UC Berkeley's Freshwater Research Group
Great job Jessie Moravek on publishing the paper ‘Restored off-channel pond habitats create thermal regime diversity and refuges within a Mediterranean-climate watershed‘ in Restoration Ecology! Check it out if you’re interested in water and air temperature modeling — you can access the paper here.
Dr. Hank Baker has recently joined the #BerkeleyFreshwater labs as a postdoc, advised by Stephanie and Ted. For his postdoc, Hank is part of a collabortive effort led by Mariska Obedzinski with California Sea Grant and supported by NOAA to explore movement tactics in juvenile coho salmon and the potential importance of lower Willow Creek as non-natal rearing habitat. Welcome, Hank!
Excited to announce that our project, entitled “COEQWAL: Equitable stewardship of California’s water in a changing climate”, has been funded through the University of California’s Climate Action Grant Program. The two-year, $9M project aims to create tools, data, public education, and partnerships that will inform more open and transformative discussions about water operations and management in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system in a changing climate. The project will also do deep dives into the multifaceted implications of water allocations scenarios for salinity management, drinking water for vulnerable communities, and Chinook salmon recovery. Stay tuned for more information!
This summer, Brian filed his dissertation entitled, “Ecological thresholds in a water-scarce, warming world: Informing instream flow conservation for endangered salmon.” Brian is now working as an ORISE Fellow with the US EPA, where is he contributing to the development of new temperature management policies for the conservation of salmon and steelhead in the Western US. Well done Brian!
We are excited to welcome Avi Kertesz into the Carlson Lab and the #BerkeleyFreshwater labs! Avi joins us from Stillwater Sciences where he worked for a number of years surveying California rivers and fishes. Avi brings a deep interest in salmon life history diversity and resilience. Welcome, Avi!
Albert and Stephanie participated in a workshop on “Revisiting the Freshwater Imperative” in Fort Collins in July. It was a jam packed few days, with a lot of discussion aimed at taking stock of progress made since the original Freshwater Imperative was published nearly 30 years ago and advancing an interdiscipinary freshwater science research agenda. Stay tuned for products from this effort!
This summer, research scientist Gabe Rossi and postdoc Phil Georgakakos, together with partners at California Trout, Stillwater Sciences, California Department of Fish and Game, and the Wiyot Tribe, led installation of an experimental fish weir to control pikeminnow on the Eel River. The Sacramento pikeminnow is native to California, but was introduced to the Eel River in the 1970s. Pikeminnow are voracious predators that feed on juvenile salmonids and are thought to be a key factor in preventing recovery of salmon and steelhead trout in the watershed. Learn more about the project here and in the video below.
Congratulations to Kasey Pregler on her new position as the Assistant Unit Leader of the USGS Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in New Mexico. We are sad to see Kasey go, but thrilled for Kasey to be starting a new lab and contributing to fish conservation efforts in New Mexico and beyond! You can learn more about what the new Pregler Lab is up to here!
There are thousands of aging dams in the U.S. that are no longer serving their intended function and/or pose a safety risk to downstream communities. In many cases, the removal of old dams is more cost-effective than retrofitting or rebuilding new infrastructure. Dam removal also tends to bring substantial environmental benefits. However, dam removal is also a resource-intensive process and, given the large number of dams that exist on the landscape, deciding which dams to remove requires careful consideration of the costs and benefits. In a new paper led by Suman Jumani, we present a screening framework for guiding dam removal planning to address this need.
Fig. 1. Overview of the dam removal decision-support framework. Steps outlined in solid lines (Tier 1 and Tier 2) can be computed through desktop analyses. Steps outlined in dashed lines are those that require additional computational work and assessment of local, socio-cultural factors that may influence the feasibility of dam removal (Tier 3).
In a new paper in Journal of Environmental Management, Molly Oshun explores how we can make better use of existing biodiversity data in California to inform conservation planning and management. Read more here.
