- 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!
News
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
Launch of the Cannabis Research Center at UC Berkeley
We are excited to officially open a new research center at UC Berkeley, focusing on the environmental and social dimensions of cannabis agriculture in California.
Check out our write-up in BerkeleyNews, a blog post by co-director Eric Biber at the UC Berkeley Law School, and our new website for more information.
Oct-Dec 2018 updates
- Akira Terui, postdoc from the University of Minnesota, visited the lab in early November for an ongoing collaboration on the Moran effect.
- Xavier Benito, SESYNC Postdoc Fellow, visited the lab in mid November to analyze diatom community time-series data.
- Albert gave a seminar at UC Riverside (Evolution, Ecology, & Organismal Biology Colloquium)
- We participated at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C., with the presentation ‘Understanding the cumulative effects of dams on regional streamflow dynamics‘.
A functional flows approach to managing environmental water
Our latest post in CaliforniaWaterBlog describes how environmental outcomes can be improved when water is allocated using a functional flow approach. Read more here!
Five key lessons from the UC Water Academy
In the latest issues of Breakthroughs, the magazine of the College of Natural Resources, we identify five key lessons from our experiential education course, the UC Water Academy.