Lab News

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!

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!

We just got funding from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (Proposition 1 grant program) to assess how climate variability may be altering food-web dynamics in the San Francisco Bay-Delta via phenological mismatches! This is a collaboration with Prof. Stephanie Carlson (co-PI), involving partners at government agencies (USGS & CDFW) and leveraging cool time-series methods on a range of long-term monitoring data sets in the estuary. Postdocs Denise Colombano and Robert Fournier are doing the heavy-lifting. Stay tuned!

We’re thrilled to announce that the paper “Drought effects on invertebrate metapopulation dynamics and quasi‐extinction risk in an intermittent river network“, led by postdoc Romain Sarremejane, was just published in Global Change Biology. We examined how stream invertebrate metapopulations respond to seasonal drying and to supraseasonal drought–and how the latter can synchronize dynamics of some (but not all) species, decreasing their long-term persistence. It was a really fun collaboration with stream ecologists and hydrologists in the UK. Check it out!

Albert got an award for developing a new upper division course on Applied time series analysis for ecology and environmental sciences (ESPM 174A), and instructing it for the first time on Zoom via interactive lectures and computer labs. This course offers a hands-on opportunity for students to learn valuable data analysis skills, apply them to real environmental data sets, and develop a final project based on individual research interests.

Xavier Benito, postdoc affiliated with the Ruhi Lab based at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), just had his main project paper accepted in Limnology & Oceanography! It’s entitled Ecological resilience in tropical Andean lakes: a paleolimnological perspective, and we show results from a range of time-series methods that allow understanding ecological resilience (and different kinds of community shifts) in lake ecosystems over long timescales. Have a look here!