Faculty
- Director Jay R. Lund, Engineering/Water Resources Management
- Founding Director Jeffrey F. Mount, Geology
- Associate Director Peter B. Moyle, Fish Biology
- Associate Director Mike Johnson, Ecology
- Randy A. Dahlgren, Water Quality
- Graham E. Fogg, Hydrogeology/Groundwater
- Richard Howitt, Resource Economics
- Gregory B. Pasternack, Hydrology
- S. Geoffrey Schladow, Engineering/Water Quality
- James F. Quinn, Ecology
Director Jay R. Lund
Engineering/Water Resources Management
Web site: http://cee.engr.ucdavis.edu/faculty/lund/
Jay Lund is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is on the editorial board of several water resources publications, has been a member of the Advisory Committee for the 1998 and 2005 California Water Plan Updates, and has served as Convenor of the California Water and Environment Modeling Forum (CWEMF).
His principal research interest is in the application of systems analysis, economic, and management methods to infrastructure and public works problems. He has led development and application a large-scale optimization modeling for California's water supply, as well as various other modeling studies for the management of flood control and environmental purposes. Climate warming, water marketing, conjunctive use, and integrated water resources management problems have been examined using this model. He co-authored an analysis of economical water supply alternatives to Hetch Hetchy Dam. Outside of California, he has been involved in optimization modeling of other major river systems, including the Columbia River system, the Missouri River system, South Florida, the US Southeast, and the Panama Canal. Jay Lund is also interested in integrated urban water supply planning and management, water transfers and markets and economic design and evaluation of stormwater quality management.
Founding Director Jeffrey F. Mount
Geology
Web site: http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/mount.html
Jeffrey Mount is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Geology, and the Founding Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences. He holds the Roy Shlemon Chair in Applied Geosciences, co-held the Presidents Chair in Undergraduate Education with Peter Moyle, and is the recipient of the 2005 Distinguished Scholarly Public Research Award for his contributions on issues of public concern such as flood risk, watershed management, and river restoration. Mount has served on numerous state and federal task forces and committees, has served as the Chair of the CALFED Independent Science Board, and is a former member of the California State Reclamation Board. He is the author of California Rivers and Streams: The Conflict Between Fluvial Process and Land Use (UC Press).
Mount’s research and teaching interests include fluvial geomorphology, river ecology, and water resource management. His recent research has focused on management of river and streams to meet multiple ecosystem and water supply objectives. Projects that he oversees include restoring salmonids in North Coast rivers and streams, restoration of lowland floodplains and mountain meadows, adaptive management of Sierran hydropower systems in response to climate change, and assessment of alternative futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. He co-teaches a course called Ecogeomorphology with Peter Moyle. This capstone undergraduate course provides hands on, field-based, interdisciplinary training in river and stream management.
Mount will begin a year-long sabbatical on July 1, 2009 to finish several book projects, but will remain involved in major research initiatives at the Watershed Center.
Associate Director Peter B. Moyle
Fish Biology
Web site: http://wfcb.ucdavis.edu/www/Faculty/Peter/petermoyle/
Peter Moyle is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. He is the author or co-author of more than 170 publications, including the definitive Inland Fishes of California (2002). He has served on numerous advisory bodies, including the Ecosystem Restoration Program Science Board of the California Bay-Delta Authority and the National Research Council Panel on the Klamath River. He co-holds, with Dr. Mount, the President's Chair in Undergraduate Education and co-teaches with Dr. Mount a river ecology and conservation course for undergraduates, taught each summer on a major Western river.
His research interests include conservation of aquatic species, habitats, and ecosystems, including salmon; ecology of fishes of the San Francisco Estuary; ecology of California stream fishes; impact of introduced aquatic organisms; use of flood plains by fish. He has long-term research projects in the Suisun Marsh, Putah Creek, Sierra Nevada streams, and the Cosumnes River.
Associate Director Mike Johnson
Ecology
Web site: http://johnmuir.ucdavis.edu/aeal/people/johnson.html
Mike Johnson is an Associate Research Scientist in Ecology, and the Director of the Aquatic Ecosystem Analysis Laboratory.
The AEAL Lab is involved in a number of projects that investigate the effects of stressors on aquatic ecosystems. It often uses a comparative approach and performs research in locations that range from California to Alaska.
His current research interests include understanding the effects of temperature stress on salmonids throughout their life cycle, understanding watershed processes that contribute to temperature stress on salmonids, and applying sophisticated statistical techniques to evaluate the sources of stressors in watersheds, their impacts on abiotic and biotic components of the ecosystem, and measuring aquatic ecosystem health.
Randy A. Dahlgren
Water Quality
Web site: http://lawr.ucdavis.edu/directory_facultypages.htm?id=7
Randy Dahlgren is a Professor of Soil Science and Biogeochemistry in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. He is director of the TMDL Research and Technical Support Program, which provides research and technical support for water quality issues in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers.
