College of Natural Resources, UC Berkeley

"Climate change does not affect everyone equally in the United States," says Rahcel Morello-Frosch, Associate Professor of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, and of Public Health at UC Berkeley and lead author of a new report on climate change. The report, The Climate Gap looks at the unequal harm climate change will have in the United States on people of color and the poor. Droughts, heat waves, poor air quality, floods, higher prices for basic necessities, and other challenges of climate change will have a disproportional impact on people of color and the poor.

The report also explores ways in which efforts to solve climate change and to close the “climate gap” can be combined. The report suggests many changes that should be made in government polices, including that government agencies at all levels should increase public participation in regulatory decisions at all levels to help counter imbalances in political power. That greenhouse gas emission reductions should be focused on neighborhoods that have the dirtiest air and on pollutants that may jeopardize public health and that green jobs and worker transition could be targeted to people of color and the poor.

To read more about Rachel Morello-Frosch's research on the “climate gap,” you can find recent articles in The Scientific American, The Huffington Post, and Scientific American Earth, or read the article in full The Climate Gap.

Posted by lauralyn at 1:14 PM | Permalink

This month, Nature profiles atmospheric chemist Allen Goldstein, (link - Nature subscription required | PDF - open access) who specializes in interpreting the scents of the forest. Goldstein has built his career on finding and characterizing some of the more elusive airborne chemicals in nature. For 10 years at the Blodgett Forest Research Station his team has described more than a dozen plant-released compounds that no one had previously measured or, in some cases, even known existed in the atmosphere.

The article expands upon themes we covered in the Fall 2007 issue of Breakthroughs magazine.

Goldstein also made a bit of a stir recently when his team found that the southeastern U.S. seems to be getting cooler while the rest of the globe is warming. The researchers used satellite and ground sensor data to track air pollution, and found that cooling induced by atmospheric haze has outpaced the warming due to rising carbon dioxide levels in that region.

Posted by Cyril at 3:39 PM | Permalink

Global warming may include some periods of local cooling, according to a new study by researchers at the College of Natural Resources. Results from satellite and ground-based sensor data show that sweltering summers can, paradoxically, lead to the temporary formation of a cooling haze in the southeastern United States.

The study, published the week of May 18 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that when manmade pollutants mix with the natural compounds emitted from forests and vegetation during the hot summer months, they form secondary aerosols that reflect light from the sun. Such aerosols may also contribute to the formation of clouds, which also reflect sunlight.

Continue reading "Summer haze cools southeastern United States" »

Posted by Cyril at 12:50 PM | Permalink

The San Francisco Chronicle recently highlighted plant biologist Chris Somerville, director of the Energy Biosciences Institute, among 10 Bay Area entrepreneurs, scientists and policymakers at the vanguard of a revolution that aims to reinvent the way people use water, power their cars, build their houses and live their lives.

"They might not become household names," wrote the Chronicle, "but their research, policy papers and startups could shape the way many households run in the years to come." The story continues:

As a plant biochemist, Chris Somerville has pioneered the search for clean liquid-fuel sources harnessed from the solar energy stored in nonfood plants. Somerville is director of the Energy Biosciences Institute at UC Berkeley, an ambitious project financed by a $500 million grant from BP, the British oil company. It is the world's largest alliance between industry and academia.

Somerville has made the study of biofuels for transportation, along with the social, economic and environmental impact of such fuels, the institute's top priority.
His research teams are using global satellite imagery, geologic surveys and market databases to identify abandoned farmlands and nonagricultural soils that could support energy crops; trying to identify the plant species most suitable for biofuels; and using biotechnology laboratories to explore nature's methods of releasing plant sugars and to create synthetic catalysts.

"We're not in commercial development; we're trying to understand it first," said Somerville. "I feel optimistic. We're trying to push the frontier forward."

Click here for the full story at www.sfgate.com.

Posted by Cyril at 8:57 AM | Permalink

Climate change will bring about major shifts in worldwide fire patterns, and those changes are coming fast, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis led by researchers at the College of Natural Resources, in collaboration with scientists at Texas Tech University.

The findings are reported in the April 8 issue of PLoS ONE, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal of the Public Library of Science.

Researchers used thermal-infrared sensor data obtained between 1996 and 2006 from European Space Agency satellites in their study of pyrogeography - the distribution and behavior of wildfire - on a global scale. They not only got a global view of where wildfires occur, but they determined the common environmental characteristics associated with the risk of those fires. They then incorporated those variables into projections for how future climate scenarios will impact wildfire occurrence worldwide.

