Current projects

GLOBAL CHANGE FORECASTING FOR BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS IN CALIFORNIA

Scroll down for details on the seven integrated projects.

Overview
The BiGCB was recently awarded $2,499,234 from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in support of catalyzing the startup of the BiGCB.  This Grant, which includes faculty in eight campus departments and four of the Berkeley Natural History Museums, will support seven integrated research projects (listed below) focused on global change forecasting for California ecosystems. The overarching goal is to achieve an integrated analysis of fossil, historic and current data to uncover new knowledge of California ecosystems responses to environmental change, which will enable predictions of future ecosystem changes.  This will be achieve through two major research themes:

Baseline metrics of ecosystem change over time:
Current predictive models are usually based on the here and now rather than the natural dynamics of ecosystems. To address this deficiency, we will build the first quantitative picture of how the environment in California has changed over extended time periods and establish the baseline for understanding the interplay between climate and biotic change. This provides the foundation for understanding biological response to climate change. Analyzing more recent timeframes allows more sophisticated tools to be applied, promising a more detailed understanding of response to change. To this end, we will apply genomic, isotopic, and phenotypic technologies to modern and early 20th C specimens to understand how organisms respond to recent environmental change. Theoretical and modeling approaches required to predict future change will be developed to provide the framework for integrating the empirical data from the longer and shorter-term dynamical analyses. 

Ecosystem services & invasive species:
Key ecosystem services in California include watershed dynamics, carbon sequestration, and pollinator services. Our focus on watershed dynamics will include integrating ecological, physiological, and evolutionary responses, to understand response to change. Our research on carbon sequestration through the impacts of fire, will develop a broader picture of how fire regimes have affected ecosystems from pre-history to the present. Understanding how pollinator services have been modified over the past century will be unraveled by focusing on the changing dynamics between native and European bees, which is tightly coupled with disease. At the same time, invasive species represent a huge threat to California ecosystems; in agriculture alone, invasive pests cause an estimated $3 billion a year in losses to California. Our work on invasive species will integrate new biological tools and climate models with economic models to predict future impacts.

The suite of projects integrates the extraordinary breadth and depth of UC Berkeley faculty expertise in biological sciences and effectively leverages the unique resources of the Berkeley Natural History Museums and field stations. The projects address different aspects of complexity of global change relevant to central California. By establishing connections across disciplines and among our departments, colleges and research units, the larger project will foster novel research perspectives and will significantly broaden and enrich the training provided to the next generation of biologists engaged in understanding and managing biological response to rapid environmental change.

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Project Details

Lead PIs: Charles Marshall and Rosemary Gillespie

Overarching Outcome: An integrated analysis of fossil, historic and current data uncovers new knowledge of California ecosystems responses to environmental change, which enables predictions of future ecosystem changes.

Project 1. High Resolution Record of Past Climate Change and the Biotic Response: Drilling Clear Lake, Lake County, Central California.

Goal: Generation of a high resolution climatic, flora, entomological, and fire history record will reveal new knowledge about how terrestrial biota responded to changes in California’s climate both during and before human presence.

Lead Co-PI: Cindy Looy
Co-PIs: Anthony Barnosky, Roger Byrne, Lynn Ingram, Charles Marshall
Collaborators: David Ackerly, John Chiang, Richard Dodd, Ivo Duijnstee, Brent Mishler, Mary Power, David Wahl, Kip Will, Susan Zimmerman

Project 2. Applying Novel Tools to Museum Specimens to Detect Early Signatures of Species and Community Responses to Environmental Change.

Goal: Development and application of novel technologies that can be used as early indicators of genotypic, phenotypic and ecological responses to recent (past 100 years) and ongoing environmental change, to enable better predictions regarding response to future climatic change.

Lead Co-PI: Eileen Lacey
Co-PIs: Craig Moritz, Michael Eisen, Rasmus Nielsen, Todd Dawson
Collaborators: David Ackerly, Steve Beissinger, Maggi Kelly, Adina Merenlender, Wayne Sousa, Marjorie Matocq, Jeff Good

Project 3. Spatial analysis of biodiversity data to test and apply theory-based indicator metrics for effects of global changes in California

Goal: Integration and application of state-of-the-art ecological theories will enable the identification of California ecosystems and food webs that are at risk due to global change, and the prediction of how these systems might adapt to change.

Lead Co-PI: John Harte
Collaborators: Rosemary Gillespie, Adina Merenlender, Bruce Baldwin, Jim McGuire, Eric Berlow

Project 4. How will California’s coastal aquatic ecosystems respond to climate change and human water management? An assessment integrating physiology, populations and food webs

Goal: Understanding physiology, genomics and phylogeography of pivotal primary consumers across California’s coastal riverine ecosystems will generate new knowledge to enable predictive models of aquatic ecosystem responses to climate change and water distribution scenarios.

Lead Co-PI: Jonathon Stillman
Co-PIs: Patrick O’Grady, Mary Power, Vince Resh
Collaborators: Stephanie Carlson, Brian Ort

Project 5. The Interaction of Climatic Change, Fire Regimes, and Human Landscape Management Practices on the Central Coast of California.

Goal: An integrated study of diverse paleoenvironmental and archaeological data will provide predictions about how changes in fire regimes due to climatic variation will influence the distribution, structure, and composition of biotic communities in California under three different conditions: (1) natural conditions, (2) pyrodiveristy management, and (3) fire suppression.

Lead Co-PI: Kent Lightfoot
Co-PIs: David Ackerly
Collaborators: Roger Byrne, Josh Collins, Laurel Collins, Rand Evett, Paul Fine, Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, Christine Hastorf, Lynn Ingram, Max Moritz, Scott Stephens

Project 6. Using Genomics, Isotopes and Pollen to Illuminate the Past and Predict the Future of California Bees.

Goal: Integrative analyses of historical collections enables predictions about how honey bees, native bees, plants, and pollination activities might change in the future, in response to drivers of change such as urbanization or agricultural land conversion.

Lead Co-PI: Neil Tsutsui
Co-PIs: Todd Dawson, Cindy Looy
Collaborators: David Ackerly, Gordon Frankie, Claire Kremen, Rasmus Nielsen, Santiago Ramirez

Project 7. Invasive species in the San Francisco Bay Area: Climate change, next generation genomics, and economics.

Goal: Develop an understanding of how invasive species impact the San Francisco Bay Area in the face of climate and economic changes by integrating approaches based on invasive species biology (coupled with “next-generation” population genomic tools) with new economic analyses of patterns of trade and land use.

Lead Co-PI: George Roderick
Co-PIs: Doris Bachtrog, Nicholas Mills, Ellen Simms, Wayne Sousa, David Zilberman

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