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

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.

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

Juvenile steelhead trout, shown here in a small stream pool, are hit hard when water levels are low. (Ted Grantham photo)

The findings, published in the May issue of the journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, link higher death rates for threatened juvenile steelhead trout with low water levels in the summer and the amount of vineyard acreage upstream.

The researchers found that juvenile steelhead trout are particularly at risk during the dry summer season typical of California’s Mediterranean climate. Of the juvenile steelhead trout present in June, on average only 30 percent survived to the late summer. In years with higher rainfall and in watersheds with less vineyard land use, the survival of juvenile trout over the summer was significantly higher.

The researchers pointed out that summer stream flow has been inadequately addressed in salmon and trout conservation efforts. Previous studies have highlighted other limiting factors such as habitat degradation and water quality, but here researchers documented the importance of water quantity for restoring threatened populations.

“Nearly all of California’s salmon and trout populations are on the path to extinction and if we’re going to bring these fish back to healthy levels, we have to change the way we manage our water,” said lead author Theodore Grantham, a recent Ph.D. graduate from UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM). “Water withdrawals for agricultural uses can reduce or eliminate the limited amount of habitat available to sustain these cold-water fish through the summer. I don’t suggest we get rid of vineyards, but we do need to focus our attention on water management strategies that reduce summer water use. I believe we can protect flows for fish and still have our glass of wine.”

Steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), historically found throughout the North Pacific Ocean, are an ocean-going, or anadromous, form of rainbow trout of the salmon family. Like salmon, steelhead trout migrate from freshwater streams to the ocean before returning to their birthplace to spawn. Steelhead trout in Southern California and the upper Columbia River are endangered, and several other populations, including those in Northern California, are threatened.

Aerial view of vineyard agriculture in Sonoma County. Vineyards that divert water from streams used by juvenile salmon and steelhead trout could reduce their impacts by storing winter rainfall in small ponds such as the ones seen in this photo. (Adina Merenlender photo)

While drought conditions clearly have an impact on water levels in streams, the study authors highlighted the role played by regional agriculture. Previous studies in Sonoma County have shown that stream flow drops when pumps draw water for vineyards. In addition to using water for irrigation, Grantham noted that farmers often pump water from streams to protect vines when freezing temperatures occur in the spring. Overhead sprinklers coat vines in a layer of water that quickly freezes to create a thermal barrier, preventing damage to the vines.

“Because frost threatens all of the region’s vineyards at the same time, there can be an incredible peak demand for water during a concentrated two to three days,” said Grantham, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis. “During a bad frost year, as much water could be used in just two weeks during the spring as in an entire season for standard irrigation needs.”

One possible solution, Grantham noted, is establishing small off-stream reservoirs to store water during times of high rainfall. Vineyards would be able to draw from these water stores during low-flow periods rather than directly from streams.

The new analysis is based upon nine years of fish count data taken from nine streams in Sonoma County, allowing researchers to account for year-to-year variability in precipitation and differences in land use.

The researchers acknowledged that there are many environmental factors that influence populations of salmon and steelhead trout, including ocean conditions, fisheries and habitat degradation, so isolating which factors are causing problems, and to what extent, is extremely difficult.

Ted Grantham is shown measuring water flows at Gill Creek in Sonoma County. (Tom Veader photo)

“This is the first scientific publication on how vineyards and summer stream flows relate to fish survivorship in California’s tributary streams,” said study principal investigator Adina Merenlender, cooperative extension specialist in ESPM. “It is the closest we have to substantiating claims by resource agencies and environmental organizations that juvenile salmon are being impacted by low flows during the summer and survive better with more flow. These findings will help inform an important environmental issue in California that is disturbing to conservationists and grape growers alike.”

Other co-authors of the study are David Newburn, now an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and Michael McCarthy, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s School of Botany.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation helped support this research.

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

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

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

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

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

Happy Earth Day! All around the planet people are celebrating, reflecting, praying, and calling for change in the way we treat the planet. But what does the Big Mama herself think of all this?

In the days leading up to Earth Day 2012, we were able to obtain an exclusive interview with our home planet. We share it with you in today’s special Earth Day Newsletter from UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management.

How does it feel to be the only known planet with life?

Well, I knew when I let that organic soup evolve into life a few billion years ago I would likely be in for an interesting ride. Venus and Mars thought I was crazy (though I think Mars is secretly hiding some microbes under his crust from the NASA rovers). Venus was so against the idea she even surrounded her atmosphere up with hot sulfuric acid. With the press I have been getting lately, its been kind of fun, so the gamble is paying off.

So, I guess you knew about us before we asked you for the interview?

It’s really hard to ignore seven billion of you. For a long time, I was thinking you’d be wiped out by the African carnivores, but getting up on two feet and learning to use stones was a pretty neat trick that put you on your way. When you started farming and made iron, I started getting worried.

How have people treated you?

Well, your species likes to “anthropomorphize” everything (try once in a while to imagine things from a silicate rock’s perspective), but yes, I could do without all this drilling, digging, dumping, etc. But the real secret I want to share with you is that all this mess you are creating is going to be way harder on you than me. I’ve got a nice thin geological strata waiting to hold the remains of the entire human era if things get too bad. However, I am just barely middle-aged, so I’ll enjoy the next four or five billion years in peace. I should mention I’ve got a lot planned for my retirement years.

We’ve always wanted to know: do you ever get dizzy? Do you just want to knock off the constant revolving every now and then?

I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.

Earth Day — seems obvious, but what are your thoughts?

Being as big as I am you would think this would have happened 10,000 or so years ago. However, the problem with being so massive is that everyone either took me for granted, or they were intimidated by me. Interestingly, when those two Apollo astronauts circled the moon in1968 and saw me set against the blackness of space, you all came to the conclusion I was actually too small (!), and you realized that there were limits to the resources you could expect from me. So, if it requires that I be conceptually downsized to get a little recognition, so be it. I’m good with my standing in the cosmos.

 Any final thoughts for your fans?

Try being a little humble, or, as I like to say, “down-to-Earth.” Just about every form of life I have seen evolve is now extinct. Humility brings with it a certain wisdom and enlightenment — emotions that only you humans can appreciate. I think your species had a better perspective of your place in the cosmos when you spent more time out of doors, and were hunters and gatherers or nomads. I am particularly fond of what someone who was herding livestock in the Middle East wrote several thousand years ago: “Generations come, generations go, but the Earth remains forever.” Keep that in mind.

Image courtesy of Earth & NASA | Interview by Department Chair Ron Amundson