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I am Kyle Leathers, a first-year PhD student interested in how aquatic communities are affected by environmental stressors, species interactions, and the combination between the two. My research investigates these topics, focusing on the effects of thermal regimes on stream food webs controlled by the predatory Coastal Giant Salamander (Dicamptodon tenebrosus).

I will apply observational, experimental, and modeling approaches to achieve realism, control, and generalizability in this research. Diverse pool-riffle sites throughout a watershed and artificial streams provide relevant scales for fieldwork and experiments respectively. I will use random forest algorithms to determine the relative importance of warming to community structure. Additionally, I will test food web stability using stable isotope analysis. My results will ultimately inform a Spatial Stream Network (SSN) model that predicts stream food-web structure and Coastal Giant Salamander abundance under future climate change scenarios. Understanding how food-web structure responds to increased water temperature can improve our ability to anticipate associated risks such as trophic cascades, pollutant bioaccumulation, and algal blooms.

The Public Policy Institute of California has released a briefing kit on managing California’s water, highlighting the state’s most pressing issues including climate change, drought, headwater forest management, and securing safe drinking water supplies to disadvantaged communities.

Read our latest post on CaliforniaWaterBlog:

Getting Strategic about Freshwater Biodiversity Conservation in California

• We are excited to announce that we are starting two undergraduate research projects! Chen Li, URAP scholar, is assisting us with the design of the artificial stream system. Gabby Doerschlag, SPUR scholar, is going to study benthic invertebrates in Strawberry Creek.
• We got a SESYNC working group funded! This is a 2-year, collaborative project with several institutions across the U.S. to work on sustainable water management through dam operations, and advance quantitative (time-series) methods that can help us get there. This project will start in January 2019. More on this soon!
• We hosted Rachel Stubbington, who visited us from Nottingham Trent University (UK) to explore collaborations on intermittent river ecology.
• Also, check out the book chapter on hydrological alteration and biological invasions, part of the book on Multiple Stressors in River Ecosystems (edited by Sabater, Elosegi & Ludwig).
• And last but not least, we received the final pieces of lab equipment we were waiting for: stereomicroscopes, an oven, and a microbalance. Ready for aquatic invertebrate business!

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.