Spectrum

In critical spawning and overwintering habitat for salmonids Hwan studies the effects of temporal stream fragmentation across three organizational levels of ecology: population, community, and ecosystem levels.

Transcript

Speaker 1:        Spectrum's next 

Speaker 2:        [inaudible].

Speaker 1:        [00:01:00] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news. 

Speaker 3:        Hi, my name is Brad Swift. I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with Jason won a third year phd student in the Carlson lab, which is [00:01:30] part of the environmental science policy and Management Department of the College of natural resources. Professor Stephanie Carlson directs the lab and she is a fish ecologist. Jason is researching the effects of summertimes stream drying on fish ecology in the John West fork, a creek in Marin county. The John West fork is the spawning grounds for two varieties of salmon the summer of 2011 Woolmark the third year of his research on this stream. [00:02:00] His research will continue for two and possibly three more years. This interview is prerecorded and edited. 

Speaker 4:        Jason, welcome to spectrum. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. Wanted to ask if you could, uh, give us a brief overview of your research and add in there how it's being funded. My research is looking at the effects of low summer flow on juvenile steelhead, on the insect communities out in the stream and [00:02:30] on certain ecosystem processes such as Algal production and leaf decomposition. And it's currently being funded by, mostly by my, by my guiding professor, Stephanie Carlson. And I also have some funding from our department and the division within our department. All right. We get out a sperm wildlife grant, which helps fund the research. And also I'm currently on an NSF graduate research fellowship. Described the, the general [00:03:00] area of the site that you chose. Sort of put it in context of where it is. So my study say, uh, the John West work is in point Reyes national seashore, which is about an hour north of Berkeley in a national park in and surrounded by some state parks. 

Speaker 4:        Also. Can you explain the watershed and the area that you're working, how it all interrelates to the watershed? So I'm, I'm working in the Lagunitas watershed. I'm working [00:03:30] in a creek that is a tributary of a tributary of a creek to the lock Anitas to log in neatest creek and log Anitas creek flows into Tomas Bay in point rays. The creek that I'm working in is a little different in that there are only two species of fish up there. Both our salt Monets, there are still head and coho salmon. This is because it's not that the creek went dry, completely dry one year and there's, there [00:04:00] was a culvert that was put in place and other fish species weren't able to recolonize the creek, but someone had adults can jump over the barrier. And so they were able to recolonize the creek and they're actually jumping through the culvert. 

Speaker 4:        Yeah. And through this culvert and swimming up swimming into the two John West work. And what's the drop on the culvert like from, from the the bottom lip to the dead of the bid. Lower part [00:04:30] of the creek. It's about four feet. Four feet drop-off. Yeah. So that's quite a leap for the salmon. Yeah. And so with this study, what is it that you're trying to learn? That is not already known. So I'm basically trying to look at the effects of low flow and my study is really looking at what the affects are at a really fine scale. So I'm tracking, uh, juvenile steel head growth, movement and survival and I'm tracking them on a weekly basis. So [00:05:00] it's pretty fine scale monitoring, which is something that hasn't really been been carried out before. And the low-flow period is when, uh, the low, the low flow start after the last records. 

Speaker 4:        And as the, as a temperature gets warmer, the stream starts to dry and it pretty much lasts throughout the summer until the first rains of the following year. Are you collaborating with other people on your project? Not directly with my lab mates on [00:05:30] my project. Sometimes they might come out and help me, but for the most part I've been working alone with the help of some undergraduates. There are certain side projects that we collaborate on. Um, there's also a person who is working with me from, uh, from a different department. He's not really working on my project, but, uh, something that's related to my project out on my field site. It mean it helps both of you? Yeah, definitely. And is that going to have some bearing is his, his [00:06:00] work or her work and I have some impact on your results. It definitely is connected. It is connected to, I'm more at the temperature and looking at how stratification and pull temperature stratification in pools might affect fish behavior. 

Speaker 4:        So where, where they kind of hang out in the pool. So that's something that could definitely help us fold into your report. Yeah, exactly. So in doing your research [00:06:30] and working in the field as opposed to, uh, if you're working in the field and the lab, how much time do you spend in the field and in the lab? Um, when I'm out during the summer, uh, during my field season, it's a pretty big chunk of it. About 80 to 85% is probably spent in the field and the remainder is spent in the lab. Um, but once the summer is over and on, the field season is over. Most of the time is spent in the lab, um, [00:07:00] crunching data, processing samples and stuff like that. 

Speaker 5:        [inaudible]

Speaker 2:        you're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Today we're talking with Jason Juan about his research into summertime streaming drying its effect on Fish Collagen

Speaker 5:        [00:07:30] [inaudible]. 

Speaker 4:        And so was there fish breeding going on in this part of the Stream? I would assume that that's the reason they're up there. Yeah. So one of the adults jump up into the stream. They breed typically during the winter when the rains, they come back with the rains [00:08:00] and they breed and the eggs hatch and spring. And then I kind of track the juveniles once they get to a large enough size to be able to monitor to them. So as you start to go up in the early spring, you're seeing lots of of small fish. Yeah. And it's so the fish that have spawned, have they left then or are do some stay? Yeah, but most of them have left. They're too large to stay in some of these pools. So most of them leave and with the Coho that or [00:08:30] they die right after they breed because they just breed once and they die. 

Speaker 4:        But with the, with the steelhead, they're able to breed multiple times. And Are you tracking it all that mortality of the coho that are coming up and breeding? No, but the park service is definitely keeping track of adults, adult spawners they go up every winter and quantify the amount of a salmon reds, which are the nests that someone is build. And they also try to [00:09:00] keep track of how many fish, adult fish that they see. Talk about the insects in the fish in the same context of the frequency. So with, with the insects, um, it's, it's a pretty disturbing method to go and collect them. So we try not to collect them too frequently. We recollect them once at the beginning of the summer and again at the end of the summer. So we don't want to disturb the habitat too much that we have to kind of dig in [00:09:30] to the stream and it just disrupts, disrupts things a lot. 

Speaker 4:        So we try to keep the frequency down and with the fish, um, we go out again, it's similar to to the insects that's we have to go and shock them and which as you can imagine, um, is quite stressful to the fish. So we shock them once in the beginning, beginning of the summer and we place pit tags into them, um, which allows us to monitor them across [00:10:00] the summer without having to actually handle them. Also, while we, um, capture them during the first event, we weigh them and measure them. And then during the late season capture event, we weigh them and measure them again and we're able to identify which the fish that were tagged, we were able to determine their growth rates and their survival. In addition, we can monitor them using the pet tags. We have a, a [00:10:30] handheld antenna that we take out and we just place it over the stream and we're able to find out where they're located or, and also if they're other still alive. 

Speaker 4:        So that happens pretty much once a week. So the pet tag is like a radio. Gotcha. Yeah, it's an audio id, tariff id similar to what is found in a for pets, the microchips that they use for pets. And then you can also measure the mortality with that as well I guess if, yeah, so we go [00:11:00] out and we try to track their movement and also if we find a pit tag, we just kind of disturb the area around, uh, around the tag lightly. And if, if the tag isn't moving, then we kind of can surmise that there has been a mortality event that that occurred. Do you remove the fish or the die or now it's pretty hard to find them because we don't track them every day. So, so things happen [00:11:30] within the week and sometimes we kind of look around for the tag but it's pretty hard to find the tag. 

Speaker 4:        But if we do come across any fish we do, we do take you back to the lab. Any dead Fisher and they are often tagged or have they not? Some of them are just untagged. We try to tag as many fish that we can capture at that are a certain size. They to be a certain size and size for them. So we do try to capture and tag every fish that is of [00:12:00] a certain size, but whether we do within that period of time that you can do the, that you're doing the tagging because you try to limit that. Yeah. How long is that period? What do you do? I've tried to do it all in a week. Three to four days. The tagging, the taking takes about three to four days. The caption and taking. And what's that like in terms of a process? Is it, is it you and a bunch of people doing it together? 

Speaker 4:        Yeah. Take a little group out. Yeah, we actually took a group out, um, and we actually stayed out there for the three, three or four days. We wanted to get an early start [00:12:30] in the day and it takes about an hour to get, get out there each day. So we just decided to stay out there and it's actually quite fun. Um, most, most people really everybody volunteers to do to do like fish capturing. They're like, oh yeah, I want to do that. It's something that the interns really enjoyed. So is that time that you're in the creek, are you actually standing in the creek? So I, yeah, I actually get into the creek and I have a, an electrical Fisher and I move through the creek, [00:13:00] shocking the fish and there are a couple of them matters beside me on the scoop up any fish that had been shocked and we placed them into a bucket and then from there we kind of weigh them and measure them after, after all the fish have been captured for a certain pool. So you do this pool by Paul? Yeah, exactly. 

Speaker 5:        You [00:13:30] are listening to spectrum on KLX Berkeley. We're talking with Jason y about his researching the summertime scream drying and its effect. 

Speaker 4:        So Jason, how did you get interested in science when you were in high school, say or college? [00:14:00] I've always kind of really been interested in science as a kid. I really enjoyed reading science textbooks and it was as one of my favorite subjects and I just decided to stick with it. And I, I majored as a, as a biology student. And what about it appealed to you when you were young? It was like, it was the investigative process, [00:14:30] I guess that that appealed to me. It was just something that you can go out and observe and I really like that, that you can, you can actually just go out and see how nature works. And I was really fascinated by that. So biology was sort of the entree and then as you went through high school, College, yeah, I majored in biology and I really enjoyed my ecology class, just getting up out [00:15:00] there and I wasn't too keen on the molecular side of biology, but the ecological part aspect of it was really fun to get out there and observe things. And, and so it was it field work then that led you to streams? Yeah, I actually worked as a, as an undergraduate. I worked with a professor of mine and he would take me out into streams in southern California and it was quite a great experience for me. And what sort of work and studies research [00:15:30] was he doing? He was, he was doing, uh, population, uh, studies of endangered and threatened fish in southern California. 

Speaker 4:        So when you're in the lab, what sort of data are you gathering? So for instance, with the leaf litter bags and the Algo production, um, when we come back from the field we have to process those samples. So we deploy tiles and we have to scrape off the LG from the tiles. And then we [00:16:00] have to run an analysis to quantify chlorophyll production. With the leaflet or bags that we set out, we bring them back and we, we way leaves in them and quantify how much leaf litter mass has been lost across time. What is it about the algae that you want to know in the river? With both the algae and the leaf litter, we want to see how the stream drying effects say Algal PR productivity or leaf litter decomposition. So we want [00:16:30] to see how much, how much Algo productivity there is in the early part of the summer when or when the stream is still pretty connected. 

Speaker 4:        And then again, we want to track that change over time to see how productivity changes as the string gets dry and dry and with the leaf decomposition, same thing, seeing it over the, over the time, yeah. We want to see how decomposition rates change as the stream gets dryer and with that we're finding that decomposition rates slowed down quite a bit. [00:17:00] As the stream dries, there's less microbial activity, less insect funner to shut up the leaves. Are there other key data points that you're collecting out of the stream? Yes. I'm trying to measure the volume of water in the creek. Mostly the volume of water in between the pools of the fast flowing portions called riffles. I tried to measure how much water is in these portions and I go out pretty much every week and measure the dimensions [00:17:30] of the riffles and I'm able to get volume on every week and I'm able to quantify how this volume gets smaller and smaller every week. Eventually these, these pools are isolated and there's no more flow exactly. Between pools. Yeah. The, the riffles just most of them completely dry up by the end of summer. 

Speaker 3:        And so the fish are then isolated in these, yeah, they're isolated. 

Speaker 4:        The there aren't able to move among the different pools 

Speaker 3:        at this point. Is it too soon in your study to, to [00:18:00] reflect on what you might conclude? Well, I'm, 

Speaker 4:        I'm already seeing some pretty drastic inter-annual variation and precipitation in the area. So as I mentioned earlier, 2009 was a very dry and that was your first year? Yeah, 2009 was a very dry year, so I noticed that there was quite a bit of a mortality for the fishes. Uh, this past year, 2010 and during that summer was a lot wetter. There was a lot more habitat for the fish. A survival was a lot higher. So [00:18:30] Marty seen, uh, some significant results in terms of inter annual variation and how more extreme temperatures and extreme dry might influence the fish population. 

Speaker 3:        Is there any part of water quality that you're measuring? 

Speaker 4:        Temperature and a dissolved oxygen levels? Not In terms of pollution really, but a temperature and dissolved oxygen are are really key for [00:19:00] some almond species in particular, they require cool temperatures that are pretty well oxygenated. 

Speaker 3:        The information that you're getting from your study will have an impact on other streams and creek management potentially. Yeah, that's, that's my hope 

Speaker 4:        is that especially in certain areas where water withdrawals occur and there needs to be a certain amount of a water, hopefully our findings can maybe influence these areas where water withdrawals occur in the [00:19:30] stream comes even more dry than they typically should naturally. 

Speaker 3:        Jason, thanks very much for coming in and talking about your research. Yes. 

Speaker 6:        Oh, 

Speaker 7:        [inaudible].

Speaker 3:        A regular feature of spectrum is dimension. [00:20:00] A few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Joining me this week to bring you the calendar is Rick Karnofsky. 

Speaker 8:        In 1848 gold was discovered in the Sierra Nevada mountains luring people by the thousands to California. Join Ranger Tammy on Saturday, August 13th from 11 to noon to find out how this event changed the San Francisco Bay forever at the Bay model visitors center in Sausalito. This is a free event on Saturday August 13th at 4:30 PM Christopher de Carlo [00:20:30] will present how to be a really good pain in the ass. A critical thinkers guide to asking the right questions at Kelly's Irish pub, five 30 Jackson Street, San Francisco visit. Reason for reason.org for more info. That's r. E a s o n, the number four R e a. S. O. N. Dot. O. R. G. 