Continue reading "Climate Change to Spur Rapid Shifts in Fire Hotspots" »

Posted by Cyril at 1:45 PM | Permalink

Professor John Harte discusses what environmental science teaches us about the potentially catastrophic consequences of a failure to address the current environmental crisis. His intellectual odyssey from physics to environmental studies offers important insight into how scientists have come to understand the relationship between humanity and nature and the necessary conditions for providing a balance that insures the well being of future generations. The conversation concludes with a discussion of how the present moment can be seized to meet the challenge of global warming.

Posted by Cyril at 10:27 PM | Permalink

In a recent conversation with Green Technology magazine, Professor David Roland-Holst, co-author of two key reports on green economic policies, discussed workforce creation, federal stimulus money and governmental policymaking.

Continue reading "Green Perspectives: David Roland-Holst " »

Posted by Cyril at 5:14 PM | Permalink

On Dec. 11, CNR hosted "Creating Fine Wines on a Warming Planet," a panel discussion on the future of the wine industry in the face of global warming. The panel featured College faculty Miguel Altieri, professor of agroecology, and Kent Daane, CE specialist in insect biology, as well as industry experts David Graves, co-founder of Saintsbury Vineyard, and Caleb Mosley, viticulturist at Ridge Vineyards. The panel discussion was followed by a special wine-tasting event.

Panelists discussed current practices in and research on traditional, organic and biodynamic agriculture. They also assessed vineyard responses to scarce water, fluctuating fuel costs, pests and changing weather patterns, all of which will have enormous impacts on California's wine industry as the climate warms.

Continue reading "Sustaining the Harvest: Creating Fine Wines on a Warming Planet" »

Posted by Cyril at 11:05 AM | Permalink

Hot on the heels of a report demonstrating the economic opportunities available to California if it invests in policies to address climate change, ARE adjunct professor David Roland-Holst has released a new study showing the enormous costs to the state posed by global warming.

About $2.5 trillion of real estate assets in California are at risk, with a projected annual price tag of between $300 million and $3.9 billion, according to the report.

Audio: David Roland-Holst discusses the report on KQED Forum.

Reports the LA Times:

For the first time, the costs of global warming's projected effects in the nation's largest state have been quantified: About $2.5 trillion of real estate assets in California are at risk from extreme weather events, sea level rise and wildfires, with a projected annual price tag of between $300 million and $3.9 billion.

Continue reading "The staggering cost of climate change quantified for California" »

Posted by Cyril at 11:27 AM | Permalink

From the New York Times: "California’s energy-efficiency policies created nearly 1.5 million jobs from 1977 to 2007, while eliminating fewer than 25,000, according to a study to be released Monday."

The study, conducted by David Roland-Holst, an economist at the Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley, found that while the state’s policies lowered employee compensation in the electric power industry by an estimated $1.6 billion over that period, it improved compensation in the state over all by $44.6 billion.

Roland-Holst's work was widely covered by media around thew world, including:
Discover Magazine
The San Francisco Chronicle
The Los Angeles Times

Posted by Cyril at 1:04 PM | Permalink

Above, Chris Somerville, professor of plant and microbial biology and director of the Energy Biosciences Institute, discusses the future of cellulosic biofuels.

In addition, ABC 7 News recently featured Somerville and David Zilberman, professor of agricultural and resource economics, in an excellent piece on Responsibly creating new plant biofuels (video).

Posted by Cyril at 2:55 PM | Permalink

Global warming is causing major shifts in the range of small mammals in Yosemite National Park, one of the nation's treasures that was set aside as a public trust 144 years ago, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.

The study, published in the Oct. 10 issue of Science, compared small mammal populations in the park today versus 90 years ago and found that mammals like shrews, mice and ground squirrels have moved to higher elevations or reduced their ranges in response to warmer temperatures, essentially shuffling the species living together in any one spot.

"We didn't set out to study the effects of climate change, but to see what has changed and why" since the last full-scale survey in Yosemite in 1918, said study leader Craig Moritz, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology and director of the campus's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. "But the most dramatic finding in the Yosemite transect was the upward elevational shift of species. When we asked ourselves, "What changed?" it hit us between the eyes: the climate."

