Lab News
CalAg Special Issue on Cannabis
Interested in the environmental impacts of cannabis production? How are cannabis cultivators responding to California’s new legal market? What is the state of cannabis research in the University of California? For answers to these questions and more, check out the latest special issue of California Agriculture
Welcome to Dr. Kasey Pregler!
Dr. Kasey Pregler is a new postdoc in the #BerkeleyFreshwater group, supported by a Chancellor’s Fellowship. Kasey will be co-advised by Dr. J. Carlos Garza at NOAA-Fisheries, and will explore the potential for assisted gene flow to contribute to genetic rescue in an endangered salmon population. Welcome, Kasey!
Welcome to Emily Chen!
Emily Chen is a new grad student in the #BerkeleyFreshwater group. Emily completed her master’s thesis in the Dept. of Fisheries at Humboldt State, where she explored how Chinook salmon use the Redwood Creek lagoon, using a combination of mark-recapture and otolith microstructural analyses. For her dissertation research, Emily plans to shift her attention inland to focus on winter-run Chinook and, in particular, asking if hatchery fish are good surrogates for wild fish in management models.
The lab is growing!
- We welcome Jessie Moravek and Megan Pagliaro to the Ruhi Lab! Jessie is interested in studying the impacts of hydropower dams, and potential for mitigating them via reoperation and removal; and will be co-advised by Justin Brashares. Megan has been putting together an exciting research project on wetland restoration trajectories in the San Francisco Bay. Read more about them and their inspiring interests!
- We also look forward to hosting Tadeu Siqueira, Brazilian sabbatical visitor who received a FAPESP grant to research metacommunity dynamics under environmental fluctuations; as well as Ph.D. student Zhenhua Sun, who is visiting this Fall from Sweden to study biodiversity benefits of stormwater ponds. Welcome all!
Busy Spring, exciting Summer
- The Lab organized a special session at the Society for Freshwater Science Annual Meeting (Salt Lake City, Utah), in collaboration with Kurt Anderson (UC Riverside). As part of the session, Kyle presented a poster on the effects of snowmelt timing; Guillermo a talk on his new analyses on the effects of drought on spatial patterns of invertebrate communities; and Albert the work of former postdoc Lise Comte, on the drivers of fish invasion in the U.S.
- Albert and Tongbi led the first workshop of the ‘WaterSystems’ SESYNC Pursuit (link); and participated in a new USGS Powell Center workshop on dams and flow regime alteration (link). Both were productive and a lot of fun! Albert also participated in an iDiv workshop in Germany, on the topic of ecological synchrony, co-led by former postdoc Lise Comte.
- Albert gave a seminar at Oregon State University (Ecology, Evolution and Conservation of Biodiversity), and at UC Berkeley (ESPM – Wildlife and Conservation Biology Seminar Series). He also participated in the Delta Independent Science Board, on a panel discussion on the ‘Roles and Impacts of Non-native Species’.
- This Summer, Kyle and Gabby are running an experiment to simulate the effects of end-of-the-century flow conditions (aka early snowmelt and longer low flows) on stream food webs, using artificial channels at the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab. Kyle was awarded a VESR graduate student grant, and a Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Congrats, Kyle!
- Incoming Ph.D. student Jessie Moravek was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and a Berkeleyan award (Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study). Well done, Jessie!
We got funding to study restoring wetlands!
The Ruhi Lab will receive funding from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, for the project ‘Reconnecting Delta food webs: evaluating the influence of tidal marsh restoration on energy flow and prey availability for native fishes’. This Fall we will start a 3-year project combining analyses of community composition, stable isotopes, and sensor time-series data, in collaboration with USGS and ICF, via State Water Contractors. More soon!
Modeling river-reservoir dynamics
I am Tongbi Tu, a new postdoc in the lab. I am working on a SESYNC Pursuit to study causal pathways and feedbacks within complex water management systems. This project integrates ecology, hydrology, and water law. The interdisciplinary team is composed of Sankar Arumugam (NCSU), Xiaoli Dong (UC Davis), Caitlin Dyckman (Clemson Univ.), Ted Grantham (UC Berkeley), Lars Olson (Univ. of Maryland), Benjamin Ruddell (Northern Arizona Univ.), Nicola Ulibarri (UC Irvine), and Albert Ruhi (UC Berkeley).
In this working group we will apply physically-based and time-series models to investigate how reservoirs can help provide engineered resilience to socio-environmental systems–especially during periods of drought. We will use a variety of approaches to detect direct and indirect causal pathways and feedbacks between hydrologic conditions, human uses, and downstream ecological outcomes in the Lower Colorado River basin. A better understanding of the complex dynamics of water systems can help advance sustainable freshwater management–a critical need in the face of increasing competition for scarce freshwater resources.
Drought and invertebrate community change in Californian streams
Hi there! My name is Guillermo de Mendoza and I am a postdoctoral researcher in the lab. Together with David Herbst (UC Santa Cruz) we are studying how stream invertebrate communities are changing over time and across the state of California. We are using a dataset collected via the Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program (SWAMP). Our question concerns patterns of distance-decay of similarity–that is, dissimilarity in invertebrate communities across spatial and environmental distances.
DDS relationships are typically controlled by environmental gradients, dispersal barriers, and ecological drift. Here we are asking whether DDS can vary over time as well–in response to fluctuating hydrologic conditions. This research will show how drought influences spatial patterns of stream invertebrates (‘who is where’), and will help us further understand how freshwater biodiversity may respond to the multi-year droughts that characterize California’s hydroclimate.
Stream flow modeling tools inform environmental water policy in California
Check out our new paper, published in a Special Issue in California Agriculture that explores how research informs policy-making