His principal research interest is watershed-scale biogeochemistry, including interactions of hydrological, geochemical, and biological processes in regulating groundwater and surface water chemistry. Recent research includes:
- Rangeland water quality using paired watersheds to examine prescribed fire and grazing effects on nutrients, sediments and pathogens
- Land use - water quality relationships at the large watershed scale
- Effects of dams, dam removal and controlled release floods on water quality
- Effects of floodplain restoration on water quality and lower food web dynamics
- Hypoxia in the lower San Joaquin River
- Water quality - food resource dynamics in California rivers
- Temporal patterns in water quality (inter-annual, seasonal, storm event, diel)
- Wetlands as a best-management practice for treating irrigation tailwaters
- Groundwater chemistry in hypersaline Owens Dry Lake
Graham E. Fogg
Hydrogeology/Groundwater
Web site: http://lawr.ucdavis.edu/directory_facultypages.htm?id=9
Graham Fogg is Professor of Hydrogeology in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources.
His research interests include groundwater contaminant transport; groundwater basin characterization and management; geologic/geostatistical characterization of subsurface heterogeneity for improved pollutant transport modeling; numerical modeling of groundwater flow and contaminant transport; role of molecular diffusion in contaminant transport and remediation; long-term sustainability of regional groundwater quality; vulnerability of aquifers to non-point-source groundwater contaminants.
His work with the Watershed Center has included an important study documenting groundwater conditions in the Lower Cosumnes River, and showing the impact of those conditions on various plans to increase fall flows for salmon.
Richard Howitt
Resource Economics
Web site: http://www.agecon.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/info.php?id=19
Richard Howitt is Professor and Chair of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. He has published widely on agricultural and environmental resource allocation issues, with special emphasis on agricultural land use, water markets and the application of optimization models to resource allocation questions. He is a member of the Western Agricultural Economics Association of Environmental and Resource Economics and is a reviewer for seven scholarly journals. He is a member of the Watershed Center’s Delta Solutions Group, and is a co-author of the 2007 Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
His research interests include building computer models of how land and water are used, and their calibration to G.I.S-based data sets. He is currently engaged in an analysis of land use patterns in the Delta and in an assessment of potential economic outcomes for agriculture and recreation in the Delta’s primary zone under different flooding and water quality scenarios.
Gregory B. Pasternack
Hydrology
Web site: http://lawr.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gpast/index.htm
Greg Pasternack is a Professor of Watershed Hydrology in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources.
His research interests include: geomorphic and hydrologic characterization of the impacts of historic and modern human activities on watershed and estuarine processes; river restoration; watershed-estuarine interactions on multiple time scales; wetland restoration.
His work with the Watershed Center has included an analysis of the paleogeology of a Delta island in order to identify constraints upon restoration; and the development of integrated approach to the rehabilitation of salmon spawning habitat below dams.
S. Geoffrey Schladow
Engineering/Water Quality
Web site: http://cee.engr.ucdavis.edu/faculty/schladow/Default.htm
Geoffrey Schladow is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center. He serves on numerous federal, state and local government committees, providing technical advice on lake, stream and estuary systems throughout California.
His principal area of research interest is the interaction between fluid transport and mixing processes with water quality in natural and engineered systems. Using a combination of field experimentation and numerical modeling, he is better quantifying the critical flux paths in these systems. His recent research has included the development of the Lake Tahoe Clarity Model, the modeling of eutrophication in the Salton Sea, the use of remote sensing for measuring water currents and water quality, and the measurement and modeling of flows in the Napa-Sonoma marsh complex.
His work with the Watershed Center has included the modeling of North Delta restoration and flood flows, and the measurement and modeling of the hydrodynamics and oxygen stratification in the Stockton Deep Water Ship Channel.
James F. Quinn
Ecology
Web site: http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/QUINN.htm
Jim Quinn is a Professor of Environmental Studies in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy. He is also Director of the Information Center for the Environment, leader of the California Information Node (CAIN) of the National Biological Information Infrastructure and editor of a new e-journal, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science.
His current research interests include conservation biology, biodiversity, environmental applications of Semantic Web technologies, the use of geospatial information systems to assess biodiversity, land use, and water quality, international databases and information sharing on invasive species and species in protected areas, watershed and floodplain analysis, and the dynamics and restoration of the San Francisco Bay - Sacramento Delta ecosystem. Past research programs also include work on marine intertidal communities, Pacific Coast marine fisheries, marine protected areas, and conservation biology as applied to parks and nature preserves.
His work with the Watershed Center has included data management, spatial analysis and measurement of terrestrial changes for the Cosumnes Research Group's 6-year study of flooding and restoration at the Cosumnes River Preserve. He is the lead PI on phase II of the Cosumnes Research Group's work at the Preserve.