Silver Lab

Wanda Cea

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:57:37 +0000

I first became involved with the Silver Lab as a volunteer during my senior year as an Environmental Engineering Science undergraduate at UC Berkeley. After graduating in December, 2008 I formally joined the lab as a technician, working specifically on the Marin Carbon Project, a research project that’s exploring better land management techniques as a means of sequestering and storing atmospheric CO2 in California grasslands. My interests lie in design and development for energy and resource efficient land use, as well as permaculture, organic farming, and sustainable agriculture

Maya Almaraz

admin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:40:09 +0000

I began work this summer as a laboratory assistant with the Silver lab. In the past I have worked on projects looking at the effects of rice rats on seed dispersal in Belize, the effects of grazing on native grassland vegetation and the endangered Smith’s blue butterfly in Carmel, and have also been involved with a study examining bees in urban gardens throughout California. In addition, I designed my own studies to investigate plant-ant-aphid interactions and arthropod biodiversity in soils cultivated by different agricultural practices in French Polynesia. My primary interest is in tropical ecology as it relates to entomology, land use practices, environmental chemistry, grassland and forest ecosystem ecology, environmental law and theories of biodiversity. I recently graduated from UC Berkeley where I earned a B.A. in Public Health and a B.S. in Conservation and Resource Studies.

Andrew McDowell

admin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:30:52 +0000

I’m the lab manager for the Silver group. Before joining the Silver lab, I spent four years at an analytical chemistry lab, where I managed the GC-MS volatile organics department. Before moving west, I was a technician in an entomology lab at Cornell. I have a degree in Chemistry from Amherst College. Much of my work is on the Marin Carbon Project, which means I get to work outside. I find that particularly enjoyable since the previous lab I worked in had no windows. Please do not confuse me either with my twin brother, Bill McDowell, who worked in the Silver lab as a technician in 2004-2005, or with my father, Dr Bill McDowell, who collaborates with Whendee. I like pie, the Red Sox, and the month of October. I dislike running (as a sport), last minute changes, and unlabeled samples in the lab.

Carbon Sequestration in Rangelands

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:44:02 +0000

--Effects of changing precipitation on soil respiration --Managing California rangelands for carbon sequestration

Steven Hall

admin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:59:08 +0000

I’m a second year PhD student in the Silver lab. At Berkeley, I hope to explore mechanisms controlling trace gas emissions and carbon accumulation in low-redox environments, with the hope of influencing ecosystem management strategies designed to mitigate greenhouse gas production. Much of my previous research has centered on the restoration of temperate and neotropical wetlands, where I evaluated impacts of altered disturbance regimes on plant communities and documented the potential of indigenous management to restore degraded systems. This led to an MS degree at the University of Wisconsin, advised by Dr. Joy Zedler in collaboration with Dr. Roberto Lindig at UNAM-CIEco in Mexico. Inevitably, this work in wetland restoration piqued my interest in soil biogeochemical processes. Currently, I’m keeping my feet dry while working at the earth’s arid extreme, testing whether soils from Chile’s Atacama desert can be stimulated to produce trace gases. I expect to be back in the muck before too long, however.

Contact: stevenhall@berkeley.edu

Hall, S.J., R. Lindig-Cisneros, and J.B. Zedler. 2008. Does harvesting sustain diversity in central Mexican wetlands? Wetlands 28:776-792.

Hall, S.J., and J.B. Zedler. In Press. Constraints on sedge meadow self-restoration in urban wetlands. Restoration Ecology.

Hall, S.J. In Press. Invasive species datasheets for Typha x glauca and Typha domingensis. CABI Invasive Species Compendium. Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International, Wallingford, UK.

Smith, S. D., P. R. Izquierdo S., S. J. Hall and D. A. Baum. In Press. Comparative pollination biology of sympatric and allopatric Andean Iochroma (Solanaceae). Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Hall, S.J. In Press. Cultural disturbances and local ecological knowledge mediate cattail invasion in Lake Pátzcuaro, México.

New Frontiers in Nitrogen Biogeochemistry

admin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:26:57 +0000

--DNRA: dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium --Feammox: Iron reduction coupled with ammonium oxidation --New methods for measuring denitrification

Tana Wood

admin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:26:26 +0000

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Silver Lab. I am currently involved in two projects: (1) A throughfall exclusion experiment in Puerto Rico to evaluate soil moisture controls on trace gas fluxes from tropical soils, and (2) Research investigating controls on methane production and consumption in soils of the California Bay Delta. My research goal is to understand the impact of climate and land-use change on plant and ecosystem-level processes.