Thanks to these detailed field notes recording not only when, where and what they saw and trapped but also what they failed to observe, the UC Berkeley biologists were able to perform a statistical analysis that makes the study results very solid, said coauthor and conservation biologist Steve Beissinger, UC Berkeley professor of environmental science, policy and management.

"One of the biggest problems we have when comparing the distribution of species now and in the past is false absences. If they didn't see something back then, is it because it wasn't there, or because it just wasn't detected?" he said. Employing occupancy models developed in the past few years, he added, "the Grinnell group's data allows us to go back and, night by night, reconstruct their trapping success for small mammals and develop a probability for detecting each species for Grinnell and for us. This is one of the first studies to use the model to look at climate change and historic changes in range."

Continue reading "Warming in Yosemite National Park sends small mammals packing to higher and cooler elevations" »

Posted by Cyril at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Larry Karp, professor of agricultural and resource economics, and Jinhua Zhao, an economist at Iowa State University (and Berkeley ARE Ph.D.) were recently named winners of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements research paper competition.

As reported in Breakthroughs last year, their paper proposes a design for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

"The successor to the Kyoto Protocol should impose national ceilings on rich countries' greenhouse gas emissions and promote voluntary abatement by developing countries," the authors write. "Our proposal gives signatories the option of exercising an escape clause that relaxes their requirement to abate. This feature helps to solve the participation and compliance problems that have weakened the Protocol. We support the use of carefully circumscribed trade restrictions in order to reduce the real or perceived problem of carbon leakage."

The full paper is available here.

Posted by Cyril at 4:23 PM | Permalink

Professor Barbara Allen-Diaz has always been a little ahead of the curve. After fast-tracking
through her M.S./Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 4 years, Allen-Diaz was snapped up by the U.S. Forest Service, only to be lured back to Cal to become the first female range management faculty in the country. In the mid-1990s, she was tapped to participate in the second installment of a massive, international research effort called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had the prescient hunch that humans were having a significant impact on global climate.

That pioneering research culminated in the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC's 2,000 scientists including Allen-Diaz and ESPM’s Inez Fung.

Allen-Diaz’s contributions focused on the effects of climate change on rangeland, which comprises 51% of the planet’s land surface. Among her team’s early findings were that changes in climate directly alter the species composition of landscapes, shifting the boundaries between rangelands and other ecosystems.

Continue reading "A Nobel Cause" »

Posted by Cyril at 12:58 PM | Permalink

A policy paper by University of California Berkeley economist David Roland-Holst says that greenhouse gass "offsets," a popular strategy for meeting carbon emissions, should play only a limited role in cap-and-trade programs.

Think Globally, Innovate Locally: Offsets and the Risks of Outsourcing Climate Action.

Continue reading "The Risks of Outsourcing Climate Action" »

Posted by Cyril at 11:04 AM | Permalink

Everyone relies on the water cycle, but how does it really work? This episode of KQED's science program Quest focuses on UC Berkeley scientists, including Inez Fung, professor of environmental science, policy and management, and their project to learn how global warming is affecting our fresh water supply.

Posted by Cyril at 9:44 AM | Permalink

Hot, dry atmosphere has made this spring one of the worst fire seasons in California history. Due to limited number of firefighters and equipment, hundreds of remote blazes are remained to burn. Is this a sign of fire seasons to come, and are we prepared to handle it?

Continue reading "California Ablaze" »

Posted by Cyril at 12:06 PM | Permalink

The growth in China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is far outpacing previous estimates, making the goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases even more difficult, according to a new analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Diego.

Previous estimates, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say the region that includes China will see a 2.5 to 5 percent annual increase in CO2 emissions, the largest contributor to atmospheric greenhouse gases, between 2004 and 2010. The new UC analysis puts that annual growth rate for China to at least 11 percent for the same time period.

Continue reading "New analysis shows alarming increase in expected growth of China's carbon dioxide emissions" »

Posted by Cyril at 3:53 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

by Dean Keith Gilless

Frozen pipes never concern San Francisco residents, but Minnesotans insulate the pipes around their homes every winter. The West Nile virus scares many Californians but doesn't alarm Scandinavians at all. Where you are in the world goes a long way toward determining the things you worry about.

Some Californians shy away from using wood for fear of contributing to the deforestation so frequently associated with global warming. But relying on imported goods means burning fossil fuels to bring those goods to market, which increases greenhouse gas emissions. The arguments to promote "locally grown" are no more or less valid when considering one's consumption of lumber and other forest products.