Speaker 3:        The science at Kow lecture series for August will be presented by Dr Willie Michaelson and is entitled nanotechnology, Enabling Environmental Monitoring. [00:21:00] Dr Michelson is the executive director of the center of Integrated Nano Mechanical Systems known as coin's, a nanoscale science and Engineering Center headquartered at UC Berkeley dedicated to enabling and realizing novel environmental monitoring applications using nanotechnology. The date of the lecture is Saturday, August 20th at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room. 100 

Speaker 8:        August 17th center night takes [00:21:30] place at the rickshaw. Stop. One 55 [inaudible] street at Van Ness in San Francisco from seven 30 to 10:00 PM at this $8 old age of show you'll hear talks about winery building, a virtual reality chocolate factory and neutrophils, one of the first immune cells to reach infection sites. Be there and be square. Visit SF dot [inaudible] Dot Com that's SF dot n e r, d an ite.com 

Speaker 8:        nightlife takes place Thursday nights from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM at the California [00:22:00] Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It is 21 and over and pictures music, cocktails and exhibits centered around a theme. In addition, the regular exhibits such as the rainforest and planetarium will be open. August 25th nightlife is on dinosaurs. Paleo lab will present a fossil shone till featuring trilobytes Coprolites, Aka fossilized dyno poop and other amazing fines that are 65 to 500 million years old. Check out additional specimens from the academy's research collections and at dyno burlesque. Show [00:22:30] the planetarium will feature cosmic collisions, a fulldome show depicting the hypersonic impacts that drive the evolution of the universe, including a recreation of the meteorite impact that hastened the end of the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Clearing the way for mammals like us to thrive admission is $12 for more info and for tickets, visit www.cal academy.org that's www dot c a l a c a d e m y dot o r g 

Speaker 3:        [00:23:00] and now several news stories. This item from the inside science news service scientists battle the dramatic declines of honeybee colonies with targeted breeding. There are a handful of pests and diseases that individually and in combination are causing unprecedented mortality in [00:23:30] honeybee colonies in Europe and North America. Serious efforts are being made to find solutions that can eradicate the pests and diseases. While the search for a solution continues. Researchers in Canada and the United States are attempting to bees that are resistant to Mites and viruses that attack bee colonies. The breeding process exposes the Queens to high levels of what is termed disease pressure. According to Rob Curie, professor of entomology [00:24:00] at the University of Manitoba. The survivors are then bred next season and so on. Seven generations have been bred so far. We are looking for bees that are resistant to mites and with a greater tolerance to viruses because they appear to be the two main factors behind colony loss. 

Speaker 3:        QRI said and added breeding attribute pursued by the Canadian breeders is the ability to withstand the brutal North American winters. Curious said [00:24:30] that normally only 46% of the species known as European honeybees survive the Canadian winter, but the newest generations have a 75% survival rate. The total losses from managed honeybee colonies in the United States were 30% from all causes for the 2010 2011 winter according to the annual survey conducted by the US Department of Agriculture and the apiary inspectors of America. [00:25:00] This is roughly similar to the losses reported in similar surveys done in the four previous years. This story from Metta page today, lab grown trickier implanted in patient June 9th, 2011 at the Karolinska University Hospital in hunting, Stockholm, Sweden. Dr Paolo Macchiarini implanted the first ever bio artificial trachea grown on a synthetic [00:25:30] substrate using the patient's own stem cells. The patient was a 36 year old cancer patient for this procedure. Dr Macchiarini and his colleagues collected stem cells from the patient who had late stage tracheal cancer since no suitable donor windpipe was available. The researchers used a nano composite tracheal scaffold designed and built by Alexander Se Follian Phd of the University College London. [00:26:00] They seated the polymer model with auto Lucas stem cells. These are blood forming stem cells and grew them for two days in a bioreactor. Dr Mk Jadine says there's no room for rejection because of the cells are the patient's own. Thus, there is no need for him to be on immuno suppressive drugs. 

Speaker 2:        [inaudible] [00:26:30] occurred during the show is pointless on a David Kearns album, folk and acoustic made available for creative Commons license 3.0 attribution [inaudible] mm editing assistance provided by Judith White Marceline production assistance provided by [00:27:00] Karnofsky [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear if you have comments or questions, please send them to us via email address. Is Spectrum. K A l s yahoo.com 

Speaker 5:        [00:27:30] genius at this same time. [inaudible] 

Speaker 2:        [inaudible]

Speaker 5:        [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:28:00] [inaudible].

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CRS engages educators, students, and scientists in an innovative web of science learning resources, transforming science education. CRS is a group of educators and scientists working together to excite children about learning through scientific exploration of the world.

Transcript

Speaker 1:        [inaudible].

Speaker 2:        [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x, Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program, bringing you interviews, featuring bay area scientists and technologists, a calendar of local events and news. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Our interview is with three representatives of the organization, community resources for science, also known as crs. They are, relieves [00:01:00] a is cotton Nova crs program, Assistant Professor Bob Bergman of the UC Berkeley Department of chemistry. And Miriam Bowering, a graduate student and Professor Bergman's research group. Community Resources for Science is a nonprofit organization. The goal of crs is to help teachers give elementary and middle school students more opportunities to do science, to ask questions, test ideas, get their hands [00:01:30] on real science activities. Through these efforts, crs hopes to inspire the next generation of thinkers, makers, problem solvers, and leaders. This interview is prerecorded and edited today. We have a group of three people from the community resources for science talking with us about their program. And why don't you each introduce yourself and then we'll get into some details about your organization.

Speaker 3:        [00:02:00] My name is [inaudible]. Uh, I'm the program assistant at community resources for science.

Speaker 4:        My name is Bob Bergman. I'm a professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley. And I help to organize an outreach program, which was initially called chemistry in the classroom and then became community in the classroom and now it's called basis and it helps to organize graduate students to do presentations in the local schools.

Speaker 3:        I'm Miriam Bowering. I am a graduate student in chemistry at UC [00:02:30] Berkeley and I'm also a classroom volunteer. I bring groups of my coworkers into fifth grade classrooms to do science with them.

Speaker 2:        We're Alyssa, can you give us an overview of what crs does?

Speaker 3:        Community resources for science is an organization that was started by two parents who were involved with a lot of science in their children's schools and they decided that there was now enough science being done, so they figured out a way to individual teachers [00:03:00] get the resources that they need, uh, Ba snails from a local store or books that they need, um, or waste organized field trips. And it evolved into bringing scientists into classrooms to do hands on presentations as well. And that's grown from that? Uh, yeah. I mean now we're able to organize hundreds of volunteers that we have go into, uh, over 280 classrooms this past year [00:03:30] and get kids involved in doing actual science. And where is it that, uh, that you do this? What school districts? Uh, yeah, we are primarily in Alameda County and the Berkeley and Oakland School districts, uh, that we do the actual presentations because um, our volunteers can reach those areas most easily those schools.

Speaker 3:        But we go out and provide services to teachers and Castro valley as well. And some of the other West [00:04:00] Contra Costa County schools. What's the grade range that you try to impact? Crs as an organization has been supporting teachers k through five from its beginnings and we've started expanding into middle schools, so mostly sixth grade, um, because they still have one science teacher, but seventh and eighth they kind of start to branch out into different subjects. However, we do still work with teachers in seventh and eighth grade and we're very [00:04:30] willing to provide them with the personal support on an individual basis that they might need, you know, requesting resources and things like that. And we do go into middle schools and do science days where we have four or five lessons going on for different classrooms and they do, you know, one set in the morning and then they switch it around and do another set in the afternoon. And for teachers to get involved, how did they do that? Free?

Speaker 5:        Uh, yes it is. I think they can just visit the website, [00:05:00] which is www.crscience.org all the information they need is there. So they can not only contact crs to get scientists into their classrooms, but they can also look for other kinds of resources on the website there.

Speaker 3:        How do you find volunteers? How do you go about recruiting a, we actually recruited a lot more volunteers this past year than [00:05:30] we have in the past. And we're really excited about that. And thanks to our campus coordinators, Leah and Kristen, we were able to really reach out to 20 of the departments on campus and we have volunteers from 20th think what is their 21 departments here at UC Berkeley? So we're really proud of that. And Bob has done a great job of really getting the word out in the Department of Chemistry and college chemistry. A little bit about, how about the history of that is

Speaker 4:        this really started [00:06:00] almost accidentally. I was at a party and one of the people from crs was someone that my wife had gone to a graduate school at UC Berkeley with and she said that they were thinking about trying to get more scientists into the classrooms and wondered if I knew of anybody who wanted to do that. So I said I would go back to the campus and send out an email message in my department and just see if anyone was interested in doing that because it must have been seven or eight [00:06:30] years ago, I guess. And we started with a group of about 12 volunteers. Uh, we met in a seminar room in the chemistry department and I think it was probably one of the original organizers. It was probably Anne Jennings who came over and gave a short talk about what crs was all about and what they wanted to do to organize this program.

Speaker 4:        It's not a very simple thing. You not only need to have good contacts with the teachers, but, uh, you can't just throw people [00:07:00] into the classroom directly. You've got to give them some training and, you know, get them to understand what, um, what's age appropriate. Especially for the classes we were targeting, which were grades three to five. So we started with those 12 people and they basically, at that time, I put together their own presentations. And one of the interesting things about this program is that the graduate student volunteers actually come up with their own presentations, mostly isn't canned presentations that they get some [00:07:30] from somewhere else and they've come with, come up with some extremely creative stuff. Um, they're teaching kids at this level of things that I personally, you know, are really relatively sophisticated. And I personally never thought that you'd be able to, you know, sort of do this with people at that age.

Speaker 4:        But that was reasonably successful and it's really been the graduate student volunteers who've done most of the recruiting. So it started out in the chemistry department and these 12 original people [00:08:00] began to kind of, you know, dragoon their friends into doing this. And so it grew from 12 to 20 to 40 to 50 and then they began to attract and talk to some people in other departments. And then we reached a point where we thought that maybe there was a slightly different way that we could do this. They came up with the idea that maybe instead of doing this on an individual basis, we could do it with teams of graduate students. You may know that [00:08:30] that in most science departments, graduate students are part of research groups. So there'll be one professor who directs a, you know, a bunch of graduate students whom anywhere from three or four to 15 or 20 people, sometimes larger.

Speaker 4:        Uh, so the idea was to now put together teams that would be localized. Each team would be localized in a particular research group that and that has several advantages. One was that someone who wanted to do this didn't have to join in as kind of a lone individual. There's [00:09:00] always a certain reticence about that. The other thing that I think major advantage of this change was that it generated some continuity so that graduate students are not here forever or at least we hope they are not. And uh, as they graduate and before they graduate, they begin to bring in new students first year students who see that this program is going on and see that there are people who are interested in excited about it. And so that really is a major attraction for people to sign up.

Speaker 1:        [00:09:30] [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley we are talking with release has gotten over Professor Bob Bergman and Miriam Bowering about their work with community resources for science.

Speaker 4:        Yeah, I would say that one of the other things [00:10:00] that I worried about when we started this program was what, what their response was going to be from the research directors. That professors that these graduate students we're working with. Okay. Because you know, you, you could envision, um, somebody giving these kids a hard time because you know, they should be in the lab doing research and here they are out doing presentations in the local schools. I've seen my role as trying to, at least in the chemistry department, keep the faculty informed about what's going on. So right from the beginning when we started [00:10:30] this, uh, I, you know, got up at several meetings. My Chemistry Department faculty meets once a week and I gave several very short presentations telling people that graduate students were going to be doing this and that we hope that everybody would be supportive of it because we thought it was not only good for them educationally, but it was a real service to the community.

Speaker 4:        One of the things that that actually made this thing go much more smoothly than I might've thought is that a lot of people are supported, their research is supported by the National Science Foundation at [00:11:00] Berkeley and the National Science Foundation has actually required as part of their proposals, something called a statement of broader impact. And one of those broader impacts that you can put into your proposals is something about how people in your research group might be, you know, reaching out to the local community. So I think as time went on, people began to view this not so much as an incursion, as a favor to them because they could easily then put in their proposals the fact that their students were [00:11:30] involved in this and these activities. And I think that really was one of the things that that made it a lot less of a problem to do this and many research groups around the, around the campus, what is the teaching philosophy you apply to building your lesson plans?

Speaker 4:        There's a lot of, you know, ambiguity's about the research that's been done in educating people. One thing comes through extremely clearly and that is the two general ways that you can think of [00:12:00] or for educating people, and this is really true at any level including the college level, are to stand up in front of them and just talk at them and the other is get people involved in doing things, have them actually do hands on stuff. On the two founders started this, they knew that that kind of research had been done and so they started from the beginning making it clear to people that they were not the volunteers. I mean that they were not going to go in the classroom and just a lecture. Okay, just write things on the board and tell people stuff because [00:12:30] certainly at grades three to five and probably at even higher grades, you're going to lose people after about the first three minutes when you do that. So the, the goal of right from the beginning was to go in with presentations that involved having the kids do stuff that with their own hands and that's been something that we've stuck with really I think quite religiously since the beginning.

Speaker 5:        Definitely all lessons are expected to be hands on minds, [00:13:00] on, uh, inquiry style work. And Bob mentioned that the typical way you get to scientists in a classroom is someone's mom or dad comes in. And also typically what you get is someone's stands at the front and maybe doesn't talk but maybe just blow something up up there, which is fun for everyone. But it's, it's really great to go in there and gives the kids equipment to play with and let them start figuring things out themselves and, [00:13:30] and be able to guide them. I think it's also interesting to see the way we're able to even help educate teachers a little bit about how science works. So I've seen some really amazing teachers through this program, but you know, none of them are scientists and a lot of them don't really understand basically what it takes to be a scientist.

Speaker 5:        So at the end we usually give a few minutes to talk about any questions the teacher or students might have. And the teachers say, well, what does it take to be a scientist? [00:14:00] Um, and we might say, well just keep observing the world around you. Stay curious, play with things. And the teacher says, so what they meant to say was study hard and no, no, that's not it. You've got to be able to nurture that natural curiosity kids have. So I think that's a big part of what we do is go in there and kill some myths about what it takes to be a scientist. The great thing about the graduate [00:14:30] students that go in is they shatter stereotypes about scientists for the children. What do you see clip art style in your head when someone says scientist. Right. And that's not what ends up in their classroom. And that's really beautiful to see them kind of taken aback by that. When scientists first in, you know,

Speaker 3:        young and most of our volunteers are female actually, which is another great plus and young female scientists [00:15:00] doing things that kids didn't think was science.

