Energy and Resources Group (ERG)
Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management (ESPM)

Research Interests: All of the below.

Manisha Anantharaman (Ph.D. ESPM)

Research Interests: Climate impacts on soil microbial ecology, geostatistics, middle class environmentalism, consumption emissions and climate change in India

Danielle Christianson (formerly Svehla, Ph.D. ERG)

Research Interests: Vegetation climate interactions, spatial patterns of vegetation, visual communication, new media.

Research Interests: Climate change, conservation biology, ecophysiological responses,long-term conservation planning, reserve networks.

Research Interests: Climate change, development, adaptation, soil carbon sequestration, global environment/development policy.

Research Interests: Mitigation of near-term climate change, high-latitude feedback effects, transient climate response

Publications:
Jackson, Stacy C. "Emissions Omissions - Response," Science 327, 269 (Jan. 2010).

Jackson, Stacy C. "Parallel Pursuit of Near-Term and Long-Term Climate Mitigation," Science 326, 526 (Oct. 2009).

Research Interests: Agroforestry; sustainable development; climate change mitigation; biomass energy and other renewable energy; biogeochemistry; global change ecology; biomimicry

Research Interests: Spatial macroecology, conservation planning, reserve network design

Publications:
Harte, J., and J. Kitzes, in press, "The use and misuse of species area relationship in predicting climate-driven extinction" in L. Hannah (Ed.) Saving a Million Species: Extinction Risk from Climate Change, Island Press.

Research Interests: Macroecology, fire ecology, fire and biodiversity interactions, fire and climate change interactions, and pyrogeography (the spatial and temporal patterns of fire on landscape and global scales)

Research Interests: Macroecology, understanding limits and successes of statistical theories of biodiversity, incorporating macroevolution in community and ecosystem level research

Asmeret Asefaw Berhe (Ph.D. ESPM, 2006)

     Current Location: Assistant Professor, UC Merced

Research Interests: Role of soil erosion and terrestrial sedimentation in CO₂ sequestration; stabilization of buried soil organic carbon.

Current Location:
Post-doctoral researcher, Stanford University.

Research Interests: Equity and sustainability; democratic participation in environmental decision making; global climate change; carbon cycling; ecological economics; modeling.

Research Interests: Plant community assembly after large disturbance, species-area and species-time relationships.

Current Location:
Lecturer, Environmental Sciences, UC Berkeley
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~es196/
castanha@socrates.berkeley.edu

Research Interests: Soil development, biodiversity, paleoecology, and climate change.

My dissertation explores the influence of climate and mineralogy on soil carbon dynamics.  I am also interested in soils and geology as modulators of evolutionary and ecological responses of plants to climate.

 

Current Location:
Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellow
Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute
Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan 305-8687
Phone: 81 (Japan) 080-4189-3954

Research Interests: Mixing ecology and statistics, my dissertation developed quantitative methods for analyzing the spatial distribution of species, and applied the methods to several large tropical tree censuses and to a California serpentine grassland census. The methods are relevant to the study of community biodiversity, the fate of rare species, and the prediction of floral abundance at multiple spatial scales. Since graduation I have been working with niche models to describe the effects of climate change on the spatial patterns of plants.

Publications while in the Harte Lab:
J. Harte, E. Conlisk, J. Green, A. Ostling, A. Smith. 2005. A theory of spatial structure in ecological communities at multiple spatial scales. Ecological Monographs 75: 179-197.

E. Conlisk, M. Bloxham, J. Conlisk, B. Enquist, J. Harte. 2007. A new class of models of spatial distribution. Ecological Monographs 77: 269-286.

E. Conlisk, J. Conlisk, J. Harte. 2007. The impossibility of measuring a negative binomial clustering parameter from presence-absence data. American Naturalist 70(4): 651-654.

J. Harte, T. Zillio, E. Conlisk, A. Smith. 2008. Maximum entropy and the state variable approach to macroecology. Ecology 89: 2700-2711.

E. Conlisk, J. Conlisk, J. Harte. 2009. Improved abundance prediction from presence-absence data. Global Ecology and Biogeography 18:1-10.

J. Conlisk, E. Conlisk, J. Harte. In Press. Hubbell’s local abundance distribution: Insights from a simple colonization rule. Oikos.

 

Research Interests: Land-use; natural resources; GIS; remote sensing; climate change.

Current Location: The Wildlife Conservation Society, Bozeman, MT.

Research Interests:  Incorporating climate change into habitat conservation planning; bridging the divide between climate change science and on-the-ground conservation activities; modeling invasive plant species distributions in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Current Location:
Research Professor, Santa Fe Institute 1399 Hyde Park Road Santa Fe, NM 87501

Research Interests:Ecological network structure, dynamics, and function; robustness; ecoinformatics; socio-ecological systems as trophic networks; paleobiology (see www.foodwebs.org)

Current Location:
Assistant Professor of Natural Sciences,
University of California, Merced.