Continue reading ""Buy local" applies to forests, too" »

Posted by Cyril at 1:24 PM | Permalink

By Bill Dennison, Cal Forestry alum & past president of the California Forestry Association

The U.S. Forest Service recently became the first federal agency to register with the California Climate Action Registry, a first step to track greenhouse gas emissions attributable to global climate change from U.S. Forest Service operations.

But it's not nearly enough.

Continue reading "Opinion: Thinning trees helps environment" »

Posted by Cyril at 1:59 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

This op-ed, by Assistant Professor Max Auffhammer and UCSD economist Richard Carson, originally appeared in the Washington Post on August 2, 2007.

China is about to emerge as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases, a position the United States has held since 1890. Now is the time for China to take the lead in finding a way to reduce global emissions, which the United States has thus far failed to do. It should start by imposing a sizable tax on the carbon content of its fossil fuel consumption and by heading an effort among other major trading countries to do the same.

Continue reading "China's Chance to Lead" »

Posted by Cyril at 11:20 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

A campus colloquium on "Energy Self-Sufficiency in the 21st Century" recently took the global climate crisis as the starting point for a freewheeling discussion among some of the world's top thinkers. Issues covered included the urgent need to make conservation a national way of life, getting the U.S. public to accept nuclear reactors, and persuading the U.S. government to serve as a world leader in developing clean, renewable energy sources.

Posted by Cyril at 10:58 AM | Permalink

From the Contra Costa Times:

Looking out across an expanse of oak-grass savanna from the top of a 65-foot research tower near Ione in Amador County, biometeorologist Dennis Baldocchi [professor of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at] UC Berkeley sums up his part in the effort to get a more accurate picture of climate change.

"We want to see how the earth breathes, essentially," he said.

One of the pieces of the climate puzzle that hasn't come into focus yet is this flux of carbon between the earth and the atmosphere. How this interchange will be affected by changes in sunlight, temperature, rainfall and soil moisture is still a big gap in the climate models.

Continue reading "How the Earth breathes is key to climate change" »

Posted by Cyril at 2:50 PM | Permalink

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has issued an executive order calling for California to establish the world's first carbon standard for transportation fuels. (Read about it in the Governor's op-ed here.)

Relying on research by David Roland-Holst, adjunct professor in ARE, the governor writes:

The University of California estimates our greenhouse gas emissions goals will increase our gross state product by $60 billion and create more than 20,000 new jobs. The time is now for America to transition to a clean-energy economy.... I am very pleased to be able to announce that California is leading the way.

Posted by Cyril at 11:20 AM | Permalink

Over the past decade, in numerous field sites throughout the world, mesh bags of leaf and root litter sat exposed to the elements, day and night, throughout the four seasons, gradually rotting away.

Now, those bags of decomposing organic matter have allowed a research team led by scientists from CNR and Colorado State University to produce an elegant and simple set of equations to calculate the nitrogen released into the soil during decomposition, which in turn could significantly improve the accuracy of global climate change models.

Continue reading "Study of rotting leaves could lead to more accurate climate models" »

Posted by Cyril at 4:44 PM | Permalink

This editorial by Professor David Sunding appeared Dec. 28, 2006, in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's executive order to begin implementation of a market-based compliance program encouraging businesses to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is clearly a step in the right direction toward cleaning our air of harmful carbon particulates. The next step is to make it financially attractive enough for businesses to comply with the program.

Continue reading "Bringing carbon buyers and sellers to market" »

Posted by Cyril at 10:23 AM | Permalink

Continue reading "Reducing pollution could increase rice harvests in India" »

Posted by Cyril at 9:06 PM | Permalink

From the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle:

Some of the world's best evidence of global warming was buried under 18 feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada last winter, and [UC Berkeley Forestry alumna] Connie Millar was determined to dig it out.

Millar, a veteran field scientist for the U.S. Forest Service, sweated uphill with three colleagues on a July morning, headed deep into Lundy Canyon, just north of Mono Lake, one of the few access points to the Sierra crest along its rugged eastern flank....

This story also quotes Forestry alumnus Bob Coats.

Read the full story: WATER SIGNS
Miniature rock glaciers. Drying meadows. Warming lakes. High-elevation studies try to predict the impact of climate change

Posted by Cyril at 8:31 AM | Permalink

From a letter to the Sacramento Bee by Prof. Michael Hanemann:

I disagree with Margo Thorning's dire prediction of economic doom from the Assembly Bill 32 legislation requiring statewide reductions in greenhouse gases by 2020.