Speaker 4:        Yeah. I think that it just turns out that graduate students are almost the ideal place in people's Times of life to do this. I have a bit more time flexibility. They still are still working very hard on their research, but you know, it's not, you know, okay, you have to be here at eight o'clock in the morning, you have to leave at five, you know, the way you would in a corporation setting. They're not overly wellmed with classes, at least not [00:15:30] after the first couple of semesters. So they have some flexibility in, in that regard. And there's a reasonable support from the institution. Right. I think that's a big issue that the, the campus and you know, and uh, as I said to a large extent, the, you know, people's research advisors have really provided a lot of at least moral support for this. And so it, it really makes graduate students almost ideal.

Speaker 4:        I think what relates is said about, you know, shattering these stereotypes is also has been a really interesting sort of eye opener for me. [00:16:00] It really is true that these kids have a very different stereotype about what scientists are from what they see coming into the classrooms and having people who they see almost as kind of corresponding to s you know, to a big sister or cousin or you know, somebody that, you know, they really can relate to I think has had a big effect. And then having people at, you know, sort of the student time of their lives when they're still young enough to be, to be seen as young people by the kids in the classrooms [00:16:30] as I think been an important facet of this. [inaudible]

Speaker 1:        [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum on k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with releases, got Nova Professor Bob Burg and Miriam Bowery about their work with community resources for science.

Speaker 3:        [00:17:00] How do you assess the impact your presentations have on students?

Speaker 4:        Um, no. You put your finger on one of the stickiest issues with respect to all of this kind of thing with respect to education in general, which is not only how do you find out if it works, but how do you define what works? And you know, whether something works and what doesn't, [00:17:30] I think when all of us like to do in the most perfect world is, is actually track the people who experience these presentations and see what difference it makes in their lives. Okay. So this is a big deal, right? Because if you know anything about research in general and educational research, it's not enough to just track the people who have had this experience. You've got to have a control group of people who haven't had the experience, right? And then you've got to track two groups. [00:18:00] And you know, in some ways it's, it's like having a drug that's really effective.

Speaker 4:        There's a real moral question as to whether it's okay to keep a control group that isn't, doesn't have access to this stuff. Right? But assuming you can do that, um, it would require way more resources than we have to track people, let's say to the point where they've applied to college, right? Or even to the point where they've gone through college to see how successful they've been once they've been in that environment. What we hope and what we sort of believe [00:18:30] deep in our hearts completely intuitively is that people who have these experiences will do better later in their educational lives. But proving that in a scientifically respectable way is a major undertaking and it's one that we really don't have resources for by any means right now. So, you know, we're pretty much working under the, the faith I guess that exposing people to this sort of thing will really make them [00:19:00] more interested in science.

Speaker 4:        So we really believe quite strongly that a, a major impact of this is not just, you know, generating people who, who might turn out to be scientists. Although we certainly hope that would be one of the things that that happens. But we'd really like to educate the general public on scientific issues, how science is done and why it's exciting and the meaning of many scientific investigations is, and we hope that by catching people catching, you know, kids early [00:19:30] and doing this, uh, really will have a lasting effect. The best we can do is get feedback from the people involved in the program and see whether they like it. And if they like it and they feel it's been successful and there you are at the point at which they're experiencing these presentations, if if they're excited about what we're doing. That's what we're going with.

Speaker 5:        This is the great thing about community resources for science. There is a staff there who are experts in science education, [00:20:00] so I sent my lesson plan draft to Heidi Williamson who coordinates the basis program and she read it. She gave me a long email with lots of suggestions of various levels of detail and I worked them in and I continued to develop as now my team members are giving me feedback and so are the teachers. So the lessons really do get improved over time from that first draft. It's not, it's not just any graduate student can make something up and go in and help the kids [00:20:30] learn something. There really is some accountability [inaudible]

Speaker 4:        are there any interesting stories that any of you have that you want to share about classroom experiences with with the program?

Speaker 5:        My favorite moments in there are when kids really put stuff together. So when they hear what we've told them and they make their observations and then they just come up with something good at their own theory for why a water job looks different from an [00:21:00] oil drop and it really makes sense or why you can get a piece of pencil lead to float on water if it's horizontal but not vertical. And when they can explain that themselves after making the observations, it's just, it's incredibly high ventilation rates if you're not right under the dots, but they actually aren't accomplishing anything in terms of air quality. So that's my plug, I guess, for people to pay attention and think about their environment. Sam Bergeson, thanks [00:21:30] for being on spectrum. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:        [inaudible]

Speaker 2:        did you see an example of data visualization? Check out the official campus dashboard at the website. My power.berkeley.edu

Speaker 1:        [inaudible]

Speaker 2:        [00:22:00] irregular feature of spectrum is dimension. A few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. Rick Karnofsky and Lisa cabbage with the calendar

Speaker 6:        on Saturday, December 1st wonderfest is putting on a special event called end of days. Does Hollywood get doomsday? Right? Planetary Scientists, Chris McKay will discuss this topic as he introduces a special screening of seeking a friend for the end of the world. [00:22:30] Starting Steve Grill and Karen Knightley popcorn is free and a no host drink and candy bar. We'll be there. Tickets are tax deductible and benefit wonderfest and variety children's charity of northern California. They must be purchased in advance for $25 visit wonderfest.org for more info. The annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union is the first week of December at the Moscone Center. Each year they have a public lecture that is [00:23:00] free and open to the public. This year that talk is on Sunday, December 2nd from noon to one and Moscone South Room One oh two lead scientists for the Mars exploration program. Michael Meyer program scientists for the Mars Science Laboratory. John Groton, seeing and participating in scientists on the Mars Science Laboratory. Rebecca Williams, well discuss curiosity driven Mars exploration. Curiosity is the most sophisticated explorer ever sent to another [00:23:30] planet and the trio. We'll talk about its latest activities. A full sized inflatable model of the rover and hands on activities for families will follow the lecture. For more information, visit agu.org

Speaker 7:        on Tuesday, December 4th at 7:00 PM at the California Academy of Science and Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Mary Ellen Hannibal. We'll present the Pritzker lecture, the spine of the continent, her book about one of the single most [00:24:00] ambitious conservation efforts ever undertaken to create linked, protected areas extending from the Yukon to Mexico, the entire length of North America. This movement is the brainchild of Michael Sule, the founder of conservation biology. EO Wilson calls it the most important conservation initiative in the world today. In this fascinating presentation, Mary-Ellen Hannibal takes us on a tour of her travels down the length of the North American spine, sharing stories and anecdotes about [00:24:30] the passionate, idiosyncratic people she meets along the way and the species they love. Reservations are required and seating is limited. Go to the California Academy of Science website for tickets.

Speaker 6:        Now three new stories, and I'm joined by Rick Kaneski and Lisa cabbage. The November 29th issue of nature has an article discussing a massive black hole in the tiny galaxy, n g c one two seven seven one of the galaxies in the cluster that is [00:25:00] the constellation Perseus to the best of our astronomical knowledge. Almost every galaxy should contain in its central region what is called a supermassive black hole. Past studies have shown that the mass of the black coal typically accounts for about a 10th of a percent of the massive its home galaxy that Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. In Heidelberg. Researchers know that the black hole has a mass equivalent of 17 billion suns, that the galaxy [00:25:30] is only a quarter of the milky ways diameter. These observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Hobby Eberly telescope show that the black hole accounts for almost 14% of the galaxies mass past spectrum guests. Nicholas McConnell published a paper last year that holds the current record for the largest black hole, which is between six and 37 billion solar masses. So the black hole in NGC one to seven seven may or may [00:26:00] not top this record.

Speaker 7:        The journal Nature Geoscience reports this week that the shells of marine snails known as terra pods living in the seas around Antarctica are being dissolved by ocean acidification. These tiny animals are a valuable food source for fish and birds and play an important role in the oceanic carbon cycle. During a science cruise in 2008 researchers from British Antarctic survey and the University of East Anglia in collaboration with colleagues from the [00:26:30] u s would tell oceanographic institution and Noah discovered severe dissolution of the shells of living terra pods in southern ocean waters. The team examined an area of upwelling where winds cause cold water to be pushed upwards from the deep to the surface of the ocean up well, water is usually more corrosive to a particular type of calcium carbonate or arrogant night that terra pods use to build their shells. The team found that as a result of the additional influence of ocean acidification, [00:27:00] this corrosive water severely dissolve the shells of terror pods, coauthor and science cruise leader.

Speaker 7:        Dr Geraint Tarling says as one of only a few oceanic creatures that build their shells out of air gunnite in the polar regions. Terror pods are an important food source for fish and birds as well as a good indicator of ecosystem health. The tiny snails do not necessarily die as a result of their shells dissolving. However, it may increase their vulnerability to predation and infection. Consequently having an [00:27:30] impact to other parts of the food web. Ocean acidification is caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere emitted admitted as a result of fossil fuel burning. The finding supports predictions that the impact of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems and food webs may be significant

Speaker 2:        science daily reports that dozens of climate scientists have reconciled their measurements of ice sheet changes in Antarctica and Greenland over the past two decades. [00:28:00] The results published November 29th in the journal Science roughly have the uncertainty and discard some conflicting observations. The effort led by Andrew Shepherd at the University of Leeds in the UK reconciles three existing ways to measure losses. The first method takes an accounting approach. Combining climate models and observations to tally up the gain or loss to other methods. Use special satellites to precisely measure the height and gravitational pull [00:28:30] of the ice sheets to calculate how much ice is present. Each method has strengths and weaknesses. Until now, scientists using each method released estimates independent from the others. This is the first time they have all compared their methods for the same times and locations. Understanding ice sheets is central to modeling global climate and predicting sea level rise. Even tiny changes to sea level when added over an entire ocean can have substantial [00:29:00] effects on storm surges and flooding and coastal and island communities.

Speaker 8:        The music heard during the show is by Stan David from his album, folk and acoustic made available by a creative Commons license 3.0 for attribution.

Speaker 9:        Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please [00:29:30] send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l [email protected] join us in two weeks at this same.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Birkmeyer, EECS at UC Berkeley, talks about his work in the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab designing and building robots. The Lab seeks to harness features of locomotion, actuation, mechanics, and control strategies to improve millirobot capabilities.

Transcript

Speaker 1:        [inaudible] [inaudible]. Welcome to spectrum 

Speaker 2:        the science and technology show [00:00:30] on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists, a calendar of local events and news. My name is Brad swift and I'm the host of today's show. Today's interview is with Paul Burke Meyer, a phd candidate in the electrical engineering and computer science department known as Ekes. He is working with Professor Ron fearing in his biomimetic millis systems lab building six legged crawling and climbing robots. [00:01:00] The goal of the biomimetic Miller systems lab is to harness features of animal manipulations, locomotion, sensing actuation, mechanics, dynamics and control strategies to radically improve Miller robot capabilities. Miller robots are small robots. For instance, the robot Paul Burke Meyer has built named dash is 10 centimeters long, five centimeters wide and weighs 15 grams. This interview [00:01:30] is prerecorded and edited. Welcome to spectrum Paul Burke. Myer, thanks for coming. 

Speaker 3:        Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Where are you situated at cal? What's your current status there? I am pursuing my phd here. I'm entering into my fifth year actually. Uh, and I'm studying Ekes specifically electrical engineering and I'm working on robotics in the w department. So 

Speaker 2:        are you in a specific group with any x or is [00:02:00] it just a general study thing? No, it's gotta be something more specific for a Ph d 

Speaker 3:        it is. So, uh, I've been working with Professor Ron fearing since I arrived and he runs the biomimetic Milly systems lab. And within that he has a few different projects, but specifically I'm working on a sort of six legged crawling and climbing robots. Describe for us the robots you're building that my goal for my phd when I first came and still true is to make [00:02:30] a robot that can dynamically climb up a any sort of surface that it's presented with. So the contribution I'm trying to make is how do you make a robot that's minimally actuated? So class uses only a single actuator right now, single motor to drive all the legs. How do you create something that is passively stable? So the structure itself makes it stable when it's climbing. So you don't actually have to spend extra computation and have extra motors on there to keep you from either [00:03:00] falling off the wall or turning and things like that. 

Speaker 3:        Um, how can you climb dynamically, not this sort of slow plodding climbing. How can you climb dynamically, rapidly up a surface and do it stable and do it with very little effort. And what does the foot look like that allows you to make a robot like that. So what does your foot need to do in order to be able to engage and disengage rapidly and without any actuation? So that's [00:03:30] sort of what my phd will say in the end, hopefully. And maybe a year and a half or two years. How did you go about building that kind of a robot? 

Speaker 3:        So the design was long and hard. Um, so when I first came to the biomimetic Mullin systems lab, they were already using what they're calling the smart composite manufacturing process, if you want to describe it. Yeah. So the original process was taking [00:04:00] two pieces of carbon fiber and cutting mirrored slits in both. You cut a bunch of slits on the one piece and you mere it across to the other, and then you take a piece of thin Palmer thin plastic sheet and then you take those two mirrored pieces and put them together and make a sandwich structure. And so you have carbon fiber with one pattern polymer, and then the other piece of carbon fiber with the same pattern that now aligns with the other one, it [00:04:30] bends. Now it's flexible at those polymer hinges at those where those slits were originally. So if each slit is a joint, it doesn't cost you anything to cut more joints out. 

Speaker 3:        Whereas if you're making sort of traditional machined robot out of say aluminum and ball-bearings and things, each new joint does a new bearing, which has some costs, has extra weight. So you can add many, many joints. For example, Dash I think has 75 or more joints in [00:05:00] the robot. Um, many of them are fixed, so they're used just to fold up the final structure and then you glue them in place. Each hip has six moving joints. So each hip has six moving joints. They're six hips. So Justin, the hips alone, they're already 36 moving joints. Um, whereas if you were to do this with ball-bearings, you quickly get something very big and very heavy. So this actually started off as a prototyping process. [00:05:30] Before they would use the carbon fiber process to make their robots. At the time they were making very small robotic flies and you have to assemble these flies under microscopes and it's very tedious. 

