Welcome to the Environmental Systems Dynamics Laboratory! We quantitatively study the ways in which physical, biological, and human components of the environment are linked to understand how critical ecosystems and the functions that they perform may change over time. Water flows as a theme through this research as one of the components of the environment most critical to life and indeed, perhaps the single most dominant factor sculpting the geography of Earth’s natural and human landscapes.
Links and recent collaborators
- Berkeley Geography
- Moore Foundation Data-Driven Discovery Program
- National Science Foundation
- USGS Hydroecology of Flowing Waters
- Coastal Systems Ecology Lab, LSU
- Carlson Lab, UC Berkeley
- David Kaplan, University of Florida
- Dorothy Merritts, Franklin & Marshall College
- Variano Lab, UC Berkeley
- Maarten Eppinga, Utrecht University
- Gitlab
- USGS NWIS site
Image Gallery
Tracer test in an urban stream in 2011. The metabolically active dye turns pink after serving as a substrate for microbial respiration.
Overhead view of the strikingly patterned ridge and slough landscape, Florida Everglades. Maintaining and restoring this patterning is a focus of current management efforts.
Vacuuming the Everglades. Shop vacs are used to collect flocculated organic sediment.
Simulated Everglades ridge and slough landscape. Ridges are red, and sloughs are blue.
Simulation of a floodplain with multithreaded channels and vegetation. Red color is proportional to vegetation density.
Boulder cross-vane at Accotink Creek, VA. This structure is commonly used in the natural channel design method of stream restoration.
A storm brews over the Everglades.
Example of pond-and-plug restoration of wet meadows, Plumas National Forest, CA.
Wet meadow in Sagehen Reserve, CA.
Marissa Goodman collects sediment samples from a tidal marsh.
Dry meander bend in wet meadow restoration project, CA.
Field site at Wax Lake Delta, Louisiana, showing the 10-m-long in situ flume used to conduct tracer tests of the movement of fine sediment through different vegetation communities