Continue reading "Not facing warming is costly" »

Posted by Cyril at 1:50 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

A new report delivered to state legislators and led by ARE Professor David Roland-Host says that returning California greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, as envisioned by pending global warming legislation, could significantly stimulate the state economy.

Continue reading "Report: Climate action will boost state economy" »

Posted by Cyril at 11:51 AM | Permalink| Comments (0)

Dramatic natural phenomena such as huricanes and heat waves have renewed the mainstream media's interest in global warming, and several excellent articles have recently feature UC Berkeley climate change scientists.

Continue reading "Heat waves renew interest in climate change" »

Posted by Cyril at 11:56 AM | Permalink

Two University of California, Berkeley, climate researchers have signed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal in a case that could force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. The lawsuit, brought against the federal government by the State of Massachusetts, seeks to slow the onset of global warming.

Continue reading "Supreme Court brief presents global warming facts" »

Posted by Cyril at 12:57 PM | Permalink

Eleven eminent scientists will speak on Friday, April 28 on topical energy issues at this day-long symposium honoring their colleague, California Energy Commissioner, UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus, and energy efficiency pioneer Arthur H. Rosenfeld, on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Rosenfeld has also just received the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award (press release here).

Sessions of The "Rosenfeld Effect" Energy Symposium will discuss the role of increased energy efficiency in California, in China, and on a global scale; the intersection of energy and safe drinking water in the developing world; the twin challenges of mitigating climate change and sustaining orderly markets in fluid fuels; how to turn good science into good politics; and defining, predicting, and coping with global warming.

View the full program.

8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Friday, April 28
Sibley Auditorium, UC Berkeley

This event has reached full capacity. However, it will be webcast live at http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events/details.php?webcastid=15730

Contact Adrienne Hink with questions.

Posted by Cyril at 4:29 PM | Permalink

There’s progress on the climate front. Suddenly the U.S. is waking to the reality of climate change as glaciers melt and seasons become more extreme. For California, predictions of declining snow packs and drier summers mean threats to urban water supplies and higher risk of wildfire. Across the country, states are taking the initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Frequent questions arise about the California Climate Action Registry and its Forest Protocols. Forest landowners are starting to learn more and examine how the Registry might benefit them. Some misconceptions have developed, thus a brief overview helps in understanding how the protocols work and the potential they offer to landowners, forests and the global environment.

Read the FAQ developed by visiting CNR faculty member Andrea Tuttle, former director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection:

http://nature.berkeley.edu/site/forms/pdf/forest_carbon_faq.pdf

Posted by Cyril at 10:10 AM | Permalink

Inez Fung, co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment, and her research team have received $1.6 million from the W.M. Keck Foundation to establish the Keck HydroWatch Center at UC Berkeley.

Research undertaken at the HydroWatch Center will help scientists better understand the water cycle and predict its changes. Their aim is to dramatically expand the observations of all aspects of the water cycle by developing cost-effective, rapid-response, and accurate sensors and techniques to monitor water quality, quantity, and pathways.

Continue reading "With $1.6 million grant, new HydroWatch Center seeks full view of Earth's water cycle" »

Posted by Cyril at 6:09 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

By Andrea Tuttle

California's forests have something to celebrate.

The first forest projects in California designed specifically to fight global warming were recently announced at the United Nations conference on climate change in Montreal. By registering in the California Climate Action Registry, the Garcia River Forest in Sonoma County and the Van Eck property in Humboldt show a new model for protecting natural resources.

The projects will reduce greenhouse gases and restore streams and roads, all while working to produce timber. Perhaps most surprising is that well-known environmental groups, including the Conservation Fund, the Pacific Forest Trust, the Nature Conservancy and the State Coastal Conservancy, will actually manage logging on these lands to save them and better the environment.

Continue reading "Forest landowners playing role in fight against global warming" »

Posted by Cyril at 2:15 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

The effects of overfishing may have driven marbled murrelets, an endangered seabird found along the Pacific coast, to increasingly rely upon less nutritious food sources, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley.

The results, to be published online by early March 2006 in the journal Conservation Biology, suggest that feeding further down the food web may have played a role in low levels of reproduction observed in contemporary murrelet populations, and has likely contributed to the seabirds' listing as an endangered species, the researchers said.

Read the Full Story at the UCB NewsCenter

Posted by Eva St. Clair at 2:43 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)