Speaker 3:        And if you, if you mess up, so in your design process, you didn't account for something or something doesn't quite align. You've lost a couple of days just working under a microscope, your back hurts, your eyes are tired and it's very frustrating. They realize, hey, this is just a geometric [00:06:00] pattern. So if we make it very small, little fold up the exact same way as if we make it very big, the pattern is the same, the folds are the same. So they take cardboard and make the pattern just bigger and then assemble it by hand without a microscope within a few hours. And exactly, they can tell it's gonna move in the way I want. So this started off as a prototyping process designed by, uh, Aaron Hoover, who's now a professor at Olin and he just graduated. So I actually took this process and started to make [00:06:30] robot designs and realized, Hey, these are actually very functional. 

Speaker 3:        They don't have to be prototypes necessarily. They're actually functional robots at the end. And uh, the cardboard was used, it's cheap cuts very quickly on a laser and you can go through designs very quickly. So instead of having one design that takes two days to build, you can build one in an hour or two. And so you can sort of explore that design space very quickly. So coming into the lab, they were using this manufacturing process where you design everything flat and you cut it out with the laser and you have to fold [00:07:00] it up into something that is functional and moves in the way that you want. And at the time, and still true, we don't have any good way of mapping what a 2d pattern is in the laser cutter, what that map looks like. And what you'll get out when you fold it up into three dimensions. 

Speaker 3:        Keeping in mind that these joints can't spin 360 degrees like a ball bearing. They're limited to at most 180 [00:07:30] degrees before they hit the link on the other side. So you have to in your in your head or on paper draw these structures. Say I started with hips, how can I get a nice leg motion out? And so I designed the hips and then like extrapolated that to six hips and sort of as you go you have to sort of mentally unfold these hips and figure out what that pattern looks like and then you put six hips and then you have to make sure that it can all fit on a flat piece and that when you unfolded [00:08:00] they don't have pieces that are unfolded on top of each other. As you go. Say you'll make a pattern and the first one you make, you fold it up and you realize that some part has to go through another part because the way you designed it actually you didn't realize this part was going to fold into the other cause you have to go back and redesign it. 

Speaker 3:        A lot of trial and error, a lot of trial and error and it took more than 50, maybe, maybe less than a hundred different design iterations for the dash that is [00:08:30] published now from where I started. And even then there were some designs I did with just a single hip just to see what a good hip design was. And it took a lot of time just to get familiar with this folding and unfolding process and laying out parts in two dimensions. And that took me six months just to get familiar with that when I first came. So, so dash is made out of this paper composite. Um, but I've made Balsa wood versions, [00:09:00] I've made fiberglass versions. I actually have not made carbon fiber just because our laser that we use to cut carbon fiber, the bed is not quite big enough so you can't cut pieces quite big enough to make dash. But now we have actually a new laser that I, I will probably pursue carbon fiber if only for the novelty. Um, so it was a, it was a long process. 

Speaker 4:        [inaudible] you are listening to spectrum [00:09:30] line a l x Berkeley. You're talking with Paul Burke Meyer about designing and building small six legged crawling and climbing robots. 

Speaker 2:        The robot that you've built and published a paper about is called Dash. What does that stand for? Dash stands for the dynamic autonomous sprawled hexapod. Once you'd spent a lot of time with Dash, you then wanted [00:10:00] to create an x generation. What was it out of dash that you wanted to explore with clash? 

Speaker 3:        So the things I liked about dash were the fact that it was still fairly small, 10 centimeters long, only 15 grams and very powerful. So if I kept it attached to a wall so it couldn't fall backwards off the wall, it had a lot of power. Could accelerate to full speed within a few hundred milliseconds. I mean it was very, very powerful. So that was nice. But its failure [00:10:30] was in the fact that in order to run it has these two plates basically that move up and down and forward and back relative to each other to drive the legs. That's basically the body is the transmission and it's true, the transmission is moving up and down. And so that's actually the problem is that it's pushing itself off the wall and it does this. So that was the, the main thing I wanted to address, but I liked the way the legs moved. 

Speaker 3:        They call it alternating tripod gait where you have three legs in contact of any one time, so you have this [00:11:00] sort of tripod of support. So I knew what I had generally that worked and I knew sort of what didn't work. And so with clash it was how do I get rid of this up and down motion? And I'd spent enough years doing this smart composite manufacturing that the transition from dash to an entirely new design was only a couple iterations before I got something that actually climbed rather than multiple 50 or so iterations. So that was a lot smoother. The hips are essentially the same, but though the way that they're driven is a little bit different. [00:11:30] And now instead of moving up and down, it's sort of moving side to side and forward and back. So it's not pushing itself off the wall. 

Speaker 2:        Can you describe the control systems you use for your robots? So the, the 

Speaker 3:        interesting thing with the robots that we're making in our lab is that we're trying to reduce the amount of controls necessary as much as possible. Traditional robots, heavy computational power, um, so that they can control each limb and very precisely so in, in, or wants, they don't fall over. [00:12:00] Basically the biggest problem is not falling over for, for legged robots and maintaining stability at least traditionally. So what we're trying to do is to minimize the amount of overhead you have to have, just to be functional. So we've worked with biologists here at Berkeley. They've sort of found these really interesting properties and cockroaches where if they're running over smooth terrain, if you measure their, uh, leg muscle activity, it follows some very repeatable pattern [00:12:30] over smooth terrain, meaning that they're, they're activating the legs the same and then they give them this very rough, varied terrain with bumps, maybe two or three times the height of the cockroach. 

Speaker 3:        They're very significant and they measure the leg activity and it looks almost exactly the same as when it's running on flat terrain. So what that that said to them was the roach is basically saying run and it doesn't care what the terrain is. They've decided that there's this [00:13:00] mechanical complexity and compliance. So the legs basically act as shock absorbers. They're just running and the legs sort of compensate for any roughness in the terrain. What we're trying to do is basically have a robot that does that where you just tell the robot to run and it doesn't care what it hits or what it's running over. It just basically runs and the legs are soft enough and bend enough to sort of compensate forever variation. There isn't the terrain. So the first design of dash that actually [00:13:30] put a motor in the motor actually came from a radio shack toy and I just took the electronics from that toy because it was remote controlled. 

Speaker 3:        Since then, the electronics have been swapped for custom electronics. A couple other students in our lab have designed really small lightweight electronics with an accelerometer and a gyroscope, even a port for uh, integrating a cell phone camera and there students who are using that cell phone camera to sort of [00:14:00] guide the robot from my end. I'm basically doing the robot design and I put these electronics on and I have two commands, three really run. And I tell it how fast and turn left or turn right. And that's it. The nice thing is you don't have to do anything more than that because it, it, it runs well and it can go over a different terrain. It can climb obstacles and dash climb obstacles as tall as itself and it doesn't really care. And so that was what that lets you do is get really [00:14:30] small CPS, really small computers that basically you put on these robots and they take very little power. But now for control, all of all they have to say is go or turn when they can use the rest of their computational time to say, read information from the camera and decide which way do I want to go? What's my objective? So from a stability controls point, it's couldn't be easier. Um, and now we're using these whatever extra [00:15:00] CPU cycles in our small board to do sort of more complicated behavior, but that's sort of another person's project. 

Speaker 2:        What sort of applications do you see this robot having? I know that you would want to use it as a vehicle, right? To have payloads on it. Right? And it also then goes into these strange places or if it can climb walls that's astounding. Right. On its own. Right. And then how do you then utilize it? 

Speaker 3:        The original goal was to have a robot that you could deploy [00:15:30] in search and rescue operations. So, um, say in an earthquake where you have claps buildings or claps minds, um, you can send in very small robots, uh, through the cracks, through the crevices down to find survivors. And you can have thousands of these really cheap and small robots and you don't care if 99% of the robots fail to find anyone or fail to even make it down as long as some small fraction finds a survivor, then you have, [00:16:00] technically you've succeeded. So the goal is to make lots of these small, inexpensive robots that can climb through the cracks, have sensors on them that can detect if someone's alive and then little radios to communicate with each other and communicate with the outside world to say, this is where someone is. Even if it's with some high probability that there's someone here, you know, it's worth spending your time digging in this exact location rather than having to uncover the entire building. 

Speaker 2:        I would imagine there are lots of uses in that realm of, of sensing [00:16:30] environments just in general, whether it's a collapse, building, a search and rescue, but you're just a hazardous place to monitor. And to have these things patrolling. So there's the, the whole idea is numbers and inexpensive, right? Manufacturer, 

Speaker 3:        right. So, so there are also proposals for environmental sensing. So deploying these robots, especially these nice mobile robots and say agricultural areas where you want to track how a crop dusters pesticides [00:17:00] travel across the countryside. You could have robots that sort of move and they can respond to say changing winds so that it can sort of get into the line of you know, the the path of these plumes of pesticides and sort of track how they're progressing across the country if they're affecting, you know, downwind communities. Also we have visions of putting these on bridges to do, checking for signs of stress on bridges and or say the nuclear power plants [00:17:30] in Japan. You could deploy these and have them run around and find you know, leaks or just have a nice mesh sort of deployed sensor network and sort of get readings from lots of different spaces and sort of try to understand how the radiation is moving. Oh 

Speaker 4:        you are listening to spectrum line k a l x Berkeley. We are talking with Paul Burke Meyer about designing and building small six legged crawling [00:18:00] and climbing robots. 

Speaker 2:        So Paul, how did you become interested in engineering? 

Speaker 3:        For me it was pretty clear from the beginning. So when I was younger, um, I was really interested in, well like most people in engineering right now. I built a lot of things out of Legos and connects and things and was really interested in electronics. I actually had [00:18:30] an elderly neighbor next door to me who I would go over and visit and uh, he would give me all of his popular mechanics magazines and popular science magazines when he was done reading them. And I think that was really the hook that got me because I was reading these magazines, seeing all these cool things and thinking like, how can I end up in this magazine? What can I do to be in this magazine because these are all really, really neat things. I think that was the, the original hook. Then, uh, it sort of blossomed [00:19:00] in high school. 

Speaker 3:        We had, uh, an advanced physics class. It was the first time it was offered and it was really sort of undefined. The curriculum wasn't really well formed and uh, as a result we had some freedom that you might not normally have in a high school course to do different projects that we wanted. Uh, the teacher at the time approached me maybe two thirds of the way into the year and said, hey, I have this, uh, this little programming board that they use at MIT for basic robotics things and I just have one of them and [00:19:30] you're doing well in the class. You want to see if you can maybe make a something and we can try to define a project for you using this board. The project ended up being making a robot that could drive through a maze and pop a balloon at the end. And he actually let me pick a partner to work with me. And I actually chose my girlfriend at the time who is now my wife. Um, and so we worked on this project for a long time and had a lot of fun. We made the whole, like the car system programmed the robot [00:20:00] and it was a spectacular failure, but it really was a lot of fun. And I think that was sort of what really cemented engineering for me. 

Speaker 2:        So you mentioned in, in talking about getting started in robotics and engineering, the the aspect of having a lot of fun with it and are you able to maintain that sense of fun and play in your work? For me 

Speaker 3:        this is, it's all fun. It's, I feel like I'm making toys all day [00:20:30] and I don't have to work at it to keep it fun because I love making these things and I think it's really exciting to come up with new structures and sort of understand why things aren't working, what you can do to change them. So for me it's, I mean adjust the, the project itself is so I think, I think it can be fun for other people when you have a like I can make this project fun for other people by actually making something that works and [00:21:00] sharing it with people and having this cool little robot that they can play with that can run up walls and things like that. But I think, I think it's true for lots of people in their careers. I think if you find the one you like, it's fun no matter what you do as long as, as long as you get to do it. So 

Speaker 2:        well thanks very much Paul for coming in and talking. 

Speaker 3:        Came with us was great. You're welcome. There was a lot of fun. 

Speaker 4:        The [00:21:30] video of dash on Youtube, search for dash resilient, high speed 16 gram x and pedal robot regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. [inaudible]. 

Speaker 2:        The Science at Cau lecture series for July will be presented by professor Romanian Kezar Rooney [00:22:00] and will be entitled Exoskeleton Systems for medical applications. Dr Casa Rooney is a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Robotics and human engineering laboratory is one of the world's leading experts in robotic human augmentation. The date of the lecture is Saturday, July 16th at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 which is on the northwest corner of the UC Berkeley campus. [00:22:30] The East Bay Science cafe is held the first Wednesday of every month that the cafe of Valparaiso at La Pena Cultural Center, 31 oh five Shattuck avenue in Berkeley from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM the cost of admittance is the purchase of a beverage or food item of your choice. Wednesday, July 6th our crystal Cha graduate student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of integrative biology at UC Berkeley will present. [00:23:00] Her topic is titled Spiders, Crustaceans, and sells omi. A story of how animals use cells to put themselves together. 

Speaker 2:        UC Berkeley. Professor Gordon. Frankie will present a discussion on native bee populations in the bay area at the Peralta community garden. This event is free and open to the public. It will be held Saturday, July 9th at noon in the Peralta community garden. The garden address is 1400 Peralta [00:23:30] AV in Berkeley. Since today's show is at the beginning of the month, let me remind you of the free admittance days for some of the local institutions that normally charge admission. The exploratorium in San Francisco is the first Wednesday of each month. The UC botanical garden in Strawberry Canyon. Berkeley is the first Thursday of each month. The Tech Museum in San Jose is the second Sunday of each month. The Cal Academy of Science in San Francisco is the third Wednesday of each month. [00:24:00] Now several news stories from the UC Berkeley News Center. The story about a new public website providing access to extensive climate change research being conducted at California universities and research centers. 

