Distanced in the Woods: Forestry Camp Adapts during COVID-19
Students at the first camp, in 1915, in Quincy, California.
When it comes to the current pandemic, not even time-tested traditions have been spared disruption. But thanks to the resilience of Rausser College of Natural Resources students, faculty, and staff, a cornerstone of the forestry program—and one of the College’s oldest traditions—continues.
Forestry Field Camp, an annual eight-week intensive program in the mountains of Plumas National Forest, introduces students to the scientific and professional dimensions of natural resource management. Students take courses in ecology and forest ecosystem management from both faculty and other forestry professionals. Normally, participants share sleeping quarters and eat communal meals. The camp offers a vital bonding experience and introduction to fieldwork.
Brandon Denina Pundamiera was one of just two students at Forestry Camp this year.
This year, however, social-distancing mandates meant that the program could invite only a few applicants. Camp coordinators found a way to help ecosystem management and forestry majors Brandon Denina Pundamiera and Natalie MacMillan attend in order to fulfill their graduation requirements. They ate outdoors and stayed socially distant, while core faculty gave all the lectures rather than inviting guest speakers. Sadly, a collaboration with members of the Mountain Maidu tribe focused on Indigenous land management had to be postponed.
Since its founding in 1915 by Walter Mulford, the first director of forestry at Berkeley, the camp has been canceled only twice, during both World Wars. In the early 1900s, students had to take two trains to Quincy, then travel by horse and buggy on rudimentary roads. Some students even rode bicycles into the mountains—a distance of roughly 200 miles—camping along the roadside.
“Forestry Field Camp is a fantastic setting where students get learning opportunities, and the community that develops can produce relationships for life,” said Scott Stephens, a professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) and the academic leader for the camp. “Our group really pulled together safely for an enriching experience, despite the pandemic.”
— By Jacob Shea
Nobel Prize Honors Jennifer Doudna for CRISPR Discovery
Jill Banfield (left) and Jennifer Doudna at the inaugural Innovative Genomics Institute open house in 2017. PHOTO: Peg Skorpinski
UC Berkeley has long been a leader in producing Nobel Prize laureates. In October, biochemist Jennifer Doudna became the latest, winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Doudna shares the prize with colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier for the co-development of CRISPR-Cas9, a revolutionary genome-editing tool.
CRISPR-Cas9 allows scientists to rewrite DNA in any organism, including humans, with unprecedented efficiency and precision. The groundbreaking power and versatility of CRISPR-Cas9 have opened up new and wide-ranging possibilities across biology, agriculture, and medicine.
Doudna’s attention was first drawn to CRISPR by geomicrobiologist Jill Banfield—a professor in ESPM and the Department of Earth and Planetary Science—who encountered it while studying bacteria that live in extreme environments. Banfield reached out to Doudna in 2006 and, during a meeting at the campus’s Free Speech Movement Café, sketched a diagram for her that outlined Banfield’s understanding of CRISPR.
Today, the women are leaders in their fields. Banfield serves as the scientific director of microbiology research at the Innovative Genomics Institute, which Doudna leads. Charpentier is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology. She and Doudna are the first women to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences together, which sends the message, Doudna said, that “women rock.”
— Adapted from an article by Robert Sanders
Extracurricular Honors
Zinmay Renee Sung (left) and Mary Wildermuth. PHOTOS: Jim Block
There could be no better time than this, the year of the campus-wide 150 Years of Women at Berkeley celebration, to note achievements made by our own female faculty. Two Rausser College professors were recently recognized by the campus for projects outside their scholarly work.
The inaugural Scheiber Emeriti Faculty Research Grant was awarded to plant and microbial biology (PMB) professor emerita Zinmay Renee Sung for the study of Asian American women’s experiences and representation on campus. Using historical records and journalistic interviews, Sung’s project assesses the evolving social, cultural, and familial environments of Asian American women throughout the University’s history.
As a PMB faculty member, Sung focused her research on flowering and seed development within plants at the chromatin level. This included examining specialization in the mechanisms behind plant-embryo development and analyzing the role of epigenetics in plant biology.
Another PMB professor, Mary Wildermuth, was granted the 2019–20 Chancellor’s Campus-Community Partnership Award, which recognizes University-sponsored programs that improve the quality of life in communities outside the University.
Partnering with the city of Berkeley’s three middle schools, Wildermuth designed and leads the Be a Scientist program, which for seven years has boosted science curriculum and provided mentorship by placing UC Berkeley researchers into seventh-grade classrooms. Over the past three years, more than 300 Berkeley research scientists have guided students through designing and carrying out their own scientific investigations.