Publications

McGlynn, TP, DJ Salinas, RR Dunn, TE Wood, D Lawrence, DA Clark. 2007. Phosphorus limits tropical rain forest litter fauna. Biotropica. 39:50-53.

Vandecar, KL, D Lawrence, TE Wood, SF Oberbauer, R Das, K Tully, and L Schwendenmann. 2009. Biotic and abiotic controls on diurnal fluctuations in labile soil phosphorus of a wet tropical forest. Ecology. 90:2547-2555.

Wood TE, WL Silver, AE Lugo. Impact of experimental drought on greenhouse gas emissions from a humid tropical forest soil. (In preparation for Global Change Biology)

Wood, TE, JA Wells, D Lawrence. In Review. Inter-specific variation in foliar nutrients and resorption of nine canopy tree species in a neotropical rainforest is related to physical leaf traits. Ecosystems.

Wood, TE, D Lawrence, DA Clark, RL Chazdon. 2009. Rain forest nutrient cycling and productivity in response to large-scale litter manipulation. Ecology. 90:109-121.

Wood, TE, D Lawrence. 2008. No short-term change in soil properties following four-fold litter addition in a Costa Rican rain forest. Plant and Soil. 307:113-122.

Wood TE, D Lawrence, DA Clark. 2006. Determinants of Leaf Litter Nutrient Cycling in a Tropical Rain Forest: Soil Fertility Versus Topography. Ecosystems. 9:700-710.

Wood TE, D Lawrence, DA Clark.. 2005. Variation in leaf litter nutrients of a Costa Rican rain forest is related to precipitation. Biogeochemistry. 73:417-437.

Contact: tanawood@berkeley.edu

Wendy Yang

admin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:25:23 +0000

I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student with broad interests in carbon and nitrogen cycling, global climate change and land-use change. My dissertation research focuses on investigating the controls on nitrous oxide and dinitrogen emissions from denitrification in upland soils. I have been collaborating with Dr. Jeff Severinghaus at UC-San Diego to develop the N2/Ar method for measuring surface soil N2 fluxes in the field. I am also working to understand nitrous oxide dynamics at Sherman Island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta where there is high potential for nitrous oxide emissions. Earlier in my graduate career, I collaborated with Dr. Bibit Traut, at the time a post-doc in the Silver lab, to investigate controls on denitrification end-products in salt marsh soil at Pt. Reyes, CA that receive high nitrogen inputs from agricultural runoff. Before starting graduate school, I spent one year in the Silver lab as a technician working with Wendy Chou in the Sierra foothills. As an undergraduate, I conducted research at Harvard Forest with Dr. Steven Wofsy and wrote my honors thesis on the contribution of coarse woody debris respiration to the carbon budget of a northern hardwood forest. I graduated from Harvard in 2003 with a B.A. in Environmental Science and Public Policy.

Contact: wendy_yang@berkeley.edu

Liu, W.H., D.M. Bryant, L.R. Hutyra, S.R. Saleska, E. Hammond Pyle, D.C. Curran, and S.C. Wofsy, 2006. Woody debris contribution to the carbon budgets of selectively-logged and maturing mid-latitude forests. Oecologia 148:108-117.

Sack, L., P. Melcher, W.H. Liu, E. Middleton, T. Pardee, and N.M. Holbrook, 2006. How strong is intra-canopy leaf plasticity in temperate deciduous trees? American Journal of Botany 93:829-839.Wendy

Becca Ryals

admin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:23:48 +0000

I joined the Silver lab as a graduate student in 2006. I am interested in the effects of climate change and land-use management on biogeochemical processes as well as climate change policy. Currently, I am working on a project examining the effects of long-term nitrogen additions on soil trace gas effluxes across California biomes. I graduated from Duke University with a Masters in Environmental Management with a focus in ecosystem management and climate policy. For my Master’s project, I investigated the potential for carbon sequestration in deep soils in at the Duke Free Air CO_2 Enrichment experiment, under the advisement of Dr. Rob Jackson. As an undergraduate, I conducted research on phytoremediation of methyl tertiary-butyl ether, a persistent groundwater pollutant from gasoline, with Dr. Deborah Hokien at Marywood University, where I earned a B.S. in Environmental Science.

Contact: bryals@berkeley.edu

Greenhouse Gas Dynamics in Tropical Forests

admin — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:26:14 +0000

--Rainfall exclusion experiments --Nitrogen and organic matter decomposition --Long term effects of hurricanes