Speaker 2:        The website. cal-adapt.org has a variety of features tailored for different types of users, including members of the general public, concerned about their neighborhood or region decision-makers such as city planners and resource managers [00:24:30] and experts who want to examine data. The information on the website comes from peer reviewed climate change research funded by the California Energy Commission's public interest energy research program. The site displays the research data in a variety of climate change related scenarios and in map format modeling various projections such as changes in snowpack, wildfire, danger and temperature throughout the end of the century. The cal dash adapt website was developed by the [00:25:00] geospatial innovation facility at UC Berkeley's College of natural resources. 

Speaker 2:        The journal Science gives out a monthly prize called spore. Spore stands for science prize for online resources in education. The June award was given to the molecular work bench software developed by the Concord consortium. The molecular workbench is a free open source software tool that helps learners overcome challenges and understanding the science of atoms [00:25:30] and molecules. This software simulates atomic scale phenomenon, permits users to interact with them. It can model electrons, atoms, and molecules, which makes it exceptable across physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. Students from grades five through college can use the software to experiment with atomic scale systems. The software includes an author ing tool that enables educators to create complete learning activities with simulations, [00:26:00] text, images, graphs, navigation links and embedded assessments. Hundreds of these activities have been created and tested in classrooms. Educators are free to download and use completed activities or simulations or create their own. 

Speaker 2:        The website is mw.concorde.org/modeler/in an earlier show, we carried a story [00:26:30] about research into toxic flame retardant chemicals in clothing and furniture which pose health hazards for babies and young children. A companion study on the efficacy of the flame retardants was released in June in a peer study presented at the 10th annual symposium on fire safety science at the University of Maryland on June 21st scientists found that California's furniture flammability standard technical bulletin one one seven does not provide measurable fire safety [00:27:00] benefits. The standard has led to the unnecessary use of flame retardant chemicals at high levels and baby products and furniture, widespread human and animal exposure, and the potential to harm human health and the environment. While there are no proven fire safety benefits to technical bulletin one one seven the chemicals used to meet it leak from furniture into house dust, which is ingested by people in pets. 

Speaker 2:        Humans studies have shown associations [00:27:30] between increased flame retardant body levels and reduced IQ in children reduced fertility and to Krinn and thyroid disruption changes in male hormone levels, adverse birth outcomes and impaired development. Flame retardants have been found in the bodies of nearly all north Americans tested with the highest human levels in young children and Californians. Dogs have retardant [00:28:00] levels up to 10 times higher than humans and cats because of their grooming behavior have levels up to 100 times higher. The California standard established by technical bulletin one one seven has become a de facto national standard legislation to allow an alternative fabric flammability standard that would provide equal or greater fire safety without the use of chemical flame retardants failed last month with strong opposition [00:28:30] from lobbyists for Kim Torah, Alber Marley and Israeli chemicals limited. For more information and the complete study, go to the website, green science policy.org 

Speaker 5:        [inaudible] [inaudible]. 

Speaker 4:        The abuse occurred during the show is by Listonic Donna David from his album folk and acoustic made [00:29:00] available by a creative Commons attribution only licensed 3.0 editing assistance was provided by Judith White Marceline and Gretchen Sanders. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have any comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l [email protected] join us in two weeks [00:29:30] at the same time. 

Speaker 5:        [inaudible].

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim Pine of the Environment Health and Safety office at UCB and Tyler Grinberg, UCB student and creek restoration coordinator, discuss efforts to restore Strawberry Creek on the UC property. The creek restoration is a volunteer effort.

Transcript

Speaker 1:        [inaudible].

Speaker 2:        Welcome to spectrum the science [00:00:30] and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with a local events calendar, news and interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Tim Pine and Tyler Grinberg. They join us to talk about the efforts to restore strawberry creek at UC Berkeley. Tim Pine is a staff member of the environment health [00:01:00] and safety office at UC Berkeley. Tyler Grinberg is a UC Berkeley student and creek restoration coordinator and teacher of a Strawberry Creek decal class. The creek restoration is predominantly a volunteer effort by students, community members, staff and faculty. This interview is prerecorded and edited. First of all, 

Speaker 3:        welcome to US spectrum. Thanks for coming and go ahead, introduce yourselves. [00:01:30] Thanks for it for having me here. My name is Tim Pine. I am a, uh, officially a staff member here at cow and uh, I'm in the office of Environment, health and safety. I like to tell people that we put the e and e, h n s and that's the environmental protection group of which I am one of five for the university. And within that, that group, I'm officially the surface water quality coordinator for the campus. So simplification to be, I'm the creek guy. 

Speaker 4:        Uh, I'm Tyler Grinberg. [00:02:00] I'm a fourth year here at Cau, although I'm not quite graduating yet to next semester I'm studying environmental education and ecology. I'm also an education minor, so I'm getting my teaching credential at the same time as my bachelor's and first Aubrey Creek. I'm a restoration coordinator and a decal coordinator. So I kind of manage our, our class on the creek and restoration efforts. Great. And Tyler, can you explain Strawberry Creek to us? So for me, strawberry creeks [00:02:30] all around us on campus, if we're on Sproul plaza, it's in some pipes that are leading to the creek. Anything we do on the campus eventually leads the Strawberry Creek. So I think the creek is all around us. But where you see the creek is up in Strawberry Canyon, uh, if you go hiking up in the fire trail, you hear it running beneath you. If you're of the botanical garden, uh, you can see it and hear it as well.

Speaker 4:        And then on campus specifically, we see it in several locations, you know, by the dialect scientists building in some ecological study areas on campus. And then eventually [00:03:00] if you want to go be really adventurous off campus, you can go down to university and Bonar Street and see Starboard Creek Park and there's some fun things to observe down there. And then if you really want to be adventurous, you'll go all the way down towards the bay at the end of university avenue and you see come out of a very large pipe in somewhat of an estuary. And it's a pretty big watershed too, right? That feeds it all. Not just the campus but up in the hills and exactly. I mean that's why I like to say it's all around us because anything we do [00:03:30] along campus will eventually find its way to somewhere in strawberry creek. So I only can think of it just as the water you see flowing, but also all the interactions are happening around the creek as well 

Speaker 3:        in terms of describing strawberry creek and the campus. You know, the very reason that UC Berkeley is here is because when the founding fathers of this university were looking around for a likely spot, having a water supply was a very, very important, but maybe the most important a requirement [00:04:00] for the location by the late sixties and early seventies. Water quality. It was just a bismal. I mean there was, you know, not just, um, you know, pollution coming off streets, things like that. But there were still operational discharges, there were still these legacy sewer pipes, it, and no one really knew where they went after they left the basement, you know, of dough library that were still actually, um, coming out into the creek. And it was about that time that some very critical pieces of legislation passed federally. And [00:04:30] then we're in in turn implemented at the state level. 

Speaker 3:        And that was the clean water act. You know, it was very, very big deal in terms of forcing, um, not just Berkeley, but all urban areas to start looking at, you know, what have we done to these watercourses? They were, um, a series of pretty dramatic discharges to the creek where it started to get the notice of local agencies, you know, the regional water quality control board, which was, you know, relatively new at that time. At the same time. [00:05:00] That was about when we had that very vibrant, you know, kind of the first modern ecology movement. And, uh, the camps community said, look, we can't let this continue. So it was a combination of regulation and also citizens desire to start doing something about this creek, you know, which definitely in need of some work. Uh, you know, I like to give a lot of credit to a fellow by the name of Bob Charbonneau, who actually still works for the UC. He works in the office of the president and he, uh, came to cau as a Grad student in the late eighties. [00:05:30] He decided to make it part of his graduate studies to put together this management plan. So, uh, the Strawberry Creek Management Plan new, which was officially adopted in 1987 is still our guiding document for my department's management and restoration of the creek. And it's really a wonderful document. It's actually been, um, copied or used as a template for other watersheds across the United States and I suspect in other countries. That's been 

Speaker 4:        a really fabulous document to keep looking [00:06:00] back at 

Speaker 5:        [inaudible]. You're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. We're talking with Tim pine and Tyler Greenberg, but the strawberry creek restoration. 

Speaker 4:        What's entailed with your restoration plan, so to speak? Well, what I really do is focus on the area around the creek [00:06:30] or their parents zone and look to restore a natural biodiversity to the area that's been lost through urbanization and invasive plant introduction. And really my, my mission, my plan is education. And I know Tim hears this a lot, but I, I feel that we can do all we want with limited resources. We have to make alterations, but unless we inform future generations of how important the creek is and how we can manage it, it's just good to go back in Arizona. Revert to this, [00:07:00] uh, never the terrible state that it has been in for the past 50, 60, a hundred years. And so unless you really take this current students, make them interested in the creek, take faculty a different colleges and make them invested in the creek or not really gonna see any major differences. 

Speaker 4:        Um, but what I'm doing actually hands on right now is taking students out, uh, to be creaking community members as well and physically removing invasive plants and introducing native ones to the nursery program we have on campus serious story about diversity [00:07:30] of plants, which will then introduce more wildlife to the area. And how do you characterize or measure where you are in that process? The goal is what and where do you think you are in that process? Uh, as far as water quality is concerned, I think that we're getting towards the end of where we want to be. From my point of view, there's still a few things I'm concerned about and that's a lot of discharges to the creek. Um, especially of political water [00:08:00] that has chlorine in it, which can imagine from an ecological standpoint kind of kills a lower trophic level of organisms that we're actually trying to preserve in the water. 

Speaker 4:        So funny thing, clean water going into the creek is actually detrimental to the entire system. So even this morning working on the creek, I saw a lot of discharges heading into the water. And then as far as invasive plants is concerned, I feel like we're really making headway. But I'd really like to get a lot of different people on campus, on board with what we're doing. And I feel like we only [00:08:30] tapping to a very small segment of the campus community. And so if I had to put a percent on it, I'd say we're at 50, 60% of where I want to be. Um, I really want to take on a lot of the campus. And right now we're confined to three ecological study areas on the campus to do our work and the immense invasive plants are moving or you know, very small ground cover species as opposed to revamping the entire system. 

Speaker 4:        And I know it's not really possible right now, but I feel if we get a lot of people on board we can really do more work than [00:09:00] simply remove ivy. And do you have a, an ongoing relationship with the landscaping group that tries to keep the campus tidy in a sense? You know, and and is responsible for a lot of the flora that's around it? Most definitely. Um, Jim Warner is the head landscape architect for that campus and we're constantly in meetings with him and talking to him about what we're doing, what he um, I mean sometimes we just agree on things but it's definitely an active communication going on between us and we've had very good feedback on what [00:09:30] we've been doing from him and he's been very helpful in our restoration efforts. Of course, there are some areas on campus that we aren't doing our work because they are landscaped. 

Speaker 4:        We are on a UC campus, but we understand that. And so we're just working wherever he can. And he's been very helpful. And I would add that the a campus grounds maintenance group, um, which is part of, of our physical planet campus services there have been really essential and it just a fabulous partner for what we've been doing. You know, they manage the grounds manager, they're in close, who's [00:10:00] very active in the sustainability community here on campus. He, uh, managed to scrounge up our very first lot of tools way back 10 years ago to kind of get us started, provided us with a gloves hand of his own stock to give to the volunteers. They coordinated with us just about every single uh, event we have. They bring us on green waste bin so that all of the vegetation that we remove goes into a composting system. 

Speaker 4:        So I, I would consider the grounds group here to be a very essential partner of ours. And [00:10:30] it's really been exciting to, and I think for them to, they've told me that they've been very excited to see the kind of the transformation that's occurred in some of these areas. What sort of data are you trying to gather, uh, from the creek and analyze this? That's a great question. Um, you know, I think as we're starting to do restoration, we're starting to go more into actually applying a science to these areas and really doing some research. Um, and before a restoration began, there wasn't that [00:11:00] much we can do in these areas. I mean, they're called ecological study areas for a reason and I think more and more people are using them now. So Stephanie Carlson, who's a fish biologist and he called us on campus, is now doing electro fishing in the creek itself to see what types of fish are out there. 

Speaker 4:        And she's found, uh, at least three variety of fish and some crawdads. Um, she studying flows as well, the seasonal fluxes and extreme velocity and habitat complexity. So she's doing some work there. I'm doing more work on [00:11:30] the flora around the creek for a current project to see, uh, which varieties of trees are growing next to the water. That's just a, you know, in addition to kind of the normal metrics we take, we do take regular water quality samples for things like coliform bacteria. We actually have three web enabled hydro stations on the campus, on the creeks, the south, the north fork and the 

Speaker 3:        main stem down there by Oxford. That measure consists, you know, constantly things like temperature, [00:12:00] um, flow turbidity and conductivity. That's been incredibly helpful in seeing when there's been, um, you know, illegal discharges to the creek as well as, uh, a valuable engineering tool to see how the creek behaves during storms. So yeah, there's actually a lot of data that's coming out now and I know as Tyler mentioned, that as we kind of improve access and safety in these areas where you need a lot more data coming back. A lot of students do their senior projects from the college of natural [00:12:30] resources and even integrated biology, um, using the creek as kind of the basis for their, their, their research project. It's been fabulous to see the data coming out of these. Quite a compendium where we're developing now. 

Speaker 5:        [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley [00:13:00] talking with Tim Klein and Tyler Greenberg, but the strawberry creek restoration [inaudible]. 

Speaker 4:        So of the invasive species that you're dealing with, is there a broad [00:13:30] spectrum of plants and bugs and things? What would they be? Invasive plants usually don't find a broad spectrum, which is the problem. You have a monoculture, generally one species of plant, which doesn't function well in a natural ecosystem where you want a wide diversity and species written it richness of plants and so on campus. I feel our two biggest problems for groundcover species are Ivey of both English and Algerian of varieties as well as Vinca, which is Perry Winkle. [00:14:00] Um, but I feel like those are two main ground cover plants. And then up in the canyon there's a lot of blackberry, but those are the plants who are primarily concerned with. They're moving on campus and they're actually fairly easy to remove. And once we explained to our students why we want to move these plants in, we really give them the reasons behind why we do it. They're actually very, um, encouraged to get out of be with the plants. I've seen my students not during class actually out there with their friends. We're moving plants on their own. Do you get to have any input [00:14:30] at all into the planning of the campus related to creek side changes or you know, building that might be happening are pending? Yeah, they do. They consult. That's a, a very, a fairly recent thing where 

Speaker 3:        my group does see a proposed projects at the early stages. If we do comment on the, not the, um, the conceptual plan, but also we get copies of the design plans as they're going through their stage to final design. And [00:15:00] those plans are reviewed by each member of my team for various impacts to water quality. A very good case in point, we'd be say a building, well there's a proposed replacement for Eshelman coming up and we've been in very, very early abroad in on the design part to deal with any runoff from the rooftop, from the landscaped area and this is going to be a project and when it finally is done, that's going to [00:15:30] capture an infiltrate as much storm water run off as possible. And depending on what time of year it could be as high as a hundred percent capture and re infiltration and groundwater. 