— By Kirsten Mickelwait
Frontline Workers in the Fields
An estimated 800,000 farmworkers take seasonal jobs each year to help plant, pick, and package produce in California. During the pandemic, they have been forced to balance risk of infection and the need for income.
Developed by a broad coalition of researchers and community-based organizers, the COVID-19 Farmworker Study surveyed more than 900 farmworkers to gain an understanding of how the pandemic has exacerbated the challenges they face. Through phone interviews conducted in multiple languages, surveyors inquired about COVID-19 prevention at the workplace, housing conditions, health care access, and work-hour reductions, among other topics.
Susana Matias, a Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology (NST), participated in the survey design, data cleaning, and analysis. Rausser College undergraduate students Celeste Nava, Alexander Gomez-Lara, and Stephanie Martinez helped Matias analyze the data.
“Farmworkers play an essential role in the California food system and economy,” said Matias. “Protecting this vulnerable population during the COVID-19 pandemic is critical for all of us.”
Find study results and policy recommendations at covid19farmworkerstudy.org.
Rausser Groups Spearhead Pandemic Aid
Common Humanity Collective organizer Christopher Gee displays prototype mask designs. PHOTO: Christopher Gee
In response to shortages of sanitization supplies and protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic, groups from Rausser College teamed up with the Energy & Biosciences Institute (EBI) to act. Since March, volunteers in the College have been producing and distributing hand sanitizer, masks, and disinfectant wipes. What began as the efforts of two graduate students in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology spread across the University before coalescing into the Common Humanity Collective (CHC), a mutual aid group of Berkeley scientists, Bay Area activists, community leaders, and neighbors.
For example, in collaboration with EBI, the Coates lab started the Clean Hands Project (CHP), a volunteer-run initiative that provides sanitizer wipes to vulnerable communities. To date, CHP has produced at least 515,000 wipes, serving women’s shelters, homeless encampments, and other sites across the Bay Area and the Central Valley, said Yi Liu, a researcher in the Coates lab. Volunteers in the Olzmann lab produced hand sanitizer and, working with the Berkeley Free Clinic, deployed bottles of it and handwashing stations to more than 20 homeless encampments. Another group, including professor Arash Komeili and Cooperative Extension specialist Peggy Lemaux, made more than 13,000 masks and distributed them to over 200 Bay Area locations and to Hmong and Mien refugee farmers in the Central Valley.
“There’s been a shared spirit of both individual initiative and collective action in order to take some measure of responsibility for the well-being of our own communities,” said Christopher Gee, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology who helped launch the mask-making effort.
Today, CHC has more than 100 active volunteers, a community-wide distribution system, and connections to more than 200 organizations. In August, Congressman Ro Khanna awarded CHC recognition for its support of Narika, a domestic violence organization. To get involved with CHC or donate, go to commonhumanitycollective.org.
— By Jacob Shea
Greenlighting Rapid COVID-19 Research
This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)—the virus that causes COVID-19—emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in a lab. PHOTO: Courtesy of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
In the best of times, research funding can move slowly. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic—what many might call the worst of times—researchers are speeding up efforts to combat the virus. In April, a diverse group of venture capitalists created Fast Grants, a program that solicits research that will deliver quick-turnaround results to fight the pandemic. The goal was for projects to provide results within six months, and the Fast Grants team promised to evaluate proposals within 48 hours and send funding within weeks—much quicker than any other public or private agency.
To date, Fast Grants—which is part of Emergent Ventures, a project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University—has distributed $22 million to more than 100 researchers worldwide. The roughly 4,000 applications have proposed research into nearly every aspect of the disease, from diagnostics to vaccines and treatments.
Daniel Nomura, a professor of chemical biology in NST, received a $1 million grant to lead a team developing highly potent small-molecule inhibitors that affect SARS-CoV-2’s main protease, an enzyme that’s critical for viral replication. “The rapid and substantial funding that we received from the Fast Grants program has been crucial in accelerating our progress toward the discovery of novel antiviral therapeutics to combat not only SARS-CoV-2 but also future coronaviruses,” said Nomura.
His colleague Anders Näär, a professor of metabolic biology and the vice chair of NST, was awarded two grants to pursue novel treatments for viral diseases. With a $400,000 grant, his team is using antisense oligonucleotides to block the replication of SARS-CoV-2, targeting the virus’s RNA genome. An additional $300,000 grant is funding detailed molecular analyses of host cell lipid synthesis and the pursuit of novel therapeutic avenues.
— By Kirsten Mickelwait
#Nofilter
After weeks of staying inside to avoid unhealthy air quality resulting from record wildfires burning across the West Coast, the Berkeley community awoke on September 9 to eerie, dark orange skies created by smoke sitting atop a heavy marine layer.
