UC Berkeley's Freshwater Research Group
Thrilled to wrap up our first experiment of the MacLIFE International Laboratories effort, led by Dr. Charlotte Evangelista together with collaborators Mat Buoro from INRAE and Albert Ruhi and Kyle Leathers from the #BerkeleyFreshwater group. We used the experimental stream system at SNARL and manipulated flows to explore how early snowmelt influences insect emergence and top-down control by brown trout.
Postdoc researcher Denise Colombano gave a keynote talk at the 2022 Interagency Ecological Program (IEP) Workshop, titled “Strength in numbers: advancing estuarine ecology through data synthesis and collaboration”. She discussed successful research team culture, and provided insights from others through interview clips. Her talk was voted People’s Choice for Best Presentation—watch it on Youtube!
Melissa von Mayrhauser, Ph.D. student (now candidate!) in the Ruhi and Grantham labs, just passed her Ph.D. qualifying exam! Her prospectus is titled Changing Flows, Ecosystems, and Perceptions on the Los Angeles and Santa Clara Rivers, and we are really excited about all the cool research on urban stream ecosystem restoration that’s underway. Congratulations, Melissa!
PhD candidate Hana Moidu explores this question in her article on California WaterBlog and a recent paper published in Water Resources Research! And an amazing graphical summary of her study is provided here:
We recently published a series of papers in a Special Issue of Frontiers in Environmental Science focused on “Environmental Flows in an Uncertain Future.” Stein et al. (2022) provide an overview of the California Environmental Flows Framework (CEFF). Grantham et al. (2022) describe the modeling approach to predict functional flows in California streams and inform development of environmental flow recommendations under CEFF. And Yarnell et al. (2022) present case studies for how CEFF can be applied to groundwater-influenced stream ecosystems. More to come!
You can learn more about Hana Moidu’s first dissertation chapter at her new California Water Blog post “Between a rock and a dry place: effects of drought on stream drying patterns in California’s intermittent streams”
The paper Energy limitation or sensitive predators? Trophic and non-trophic impacts of wastewater pollution on stream food webs, led by Jordi-Rene Mor, visiting PhD student from Catalonia, was just published in Ecology. Take a look if you are interested in community size spectra!
We’re really thrilled to welcome Rose Mohammadi as a new Ph.D. student in the lab! Rose’s research will focus on how drought affects metacommunity stability, using time-series modeling and field experiments at Chalone Creek, Pinnacles National Park, in the context of our recent NSF CAREER. We extend our warmest welcome to Dr. Rodrigo Sinistro, who just joined the lab as a sabbatical for this upcoming academic year. Rodrigo is a freshwater ecologist from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), specialized in restoration of eutrophic water bodies, and is bringing some planktonic expertise to the salty side of our research program. Welcome, Rose and Rodrigo!
Mariska Obedzinski is a new grad student in the #BerkeleyFreshwater group, and will be co-advised by Ted and Stephanie. Mariska is a California Sea Grant Extension Specialist and has been leading a large-scale monitoring effort focused on endangered coho salmon in the Russian River. Mariska’s dissertation work will leverage the long-term monitoring data to explore the influence of hydroclimatic variation on coho distribution and abundance across years with different rainfall patterns.
Several members of the Carlson Lab provided leadership in organizing the 2021 Ecological and Evolutionary Ethology of Fishes conference, together with partners at UCSC. It was a ton of work but also a ton of fun, and we heard about a lot of great science through the presentations and small group discussions. Thank you to Kasey, Rachael, and Emily for helping make the conference a resounding success!
