Ecosystem Change

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