Rausser College facilities manager Tony Gamez captured this picture (right) of the Campanile around 9:30 a.m. Our fire experts regularly share their knowledge and research—including options for mitigation and adaptation—with policy makers, land managers, and the national news media.
As part of Reunion and Parents Weekend in October, professor Scott Stephens delivered an online lecture titled “Fire in Western U.S. Forests: Friend or Foe?” Watch the recording at nature.berkeley.edu/fire-2020.
Two Departments Celebrate Landmark Anniversaries
Among other milestones at Rausser College this year, two departments are marking momentous anniversaries. The Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) is celebrating 50 years of the interdisciplinary Conservation and Resource Studies (CRS) program, which was designed for students to pursue the intersection between such environmental topics as natural resources, population, energy, technology, societal institutions, and cultural values.
CRS was originally co-founded as the Conservation of Natural Resources (CNR) major in 1969 by John Hurst—a Berkeley professor of education and a founder of Democratic Education at CAL (DeCal), a program of student-led, faculty-sponsored courses—and Loren Cole, who co-founded the Berkeley Ecology Center and the first urban recycling center in the U.S. The program was implemented in 1970. “The CNR major was one of the most innovative and creative majors to emerge from the free speech and educational movements of the ’60s and ’70s,” said Carolyn Merchant, a CRS/ESPM faculty member emerita. “Today it remains as an inspirational opportunity for anyone interested in saving natural resources and the environment.”
The Department of Plant and Microbial Biology (PMB) is also celebrating. For 30 years, it has built an internationally acclaimed reputation on its research and teaching programs in both plant and microbial biology. “PMB has risen from the disruption caused by the campus’s 1986 reorganization of biology—merging four departments and two colleges—to place first in ecology (which includes plant biology) and second in microbiology in the 2020 U.S. News & World Report rankings,” said microbiology professor John D. Coates. “Now we look ahead to another 30 years with a remarkably talented and diverse group of scientists researching the primary challenges of our times, including food security, climate change, and sustainability.”
As part of the department's anniversary celebrations, PMB is hosting a series of online webinars. Watch previous event recordings and stay up to date on upcoming talks on the PMB anniversary website.
Saving Livestock by Thinking like a Predator
A cow explores a predator-proof enclosure in Kenya’s Soysambu Conservancy. PHOTO: Courtesy of Christine Wilkinson/National Geographic Society
For predators like wolves, cougars, and snow leopards, a cow out to pasture may make for an easy and tasty meal. But when wild animals eat livestock, farmers face the traumatic loss of food or income, which frequently sparks lethal conflicts between humans and carnivores.
For thousands of years, humans have struggled to reduce the loss of livestock to wild carnivores, yet solutions remain elusive. According to a recent study led by ESPM graduate student Christine Wilkinson, the answers are rooted in basic ecology.
Wilkinson and her co-authors argue that understanding ecological interactions between predators and livestock—as well as the surrounding landscape—will allow farmers and wildlife managers to better target interventions to discourage predation by wild animals.
“There is no one-size-fits-all solution for livestock predation, because the variables at play change depending on the stakeholders, the landscape, and the carnivores and livestock involved—as well as the scale and cost of management tools,” said Wilkinson. The study was published in the journal Conservation Biology.
Using various case studies around the world, the paper demonstrates that management and deterrence strategies are more effective when tailored to these variables. It suggests that many nonlethal deterrents—such as guardian dogs, lights, electric fencing, or brightly colored flags—can help keep carnivores away.
— Adapted from an article by Kara Manke
Lowering Carbon Emissions While Protecting Global Income
In recent years, products made by high-carbon-emitting, or “dirty,” industries—including those using iron or steel, industrial chemicals, or paper—have faced much lower import taxes than cleaner products. Fixing this worldwide “environmental bias” in trade policy could greatly lower global carbon emissions while having little impact on global income, finds a new study in the Energy Institute at Haas’s Working Paper Series.
“If you took two arbitrary bundles of goods that showed up in some port around the world, if one of those bundles emitted one additional ton of carbon dioxide to produce, those dirtier goods would face an average of approximately $85 to $120 less in tariffs and in nontariff barrier obstacles,” said study author Joseph S. Shapiro, an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. The discrepancy between tariffs on products by dirty and clean industries is likely due to what economists like to call “up-streamness.” Raw goods, like steel and aluminum, are the base materials for consumer goods, like automobiles and cell phones. The production of upstream raw materials is usually more fossil-fuel-intensive than that of downstream products, which often include “clean” inputs, like software or design.
“Setting trade policies that are more similar for dirty and clean goods, either by increasing protection for dirty goods or by decreasing it for clean goods, has the potential to decrease carbon emissions,” Shapiro said.
— By Kara Manke