Speaker 3:        Those considerations were never even anywhere on the radar as as little as 10 years ago. So that's just a perfect example of, you know how having the ability to comment on these days. Seeing projects early on has really helped out Morgan stadium to Morgan stadiums that really another really great example is [00:16:00] now I'm that water collecting in the stadium is going to go through a pretreatment system and an infiltration system to both trap pollutants and to try to put as much of that water back down on the groundwater table as possible. So it's been a really a neat thing to see. Those kinds of, some of those kinds of comments be incorporated into the design. 

Speaker 4:        And you mentioned a nursery as well. It's part of the, the whole process. Describe the nursery activity that you're doing. Yeah, and I really feel it's our third partner restoration [00:16:30] after um, assessing water quality, removing invasive plants, we finally have to reintroduce native plants. We can't just leave these areas bear. And so through a grant with the Green Initiative Fund TJF where students get a few dollars every semester voluntarily into this pool. We got a grant to build a native play nursery on campus and took about a year to build. It was finally done. We had our grand opening last Wednesday, so we had a good ceremony there. But we have one of our nursery coordinators or a restoration coordinator who also does nursery your work. David Pawn, [00:17:00] he's a third year here at cal studying environmental science and he propagates native plants right in the nursery on campus. And then once we grow this plant, students can then do the final step of restoration where they put these plants into the ground and monitor the area. 

Speaker 4:        Where is the nursery, the nurseries in the welding courtyards. So by Jean Nini and Wellman Hall and the college onto our resources. In terms of what volunteers can do, are there things, you know, if somebody wants to be involved [00:17:30] but doesn't want to go dig up Ivy, can they help? Uh, definitely. And we, we understand students have different levels of involvement, you know, of what they actually want to actually want to do. And I think everyone should be getting their hands dirty. That's just my opinion. But we have people work in our nursery. We don't really have our volunteers do other outreach work, although I guess it's something we can think about starting to do. 

Speaker 3:        I, you know, that's a great question because, um, you know, one of the criticisms [00:18:00] that I've been very kind of cognizant of is that we could do more in terms of the outreach part of this thing. You know, given that resources are going to be so critical to our continued, you know, health and functioning as a group. You know, I'll admit that we, we tend to put more time on the ground as Tyler mentioned because I think that's our focus. But we would love it if people who have an interest in marketing and outreach people in publication though. Absolutely. We would welcome any skillset. I'm sure we can apply it to um, [00:18:30] the restoration program and were born very inserted in hearing any ideas that people have. Is there any point that you guys wanted to make? 

Speaker 4:        Do either of you, one of the points I wanted to make, I'm not sure if I made it earlier, is that how important it is for us to take stewardship of our local environment. In my environmental science classes, I've actually learned a bit about how native Americans were stewards of their environments. That's really why California looks the way it does now. All these, what we call the native plants is because native Americans [00:19:00] tend to those plants and create a series of events that allowed those plants to be successful. And so when a student comes here as a freshman, I think that's just as important to learn about how to use telomeres as it is to learn about the native plants we have on campus. I know it sounds really corny, but after they work with us, they look at the creek a different way because when you work on the water, when you work in the right parents zone, something does change in you. You have a sense of ownership of the environment. That's what we need and so I think [00:19:30] as a campus we need to ensure at least after I'm gone and even while I'm here, that all students become stewards of Strawberry Creek and the local watershed. Thank you both for coming today and talking with us. Thank you very much. 

Speaker 3:        Which was my pleasure. I could talk about the creek all day long. 

Speaker 1:        [inaudible] [inaudible] 

Speaker 6:        [00:20:00] to contact or volunteer for the Strawberry Creek Restoration. Visit their website, Strawberry creek.berkeley.edu as always, you can contact spectrum if you want this contact information. 

Speaker 1:        [inaudible]

Speaker 6:        [00:20:30] a regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. The June Science at Cau lecture will given at 11:00 AM 

Speaker 2:        on June 18th in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 the June 18th talk will be given by Terry Johnson and is entitled synthetic biology [00:21:00] beating the cell at its own game. Bioengineering lecturer Terry Johnson received the Spring 2011 outstanding instructor award from the Bio Engineering Honor Society. He was also awarded the 2011 outstanding faculty of the Year award and named an eminent engineer by the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. Join the center for Biological Diversity and the Ecology Center for a presentation on [00:21:30] the clean air act and how it may be our best hope against climate change. The title of the presentation is the clean air act and global warming, how it works, why we need it and what we can do to support it. This presentation is free. The presentation will be Wednesday, June 22nd 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Ecology Center, which is at 25 30 San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute [00:22:00] or Ambari is holding an open house on Saturday, June 25th this event is free. 

Speaker 2:        The Ambari open house features science and technology exhibits deep sea videos, research presentations, robotic submarines, children's activities, ocean career information, and much more Ambari staff scientists and engineers will share their excitement about the institutes work. Visitors can view a remotely operated vehicle [00:22:30] and some of their autonomous underwater vehicles and Baris research vessels will also be on view at the dock with related displays. Visitors can also find out about the Monterey Bay aquarium's Seafood Watch program and a new marine environmental organization. The center for Ocean Solutions. The Open House is Saturday, June 25th from noon until 5:00 PM the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute is located at [00:23:00] 7,700 sand Holt road, moss landing, California. Their website is ambari.org the link to the open house is found under news briefs. Now some stories in the news. The journal Science has given its May science prize for online resources and education or spore award to the periodic table of videos. 

Speaker 2:        Science editorial fellow Melissa McCartney says the videos are an entertaining [00:23:30] mix of experiments and anecdotes and are aimed at anyone with a curiosity for chemistry. No prior knowledge on the part of the viewer as needed. The chemistry themed videos are produced by University of Nottingham Professor Martin Poliakoff, journalist Heron Chemist Pete licence, Steve Ladelle and Debbie ks and lab technician Neil Barnes. The periodic table of videos was conceived in 2008 after heron tape Poliakoff as part of another series [00:24:00] of videos called the test tube project. They decided to collaborate on the periodic table of elements and within about five weeks the videos for all 118 elements had been uploaded to youtube. The periodic table of videos continues to grow with videos about chemistry topics beyond the elements such as segments that play off the news. The site now hosts more than 300 videos. The videos can be viewed on youtube search for periodic table of videos. 

Speaker 2:        [00:24:30] They may also be [email protected] which is helpful at schools where youtube is blocked. The American Association for the Advancement of Science website reports that an American research team has succeeded in high tech grand survey of ancient Egyptian settlements, tombs and pyramids by analyzing high resolution satellite imagery covering all of Egypt. Researchers have reportedly discovered up to 17 lost pyramids, nearly 3000 ancient [00:25:00] settlements and 1000 tunes. The effort was led by archeologists, Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama Birmingham Parcak began her study 11 years ago searching for traces of ancient village walls buried under Egypt's fields and desert sands obtaining images from both NASA and quickbird satellites. She combined an analyze data from the visible imagery as well as from the infrared and thermal parts of the light spectrum. [00:25:30] Through trial and error, she discovered that the most informative images were taken during the relatively wet weeks of late winter. During this period, buried mud brick walls absorbed more moisture than usual producing a subtle chemical signature in the overlying soil that showed up in high resolution infrared satellite images to further test. 

Speaker 2:        Some of the most recent satellite finds. Park enlisted the help of a French archeological team already digging at the 3000 year old site [00:26:00] known as Tannis Park Act says they found an almost 100% correlation between what we see on the imagery and what we see on the ground. In the wake of the fines, the Egyptian government reached an agreement to work with Park and others, American researchers to develop a nationwide satellite imagery project to monitor archaeological sites from space and protect them from looting and illegal house construction and other encroachments park says of the agreement. We are going to be teaching [00:26:30] young Egyptians how to look at the satellite data and analyze it so they can keep an eye on the sites. She and her colleagues plan to raise funds privately to support the effort. This item from the UC Berkeley News Center website written by Robert Sanders, a new initiative for citizen scientists and the crowdsourcing of ecosystem observation has been launched named the global amphibian blitz. 

Speaker 2:        Any adventurer, hiker or backyard naturalist where the camera can help scientists survey [00:27:00] and hopefully save the world's amphibians. Thanks to a new social networking site that links citizen scientists with researchers tracking the decline of Amphibians around the globe. The global amphibian blitz is a new partnership between the University of California Berkeley's Amphibia web and six other amphibian groups. The new website is provided by I naturalist.org a bay area social network for naturalists. The website allows amateur naturalists from [00:27:30] around the world to submit their amphibian photographs along with dates and gps locations. The project is curated by a team of scientists who will identify and filter the submissions in search of rare species or out of range occurrences of interest to scientific and conservation communities in an effort to protect the data from commercial collectors and others who would exploit the information. The exact whereabouts are rare and endangered amphibians are obscured to all but the scientific community. [00:28:00] The website can be reached by going to eye naturalist.org/projects and click on the global amphibian blitz. That's I naturalist.org there is also a youtube video explaining the project to find it. Search for a global amphibian blitz 

Speaker 1:        [inaudible].

Speaker 6:        [00:28:30] The music heard during the show is spineless. Donna David from his album, folk and acoustic, made available through a creative Commons license. 3.0 attribution editing assistance was provided by Judith White, Marcel [inaudible] and Gretchen Sanderson. 

Speaker 1:        [00:29:00] [inaudible]. 

Speaker 6:        Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from our listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email addresses spectrum dot k a l [email protected] join us in two weeks at the same time. 

Speaker 1:        [00:29:30] [inaudible].

Speaker 4:        The abuse occurred during the show is by Listonic Donna David from his album folk and acoustic made [00:29:00] available by a creative Commons attribution only licensed 3.0 editing assistance was provided by Judith White Marceline and Gretchen Sanders. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have any comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l [email protected] join us in two weeks [00:29:30] at the same time. 

Speaker 5:        [inaudible].

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dale McCollough of UCB and Wayne Linklater of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand discuss a survey of wild animals in El Cerrito and Kensington, CA that McCullough and K. Jennings did in 1995 and 98. Linklater and J. Benson repeated the survey in 2010.

Transcript

Speaker 1:        [inaudible].

Speaker 2:        [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with news events and interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Dale McCullough and Wayne Linklater. They're both researchers of large wild mammals. Del Macola is a professor Ameritas at the environmental science and Policy Management Department of the College [00:01:00] of natural resources at UC Berkeley. Wayne link ladder is a senior lecturer in the school of biological sciences at Victoria, University of Wellington in New Zealand. We talk about their research in wild animals in urban settings, specifically a survey of deer and other wild animals in El Sorito and Kensington, the Dale Macola and Kathleen Jennings first completed in 1995 and again in 1998 Wayne link ladder [00:01:30] and Jeffrey Benson repeated the survey in 2010 a summary report of the surveys can be downloaded from Wayne's website. Wayne's website address is really long, so if you would like it, send us an email and we'll pass it along to you. Our address is spectrum dot k a l [email protected]. This interview is prerecorded and edited. 

Speaker 3:        We're joined by Dale McCullough and Wayne Linklater. [00:02:00] And Dale, why don't you tell us about yourself and where you're currently positioned at UC? I know that you're a professor Ameritus, which is 

Speaker 4:        Professor Ameritus. Yes. Which means I am retired and ordinary person's language and I retired in 2004. Most of the things I did at UC Berkeley had have wound down and hadn't been done. But I've continued to do research on several projects that I've been interested in. So I'm have been [00:02:30] continuing research on Kangaroos and outback Australia and leopards and tigers and far east Russia and seek a deer throughout Southeast Asia. 

Speaker 3:        Great. And Wayne? Well, I'm a wildlife biologist from New Zealand, from Victoria University, in fact that the, it's quite a handle, but at the scene provide a of est in restoration ecology at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and like daylight. My history is full of work on, on large mammals to [00:03:00] exciting places and phd students working in Malaysia and India on elephants and in, uh, South Africa. On Rhinoceros. What brings me here is my growing interest in the relationships between people and Wildlife, which is why I came and did a sabbatical here for six months in 2008, 2009 the year in which we replicated, um, some work that we'd done in Wellington looking at people's relationships with wildlife in their backyard. [00:03:30] So is that when you and Dale hooked up on this wildlife survey that you've done in the El Cerrito and Kensington hills or just, I guess it's the entire, it's all of Kensington and all of El Sorito. That's right, yes. What happened was that Dale pointed out a phd thesis to me from Kathleen Genie and it immediately put to my interest, I contacted Kathleen and she had done the survey in the mid 1990s with Dale's a advice [00:04:00] and I saw a really quite exciting opportunity to replicate their work 10 years later. But Dale knows better how that Sioux, they evolved in the first place. 

Speaker 4:        Yeah. It happened sort of accidentally in the deer population and in the East Bay was building up and becoming a problem and people were going to city councils and places like that and complaining and I live in Kensington and [00:04:30] the deer, my neighborhood had gone up so I could are going to have dinner and sit out on the deck in the evening and guarantee that there'd be going up and down the street. And then I thought, well, Geez, here I get on airplanes and fly off to Japan and Taiwan and Vietnam and so on to, to study there and I don't even know what these deer out in my street are doing. And so I decided, well, we better do a biological study of them to find out how they are behaving in the urban area [00:05:00] and how that compares with what they do in the wild. 

