Lab News

California recently released the findings of its Fourth Climate Change Assessment. The assessment includes a statewide summary report, regional reports, and topical reports and are intended to translate the state of climate science into useful information for decision-makers and practitioners to catalyze action that will benefit regions, the ocean and coast, frontline communities, and tribal and indigenous communities. Ted led the North Coast Region Report, with contributions from several UC colleagues.

Check out the latest report from PPIC’s Water Policy Center, which recommends water policy reforms for avoiding negative social, economic, and environmental consequences from drought and a changing climate. Key reforms include:

• Plan ahead. Stronger drought planning is critically important for urban water management, groundwater sustainability, safe drinking water in rural communities, and freshwater ecosystems.
• Upgrade the water grid. California needs a comprehensive program to address above- and below-ground storage, conveyance, and operational challenges by mid-century, including repairing facilities that are broken, expanding conveyance and storage capacity, and modernizing and integrating operations.
• Update water allocation rules. California should comprehensively update its water allocation governance. The goals should be to find equitable and efficient ways to allocate limited supplies among competing demands during dry times while promoting efforts to capture and store water during wet times.
• Find the money. Reliable funding is crucial for adapting to climate change. New sources are needed to pay for necessary water-management investments and to fill funding gaps in the state’s water system.

Rachael Ryan is a new grad student in the #BerkeleyFreshwater group, and will be co-advised by Stephanie and Ted. Rachael plans to explore the influence of climatic variation and habitat mosaics on distribution, abundance, and diversity of coho salmon in the Lagunitas Watershed, in west Marin. Stay tuned for updates!

• This has been a hectic summer. We are excited to announce that Kyle Leathers just joined the lab–welcome to our first graduate student!
• We also finalized Lise‘s postdoc project on the alteration-invasion nexus in rivers nation-wide, and she will be soon moving on to bigger things in Seattle. Visiting graduate student Jordi went back to the Catalan Institute for Water Research after a productive stay analyzing stable isotope data from Catalan streams.
• We are NSF funded! An exciting Macrosystems collaborative project (‘Scaling Climate, Connectivity, and Communities in Streams’) will start on January 1st. More on this soon!
• Albert coauthored a Science perspective on the use of remote sensing data to determine the distribution and trends in global freshwater habitat.

Check out our new paper in Climatic Change!

Figure from paper illustrates how monthly streamflow in the interior mountain region of California responds to incremental changes in temperature and precipitation (relative to historical period). Black dots represent climate model projections for the region.

• Albert attended the ‘Boundary Spanning Symposium‘ at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), and presented on the effects of dams on river flow regimes.
• Albert & Jordi participated in the ‘Eyes on the Eel‘ synoptic survey, and enjoyed a deluxe tour at the UC Angelo Reserve with Mary Power.
• Two proposals are on the works, one of them involving restored wetlands in the San Francisco Bay.

Fernando Nardi, Ryan Morrison, Antonio Annis, and Ted just published a paper in River Research and Applications, which describes a floodplain mapping approach that uses geomorphic principles and land surface topography to predict the distribution of floodplains across large geographic scales. Check it out!

• May was travel month! Albert participated in a Powell Center workshop on the Budyko framework–this interdisciplinary working group is ongoing and will present in next AGU Fall Meeting on the cumulative effects of dams on flow regime alteration.
• The Berkeley Freshwater Ecology labs also attended the Society for Freshwater Science Annual Meeting in Detroit, MI. It was a great combination of science & fun.
• Meanwhile, visiting researcher Maria went back to Spain after a productive stay analyzing arthropod metacommunity data from intermittent streams.
• Last but not least, the lab renovations were completed!

Hot off the press, a new paper by Howard et al. in Freshwater Science identifies priority watersheds in California for conserving freshwater biodiversity.

Check out this video about our inaugural 2017 UC Water Academy class on UC TV!