit: Anand Varma

A new paper co-authored by Professor Damian Elias and published in the recent edition of Science magazine identifies the cause of sounds made by some hummingbird species during courtship.

While courting, a male hummingbird will typically climb into the air five to 40 meters and then quickly dives down past a perched female. When the male bird bird reaches the lowest point of his dive, he rapidly spreads and closes his tail feathers, causing them to flutter and generate sound.

Read the paper online

Lead author and UC Berkeley alumnus Christopher Clark explains how hummingbirds generate sound with their tail feathers in the video below. Credit: Christopher Clark

Filed Under: Research Articles, Research News Tagged With: animal behavior, animal communication, biomechanics, ornithology

Professor Allen Goldstein receives award to study Gulf Oil Spill

September 9, 2011

Professor Allen Goldstein will be sharing an award of $860,000 over three years with colleague Evan Variano of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. This award is part of a research consortium formed after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil spill.

Teams will investigate the fate of petroleum in the environment, the impacts of the oil spill, and the development of new tools and technology for responding to future spill and improving mitigation and restoration.

Professor Goldstein will be studying the evaporation of oil into the atmosphere.

Read the press release.

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

Gene sleuths trace tree-killing pathogen back to California

September 2, 2011

A row of Italian cypress trees near Siena, a city in Italy's Tuscany region. A number of trees show symptoms of cypress canker disease. Researchers have traced the origin of the pathogen responsible for the disease back to California. (Photo by Robert Danti, Italian National Research Council)

BERKELEY — A new study by UC Berkeley and Italian researchers spotlights the hazards of planting trees and other vegetation in regions where they are not native. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Research News Tagged With: environment, fungus, trees

Graduate Student Hillary Sardiñas Receives $25K Grant from Western SARE

August 30, 2011

Hillary Sardiñas, graduate student with the Kremen Lab, recently received $25,000 for her project, “Ecosystem Services in Hedgerow Restorations: Pollination Function and Nesting Habitat.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Honors and Awards

There’s something in the California air

August 25, 2011

UC scientists built and worked in towers as part of the largest single atmospheric research effort in the state. The data they’ve collected will guide policymakers dealing with air pollution. [Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Research News Tagged With: air pollution, air quality, earth sciences, engineering, environment, NOAA

Obituary: ESPM Research Associate Rebecca Wenk

August 18, 2011

BERKELEY — Rebecca Wenk, a research associate in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM), died after a brief battle with thyroid cancer on Thursday, July 14. She was 31. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Obituary

Ecosystems take hard hit from loss of top predators

July 14, 2011

A paper reviewing the impact of the loss of large predators and herbivores high in the food chain confirms that their decline has had cascading effects in marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems throughout the world. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Research News Tagged With: ecology, ecosystem, environment, food chain

How Safe is Mist Netting? First Large Scale Study into Bird Capture Technique Evaluates the Risks

July 12, 2011

Frequently Captured Birds Found to be at Less Risk of Injury Compared to Birds Captured Once [Read more...]

Filed Under: Research News Tagged With: bird capture techniques, birds, ornithology

Latinos Have Higher Exposure to Nitrate-Contaminated Drinking Water, Study Finds

June 23, 2011

San Joaquin Valley communities with large Latino populations are exposed to disproportionately high levels of the agricultural chemical nitrate through their drinking water, [Read more...]

Filed Under: Research News Tagged With: class, race, water, water contamination

Wild pollinators worth up to $2.4 billion to farmers, study finds

June 20, 2011

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 the journal Rangelands. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured Articles, Research News

One Health: Water, Animals, Food and Society

June 18, 2011

Residents of Nyanza Province in Western Kenya rely on subsistence fishing and farming and remain particularly vulnerable to food insecurity, poverty, and HIV infection. Photo by Katie Fiorella

Graduate student Kathryn Fiorella of the Brashares Lab spent the summer of 2011 exploring links between human health and the environment in Western Kenya.

ESPM Graduate Student Katie Fiorella

Kathryn was one of eight students from four University of California campuses to receive a $5000 One Health Student Summer fellowship to conduct research responding to global health problems arising from the human-water-animal-food interface. Her project seeks to understand how resource access is vital to addressing issues of limited food access and under nutrition.

In her One Health Summer Research Project, she will explore these links between human health and the environment in Western Kenya where the residents of Nyanza Province rely on subsistence fishing and farming and remain particularly vulnerable to food insecurity, poverty, and HIV infection.

Focusing on issues of food access and nutrition, she will use public health, ecology, and sociology methods to analyze the critical role that resource access to the Lake Victoria fishery has in shaping nutritional status among a vulnerable group. Specifically, she will test the hypothesis that declining access to the Lake Victoria fishery resources will negatively affect nutritional status (anthropometric measures, hemoglobin levels) for people living with HIV/AIDS.

The Chancellor’s Awards for Public Service

Jenna Cavelle, CRS Major, Receives The Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize

Ten ESPM Graduate Students Receive Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award

Promoting Biodiversity Across Scales

How to Feed 9 Billion?

Investing in Research

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