Speaker 4:        And so we started, started out with the, uh, survey to get some sort of background. It's, it's hard to apply a lot of the methods that we use in the wild to an urban situation because the high density of people and particularly in, in, uh, in places like Kensington and El Serita where the traditional law is very small and houses very big. That was the motivation. And so we did the, uh, [00:05:30] the first survey, um, on a random systematic random sample. So it covered a certain area, these two cities. And uh, and then we repeated it in 1998 because we, from our work, we're seeing something of a decline in the number of deer. And we wanted to see if that was what was happening across these, these two, uh, communities. And in general, it was [00:06:00] a lot, it was mainly in the areas on the higher parts of the hill. And just to sort of anticipate the deer continued to go down and were low levels. And one of the things that is peaked our interest recently is there is evidence that the deer are starting to build up again. And so Wayne's interest fit right into, well if we're going to have another in increase in deer [00:06:30] then it would be really good to be able to document that. And so, um, the, the, the timing from my point of view was perfect. 

Speaker 3:        And Wayne, with your current survey, you're picking up the laurels of this, uh, this research and so I don't have, we don't have the facility to repeat the biology on the ground and unfortunately we'd love to but we don't. But what we can do is a use this EC ground information already gathered by Kathleen Jennings [00:07:00] and Dale to look at with the pictures changed for the people in the 10 12 years since the last survey in 1998 and in particular, I'm very interested in as a seed the relationship between people and wildlife and what does, what replicating a survey like this enables us to do is to try and build a relationship or understand the relationship between people's beliefs or attitudes about wildlife in this case, deer and [00:07:30] the presence of dia themselves and how that changes over time. The reason we're interested in that is because these days when it comes to managing wildlife, understanding how to manage the problem with wildlife, data's the people in the equation is becoming more important. 

Speaker 3:        So it's very important to understand how are people's attitudes and beliefs change? How dynamic are they to external influences like the density of d or or, [00:08:00] or um, experience and uh, so living around the deer that's right for a longer period of time, increased tolerance or not oh, not and actually understanding that that dynamic is important for managers who need to prioritize in a landscape that's full of people whose, uh, relationship with a deer is variously extremely negative to extremely positive. It's a very challenging environment to work in. I mean, he manages to, they hear out at the sort of problem, but if we [00:08:30] could add a social dimension to this map wildlife management problem, we might be some of the wider, resolving some of those issues. I think. Is there any way within the survey to try to take account of the management of the area? Is there an overlaid management in the El Sorito Kensington area or is there really no public policy or is and, 

Speaker 4:        uh, a management system in most, I mean, you know, the, the way deer populations are traditionally controlled [00:09:00] is through hunting. And obviously you can't have hunting in this situation, but in places like Kensington and El Serita, you just, you can take an animal maybe under extraordinary circumstances, but the hazard is just too great. 

Speaker 3:        Well, does, does trapping become a solution or is that 

Speaker 4:        it's very, very expensive and hard to do and people think contraception, well again, if you have animals in captivity or that sort [00:09:30] of thing, contraception works great, but unfree and roaming animals is very expensive. It just won't work. So literally there is no, no good solution. And you know, again, to refer to the Monterey Peninsula where we have this longer record, people get excited, you know, and they, they finally get enough information to see that there's really not much that can be done. And by that time the deer start going down on their own and people forget [00:10:00] about the problem and 15 years later 

Speaker 3:        back comes back again. Yeah. One of the other interesting parts of that original survey too was that all day the deer at concentrated toward the upland, the penetration to the El Sorito down near the bat, it's actually quite deep. Although in low numbers they actually get right down there and to very high density, high traffic areas. Basically they go down pillars 

Speaker 4:        too much concrete, you know, and not enough deer habitat. Right. But if there's any [00:10:30] residential neighborhood with the typical local gardens and some on their there, they were on Albany Hill. Yeah, they went clear down to the bay. Were any place that there was suitable habitat that they were there? Yeah. 

Speaker 3:        And Wayne would the current survey and then hopefully you're going to try to continue this project. Do you need to get funding for it or how will you maintain? Well, fortunately the sort of work doesn't require large amounts of funding. I shouldn't say that publicly [00:11:00] because of course we're always after funding, but, but unfortunately, this sort of work can be data rich without large amounts of funding because we were primarily interested in people's observations and their opinions. And in a topic like this, uh, people are actually very forthcoming and very helpful for some reason. Uh, most sorts of surveys have very low response rate. So I think people fear, feel harassed and harried by surveys, political surveys, commercial surveys. But [00:11:30] when it comes to wildlife, the seems to attract people's interest and, and, um, most everyone has an opinion on wildlife in their, in their locality. 

Speaker 3:        And so fortunately, uh, we get very high response rates, which we're very grateful for for the sort of survey. So, um, the resources required to undertake a survey, a fairly rudimentary, which actually makes it possible to do this sort of work over the long term with some confidence. So I, I think depending on the outcomes of this one, [00:12:00] we'll almost certainly repeat it. I'd be very interested in knowing how our, uh, deer and other wildlife disperse through this landscape. What are the barriers and triggers to that widespread movement? I suspect that there are elements of the urban landscape that actually landscape architects and urban designers plan for other reasons. The deer and other wildlife I find very useful for moving about the landscape. [00:12:30] These corridors that I mentioned, for example, when people count sell land anymore under [inaudible]. So, uh, electric was our, um, these, these, my function is very important corridors for wildlife movement through the landscape, uh, in fact may be making the urban landscape much more permeable than it used to be. 

Speaker 5:        [inaudible] [00:13:00] you're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Today we're talking with Wayne Linklater and Dale Macola about wild animals, urban sentence. [inaudible] 

Speaker 4:        so you're really focused on deer because they were the past, so to speak. Well, that's what we focused [00:13:30] on, but you know, rod also keeping a very pretty close watch on what was going on with pay odis because they were one of the predators. And again, I'm not familiar with what coyotes are doing right now, but they were coming down through that Mosher corridor clear down to the middle school down there. Uh, and, uh, you know, we had some evidence that mountain lines were, you know, on the verge of coming in one case where it probably [00:14:00] was a mountain lion, it came down below Arlington Avenue and of course a that recent mountain lion, you know, Jason White, Shaddock Shaddock Avenue, I think Shotokan Cedar. And uh, so it's a problem with the disparate young dispersing animals meanly. You know, these aren't mountain lions that have territories that overlap. It. 

Speaker 4:        It usually when we see animals like that, they're, they're young [00:14:30] animals that are dispersing and trying to find a territory where they can, they can live. And I, and of course these, uh, sere make awfully good meals and of course we worry about an attack on a person. You know, that, right? That's the, the big concern because it, in each case, the probability is very, very low, but enough cases and then, you know, eventually will become inevitable that there [00:15:00] will be some attack and then all the wheels will come off because there would be zero tolerance for that. So then that would reintroduce hunting. Well you can't hunt here. So it would be hard to do any kind of control. That's what makes this so difficult is uh, the, the sort of example we have is down, uh, on the Monterey peninsula where the deer have periodically [00:15:30] gone up and gone down again for reasons that we don't really understand. 

Speaker 4:        We know it's not direct mortality, it's failure and success of reproduction, not the attempt to reproduce, but that the fond doesn't survive for reasons that we don't understand, but they've gone up and down on like a 15 to 18 year time period. So my [00:16:00] expectation is that these deer may show some sort of similar pattern. Eventually we may figure out why. And like I say, just over the last year or so, there are the signs that the deer are starting to come up. So peaked in 1995 already started going down. They went down very, very gradually. Our radio collared animals, you know, live, normal lifespans and very gradually disappeared just like [00:16:30] you would, you would expect. What is that life span? How long? Well, the urban area, uh, the equivalent of 70 would probably be about 12 or 13 years for deer and, but you know, some humans live to be a hundred, so occasionally you're gonna probably get a 16 or 17 year old, uh, deer. And then again in the urban area where the hazards aren't that great. Interestingly, the animal that was the radio animal that [00:17:00] we had that lived along this time died in a yard right across the street from the yard where we captured it. 

Speaker 4:        You could easily toss the rock, the spot where we captured it to where it went to its final resting. It goes back to that really small range that you were talking about in hotspots for food because of gardening and also fruit trees, [00:17:30] which isn't major attracted when, when there's fruit in the falls. 

Speaker 5:        [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. Today we're talking with [inaudible] and Dale McCullough about wild animals and urban sex. [inaudible] 

Speaker 4:        [00:18:00] just, uh, you know, just the recent illustration of what we're talking about, who I know, the biology of the animals, they, uh, have had some problems with deer attacks, quote on people. Also down near the the food ghetto. I was contacted indirectly by one of the graduate students in, in the [00:18:30] department here who is working with, uh, a city official on that. And I said, well, I don't, I don't know what's going on, but my guess is that people are walking dogs and it's females with Fonz that are attacking because in the wild they recognize that dog is a coyote or so on. Well, it turns out that is exactly what the situation was when they talked about it a bit. But see, just having that little [00:19:00] clue about, you know, the biology of the animal and how those interactions work puts that whole problem into a different context. 

Speaker 3:        Piece of information. Like that immediately informs because suddenly the options are a, the biological control of her mother, Dia. But also this becomes an information management problem, doesn't it? Because for most people, when they understand that the steer is acting in defense, they'll change the [00:19:30] behavior, but that information becomes a way of managing the problem by changing people's behavior rather than potentially the cost of managing a deer population. Right. Wildlife feeding is a classic example of this, isn't it? Where in places where the feeding of wildlife becomes a problem, the wildlife come in, they come in at last dean's states, they lose their fear of people. They immediately become more dangerous. Just that piece of information [00:20:00] and some sort of social marketing campaign to inform people that actually the magnitude of the problem, that feeling causes is sometimes often enough, enough to reduce the magnitude of the problem. People change their behavior. It also empowers people and it empowers management agencies in ways that other sorts of solutions, which grant all sorts of controls. He don't [inaudible]. 

Speaker 4:        Yeah. The thing is it, it sensitizes people. So if you say you shouldn't be feeding them, you shouldn't be taming them. That's dangerous. [00:20:30] You should be a little afraid of the deer and the deer should be a little afraid of you. And then there are homeless nerve problems. But if the deer totally becomes on afraid, that's when the problem comes in. And most wildlife problems are of that kind. So like where there've been cases, coyotes if attack children, it's in cases where people have been feeding them, they've completely lost their fear. And the other thing, as you can tell people, you should reinforce if, if you approach the deer [00:21:00] and, and they don't go, go away, you know, get your darn broom or whatever you have, you know, but just make that deer get outta there to establish the fact that it is still not running the place. [inaudible] 

Speaker 3:        if we take a step back and, and think about, uh, relationships between wildlife and people in urban landscapes, one of the really interesting parts of that context to me is that this year the world's urban population just tipped 50%. [00:21:30] The world's population just took 50% of than most people in the world now live in urban areas. They live in, in areas which should depauperate of wildlife and wilderness. It's really interesting to me to try and understand what the implications of that are for the future of wildlife conservation and wilderness conservation. Because increasingly the world is going to depend on people making decisions who [00:22:00] no longer have contact with wilderness or wildlife anymore. The way that our grandparents did for instance, and other academics have talked about this idea of extinction of experience. So the voting populous in North America for instance, are going to be less and less ecologically or environmentally literate with time. The more open eyes they become, it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Hair important. Therefore, relationships with wildlife in urban areas might [00:22:30] become for facilitating this relationship with wilderness. So that's one of the things that gets me interested in in urban landscapes and these urban things like DNA. So let me just say thank you very much for your time in talking about this with us. You're most welcome 

Speaker 5:        [inaudible] [00:23:00] [inaudible], 

Speaker 2:        [00:23:30] a regular feature of spectrum's dimension, few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. The science at cow lecture for May is associate Professor Neil Seuss. We from the Department of Environmental Science Policy and management at the College of natural resources. The lecture will be May 21st at 11:00 AM in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 he will be talking about extreme sociality, super colonies of the invasive [00:24:00] Argentine ant with the end of the semester days away. Here's an on campus resource you may find helpful. Reuse. Reuse is a student run program dedicated to promoting the reuse of materials on the UC Berkeley campus. They promote reuse by providing spaces for the campus community to freely exchange reusable goods. The reuse stations consist of shelving units placed in buildings where campus members donate and pick up reusable materials [00:24:30] to learn where the stations are located. Visit their website, reuse.berkeley.edu for those with bigger items or specific needs. 

Speaker 2:        Reuse now sponsors an online forum for exchanging things. The forum address is exchange.berkeley.edu you do need to have a berkeley.edu email address to use the forum Thursday May 12th his bike to work day at UC Berkeley on bike to work day. [00:25:00] UC Berkeley will host an energizer station in Sproul Plaza from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM I have no idea what an energizer station is. If you have a bike and you need help fixing it or maintaining it, there are at least two groups on campus ready to help citizens cycle and by cy cow. Both have free sessions to repair bikes and hopefully teach you how to maintain your bike. Citizens Cycle has two free clinics a week in front of the East Asian library. The Monday clinic is held [00:25:30] from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM and the Friday clinic is from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM citizens cycle is a voluntary student group. Buy Cycle has free repair three days a week. 

Speaker 2:        Monday 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM Wednesday 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM Friday 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM their website is buy-side cow, B I c y c a l.com. The free repair [00:26:00] sessions are held just behind the Golden Bear cafe at Sproul Plaza by cycle is a student funded cooperative. Two news items of note. This first news story was derived from the UC Berkeley News Center story by Sarah Yang in early April, 2011 energy secretary Steven Chu announced grants totaling 112 point $5 million of funding over five years to support the development of advanced solar photovoltaic [00:26:30] related manufacturing processes throughout the United States. The Energy Department's sunshot advanced manufacturing partnerships will help the solar power industry overcome technical barriers and reduce for photo-voltaic installations. A local outgrowth of this sunshot funding is the bay area photovoltaics consortium jointly led by the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University. The consortium will receive [00:27:00] $25 million spread over five years. Industry sources will provide $1 million annually to the consortium budget. 