Research Interests:  Biogeography, microbial ecology, macroecology, biological conservation, theoretical ecology

Zhibin He (Visiting Researcher, ESPM 2008-2009)

Research Interests: Forest ecology and hydrology,spatial patterns of vegetation,water resource management in the arid inland river basin.

Research Interests: Automated demand response, relative building system control, diversified and urban farming systems, synergies between social and ecological sustainability in cities

Current Location: American Meteorological Society, Washington, DC.

Research Interests: How biological systems contribute and respond to global change. Developing approaches that decrease conflict between human activities, conservation, and climate protection. The use of science in policy.

Current Location: Postdoctoral researcher, Baldocchi Lab, UC Berkeley

Research Interests: Global change ecology, biological invasion, biodiversity conservation, atmospheric science, micro-meteorology.

Thesis Research: Carbon cycling and material exchange in grasslands dominated by native and by exotic grasses in Northern Coastal California.

Current Location: Assistant Professor, Dept. of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship, Warner School of the Environment, University of Colorado, Fort Collins, CO

Research Interests: Ecosystem response (vegetative and soil parameters) to climate warming and changes in the traditional pastoral land use dynamic on the eastern Tibetan Plateau.

Current Location: Assistant Professor, School of Natural Sciences, University of California, Merced.

Research Interests: Climate-ecosystem feedbacks, ecological consequences of climate change, regional land-use and climate change, mountain ecosystems, climate policy

Publications while in Harte Lab:
Kueppers L.M. and J. Harte, 2005. "Subalpine forest carbon cycling: Short- and Long-term influence of climate and species" Ecological Applications 15(6) 1984-1999.

Kueppers L.M., P. Baer, J. Harte, B.Haya, L.E. Koteen, and M.E. Smith, 2004. "A Decision Matrix Approach to Evaluating the Impacts of Land-Use Activities Undertaken to Mitigate Climate Change" Climatic Change 63: 247-257.

Kueppers L.M., J. Southon, P. Baer, and J. Harte, 2004. "Dead wood biomass and turnover time, measured by radiocarbon, along a subalpine elevation gradient" Oecologia 141: 641-651.

Michael Loik (Post-doctoral fellow, 1993-1994)

      Research Interests: Synoptic ecohydrology, snowfall
      climatology, climate forecasting, mitigation & adaptation
      governance.

      Current Location: Associate Professor, Environmental Studies,
      University of California Santa Cruz.

Research Interests: Community-level phenomena; food web
properties; especially the effects of spatial scale, spatial structure and dispersal processes on these; the relative roles of chance events and stabilizing mechanisms in the coexistence of competing species and the implications of these roles for the stability and resilience of ecosystems.

Current Location: Assistant Professor
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan.

Sarah Richmond (M.S. ERG, 2009)

Research Interests: Geomorphology, hydrology, river restoration, GIS, California water resources management and policy.

Current Location:
Postdoctoral Scholar
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
UC Berkeley

Research Interests: Spatial patterns of species diversity, especially the species-area relationship; incentivization of conservation at the international level; teaching.

Publications while in Harte Lab:
Smith, A.B. In press. Caution with curves: Caveats for using the species-area relationship in conservation. Biological Conservation.

Sandel, B. and A.B. Smith. 2009. Scale as a lurking factor: Incorporating scale-dependence in experimental ecology. Oikos 118:1284-1291.

Smith, A.B. 2009. International biodiversity governance and the outpacing of policy by threats: How can conservation regimes address global climate change? Commissioned work (E3750) for "Managing Biosafety and Biodiversity in a Global World: EU, US, California and Comparative Perspectives" by the Center for Institutions and Governance, UC Berkeley and Centre for Global Governance Studies, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

Smith, A.B. 2009. "World Conservation Union" and "Dolphins and Porpoises" in Dutch, S.I. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Global Warming, Salem Press, Pasadena.

Harte, J., A.B. Smith, and D. Storch. 2009. Biodiversity scales from plots to biomes with a universal species-area curve. Ecology Letters 12:789-797.

Harte, J., Z.T. Zillo, E. Conlisk, and A.B. Smith. 2008. Maximum entropy and the state variable approach to macroecology. Ecology 89:2700-2711.

Srinivasan, U.T., S.P. Carey, E. Hallstein, P.A.T. Higgins, A.C. Kerr, L.E. Koteen, A.B. Smith, R. Watson, J. Harte, and R.B. Norgaard. 2008. The debt of nations and the distribution of ecological impacts from human activities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105:1768-1773.

Harte, J., E. Conlisk, A. Ostling, J.L. Green, A.B. Smith. 2005. A theory of spatial structure in ecological communities at multiple spatial scales. Ecological Monographs 75:179-197.

Scott Saleska, (Ph.D. ERG)

         Current Location:
         Assistant Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
         University of Arizona
         Tucson, AZ 85721

Research Interests: biodiversity and non-random extinctions, valuation of ecosystem services, and conservation policy.