Speaker 2:        The Bay area photovoltaics consortium will fund competitive grants through a process open to all universities, national laboratories and research institutions. The consortium seeks to spur research and development of new materials and manufacturing processes that will cut the cost significantly, increased production volume and improve the performance [00:27:30] of solar cells and devices. Ali's Javi, UC Berkeley, associate professor of electrical engineering and co-director of the consortium addressed their goals by saying the cost of solar energy in 2010 was about $3 and 40 cents per watt of power installed. Our end goal is to decrease that cost to $1 per watt installed. Our collaboration with industry will be critical in achieving this goal. We are fortunate that the bay area is home to such a high density of photo-voltaic related [00:28:00] companies. Cal Green Fund grants for 2011 were announced at the eighth annual UC Berkeley Sustainability Summit. April 19th the grants were awarded to Christopher carbuncle at the UC botanical garden. Josh Mendell College of letters and science. Elizabeth Chan of the energy and Resources Class one nine zero any Gordon and Paris Yacht Chakrabarti at the UC Berkeley compost alliance and frank you [00:28:30] at UC residents hall assembly 

Speaker 5:        [inaudible] can use occurred during the show is from an Austin, a David album titled Volker and [00:29:00] [inaudible]. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from our listeners. If you have comments about the show or we'd like to link to Wayne Linklater's website, which you can download the El Cerrito Kensington wild animal survey, send us an email or an email address is spectrum dot k a l [email protected] [00:29:30] join us in two weeks at the same time. [inaudible].

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shalene Jha Postdoctoral Fellow and Hillary Sardinas College of Natural Resources grad student at UC Berkeley discuss their research in native bee populations, landscape genetics, foraging ecology, ecosystem services. They talk about research funding and collaboration.

Transcript

Speaker 1:        Hmm 

Speaker 2:        [inaudible].

Speaker 1:        Welcome to spectrum the science and technology [00:00:30] show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with news events and interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Shalani Sha, UC president's, postdoctoral fellow and Hillary Sardinia graduate researcher. They're both members of the environmental science policy and Management Department of the College of natural resources at UC Berkeley. We talk about their research of native bumblebees and bee habitat [00:01:00] during the interview, colony collapse disorder as mentioned, but not explained. Colony collapse disorder is a still unsolved mystery that since 2006 has killed approximately 50% of kept European honeybees in North America. The disorder is characterized by the complete disappearance of all the bees in a colony. The kept European honeybees are essential pollinators of many commercial scale fruit and nut crops throughout the world. The suspected causes of colony collapse disorder include fungus, [00:01:30] viruses, pesticides, Mites, diet, antibiotics, and whether the breakthrough mentioned in the interview is not a solution, but possibly a forward step to a solution. This interview is prerecorded and edited. 

Speaker 3:        My guests are Shalani jaw and Hillary seediness. They're both at the college of natural resources. And why don't you, shall any describe the research that you're currently doing together? 

Speaker 4:        [00:02:00] Sure. So Maria and I are both in Claire Cremins lab and this particular lab group actually has very diverse interests, mostly related to conservation, biology and ecological interactions between people and animals. And our work is related to pollinators. So how do you conserve pollinators in agricultural habitats? That's sort of one of our research closed side and we worked and some of the farming communities [00:02:30] in northern California around Yolo, Solano in Sacramento County, looking at native bees and how agricultural landscapes and regions impact the way bees move and nest disperse across agriculture tools. 

Speaker 3:        Is there also an element of working with, or at least understanding the, the beekeeping community in those, those very same areas or is there an overlap and interface that happens? Yeah, so a lot 

Speaker 4:        [00:03:00] of the farms that we work in manage TVs as well that managed European honeybee colonies provide pollination services in addition to native bees. So, um, the other portion of our outreach has to do with working with land managers and farmers. We're interested in promoting native bee diversity. These are farmers that often have some incentive from the USDA or have some resources that they can use for restoration. So we kind of [00:03:30] provide some of the research based tools to inform restoration does this, if that's sort of where we hope our work is moving towards. No one in our lab right now is currently working on honeybees, but we do work with a number of labs at Davis that have at UC Davis [inaudible]. 

Speaker 5:        However, previous work that Claire has done with a former student of her, Sarah Greenleaf did look at how native bees and honeybees interacted and was able to show that the presence of native bees actually [00:04:00] enhanced honeybee pollination of certain crops that where they did their study was in sunflowers. And I'm working in some flowers too, and one of the things we do, we do collect honey bees and our studies and are able to see how much they're utilizing hedgerows and whether or not they're actually hedgerows linear strips of native plants. These restorations that were moving entire cultural landscapes. If they're actually providing additional resources that are important to honeybees. And [00:04:30] by looking at their movement, we can see if the honeybees are going into the hedgerow and then into the crop or different distances to try and understand a bit about their biology as well. [inaudible] 

Speaker 4:        some of these landscapes only have five, five or less percent of their natural habitat still maintained. So we've got places where restoration or nightmare would be necessary in order to bring back native communities and some of our other sites sort of as a comparison, we have more complex landscapes like [00:05:00] a in the k value where, um, some of these farmers are just surrounded by natural habitat. And we're also trying to get a sense of what landscape features are important for native bees for honeybees and sort of what does that mean in terms of pollination services that farmers receive from the fields. 

Speaker 3:        Are there other pollinators besides visa, you're, you're studying as well. 

Speaker 4:        Many of the people in the lab, um, have more expertise with these. But definitely, uh, in a lot of these [00:05:30] surveys they're looking at, you know, butterflies surf with flies, Wasp. So organisms that aren't primarily pollinators, maybe they serve other ecological functions, like some people are understanding pest predators. And how can these natural habitats not only support pollinators, but also support the organisms which control pests. 

Speaker 3:        Hillary, tell me about when you wanted to become a scientist. 

Speaker 5:        When I wanted to become a scientist, 

Speaker 1:        or when did you [00:06:00] first start to think about it and say, this is interesting and I could see myself going this direction? I guess 

Speaker 5:        when, what really sealed it for me? I went to the University of California at Santa Cruz, and within the first few weeks I found this garden called the Alan Chadwick Garden, which is very magical and has been there since the 60s. Um, and I started interning and then working there. And so that's what got me really interested in agriculture and native plant propagation and just in botany in [00:06:30] general. So after graduating from college, I decided to work in native plant nurseries and ecological restoration cause that seemed to be a place where you could kind of garden with nature. And in doing that, discovered that a lot of plants when I would go to collect their seeds and propagate them, there didn't seem to be a lot of seeds. And when we were doing these restoration projects, we weren't considering the pollinators at all. So after kind of digging more deeply, finding that there is this major disconnect in [00:07:00] that I found I really wanted to go study this for some reason. Um, and the university just the whole academic setting was fascinating. 

Speaker 4:        Inshallah. Any hip hop for you. Right. So, um, my experience also started when I was an Undergrad. I was working on a project related to plant populations and understanding how weather and soil attributes, etc. Effectively as, [00:07:30] and then separately also working on blossoms. And so, uh, I was really interested in both of these systems and then started thinking about the really important connection between insects or animals that provide these pollination services, um, and the plants that require them in order to reproduce. And I just thought it was a really magical interaction that this, this, this, this interconnectedness between plant communities and pollinators. It's really fascinating. And [00:08:00] in order to have a really holistic understanding of plants or pollinators, you really have to understand both. But especially also like Hillary said, because of pollination is so important for our agricultural system, nuts and berries and all that, you know, all the wonderful things that we appreciate it on our kitchen table. I thought what better place to study pollination in an agricultural system? 

Speaker 6:        [inaudible]

Speaker 1:        [00:08:30] a lot of clean water focus and interest in the agricultural realm is in creating spaces between rivers and farm lands, 

Speaker 3:        which would be natural areas for your pollinators to live in. [00:09:00] Is their activity in trying to blend the research 

Speaker 4:        [inaudible] that's one thing that many biologists complain about is that there are many of these projects taking place, but we need to work on communicating and making sure that multiple projects can potentially meet multiple needs. And so we do have members in our lab that are working in or plan on working in that right now are being conserved for the [00:09:30] Berman out. We'll actually Abram, UC Davis. So these are conservation areas that people have, have managed in order to promote the bird but potentially could also provide support for pollinators. So definitely what we're trying to look at restoration in many different of many different uh, ecological systems. So whether that's water systems or you know, mammalian systems or working at conserving birds and thinking about how we can do Lilly also conserve native [00:10:00] pollinators are pest creditors.

Speaker 5:        I would say that the term for this, it's often uses multi-functionality and it seems in a lot of ways in agricultural areas. Europe is very much with the vanguard kind of preserving their agricultural areas for biodiversity, for cultural heritage of the size as well as nutrients. Like lame, preventing, you know, water from entering waterways. And that's one of the things we need to talk to farmers about. The benefits of a hedgerow for example, you can say it has the advantage of being a wind break [00:10:30] and preventing, um, soil from moving across. And so there's all of these different benefits that it has, but there's also some, you know, this services, if we're talking about ecosystem services that has roads could potentially create, and so trying to show the entire spectrum of what they can and cannot do. And often a single lab doesn't look at every aspect, but when you try and present it to the public or even write it up in a p in a journal, you want to try and pull [00:11:00] from all of those bodies of knowledge on, on it to create a holistic picture. 

Speaker 3:        So it's, it's somewhat difficult and problematic to try to add your level, bring all of this information together 

Speaker 4:        in the sciences or you're talking just strictly about research. It is often necessary to kind of focus because there's just so much that, so many factors that play a role in understanding the communities or understanding water filtration systems or hydrology. [00:11:30] I think you're right. You know, we definitely need collaboration across institutes, but I think even within research people are trying to make connections between labs that work on range land, plant conservation and lots of work on these are our pollinator conservation. So there's those kind of within um, institute cross collaboration that's necessary and across as well with these. Who would be Sangiovese and some of these funding agencies? 

Speaker 5:        No, it does seem like [00:12:00] at least here at Berkeley, there's this group that's arisen called the diversified farming round table round table and the diversified farming round table. And basically they're, they bridge a lot of these gaps. Do they bring a professor like Claire Who's really interested in conservation biology with somebody who's much more in touch with agro ecology like Miguel LTE, Arie and a lot of their Grad students and create this forum to talk about a lot of different issues and from [00:12:30] that can come review papers where we look at some factors say pesticide use in Agora ecosystems and how that would affect all of these different organisms, not just the one that we're focused on. And it also creates opportunities to build those research associations. 

Speaker 3:        [inaudible] you mentioned applying for grants and so ongoing. Do you have things you're looking to a present? 

Speaker 4:        Yeah, sure. I mean I think that's the [00:13:00] challenging and exciting thing about research is every question that you start to answer leads to more questions and, and so you know, with my work, so I focus on the native bumblebees. I'm looking at how these agricultural landscapes or whether they can actually support native bees or not and how these bumblebees are moving across agricultural landscapes. When I first began this work, the question was just, well, you know how many bees does a certain landscape support? And the more you dig into it and you realize [00:13:30] that, well not only is that important, but if you want these populations to be healthy and to persist in the landscape, they have to be able to reproduce and move and colonize new areas, etc. So now understanding their dispersal processes becomes the next big challenge. Okay, we know how many they are. We know we'd have 50 colonies in a particular landscape, but are they integrating I, they, um, are they moving across the landscape? Are they able to reproduce successfully? [00:14:00] So those are some of the next steps. And understanding how the landscape affects these ecological processes or these reproductive processes is very important if we want to conserve these native bees. 

Speaker 3:        Did you, uh, see recently the, the information about the, or the breakthrough, I guess you could call it in the colony collapse research, that was kind of impressive. Did that surprise you that the, those two organizations got together to work on at the U s army, and [00:14:30] I guess it was the University of Montana. 

Speaker 5:        The military is actually using honeybees for a lot of different purposes. There's a professor in the geography department, j Co sac, who's really looking at using them for looking at unexploded ordinances and how they can put honey bee colonies all over the world and their honey to see if there's radioactive material to see if there's, you know, nuclear testing going on. So for me, I was actually shocked when he had [00:15:00] spoken that there wasn't more looking at colony collapse disorder because if they're thinking about, you know, food security or threats, I would think, well this is a major threat to our, you know, national security. And so when I read that they'd been working out, I was like, oh, I'm so glad. Right. I mean, I think 

Speaker 4:        it comes back to this question of if you have multiple agencies working on, whether it's persistence of 10 populations or ecosystem services or conservation of our natural [00:15:30] resources, having multiple agencies working on the same problems but not working together can be a big barrier. And so it would be great if there was more of these cross collaborations and yeah, the military apparently has been interested in a lot of social insects for a number of reasons. So there are entomologists that work very closely with the military, you know, to understand how insects communicate with each other and navigate unknown landscapes. And so [00:16:00] there's a lot of potential for core collaborative work just about stepping out of your comfort zone. Maybe, you know, talking to people in other agencies, 

Speaker 5:        there are more and more grants offered through the Department of Defense and Department of Energy that I'm ecologists are becoming really interested in their offering them as fellowships to graduate students that I know a number of people in SPM have applied. And it's true, like in some ways you wonder kind of how this research will be [00:16:30] used and the knowledge. But at the same time it's creating this large pool of money to study all of these incredibly valuable things. And I think with this increasing interest in food security in all of these global crisis taking place right now, and there's really just such a great opportunity for collaboration across people who study food systems or study biological systems and government agencies who are really interested in conserving [00:17:00] and then making sure that people have access to good food and are not Melanie [inaudible] are not starving. So that's a really important overlap that we should be capitalizing. 

Speaker 6:        [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum KALX Berkeley [inaudible] 

Speaker 3:        [00:17:30] is there an international element to the research that you read? Are there good sources out there that you did you go to or 

Speaker 5:        yeah, they, I think just the nature of the world right now is so global as therapy people, you know, say in Germany there's m k has sharky like in his lab looks at a lot of the same systems and so we kind of try and compare like our systems to [00:18:00] their systems. And that's not just in Germany but in [inaudible] 

Speaker 4:        Zealand and all over. So every little bit that you learn from one place, you want to see if that's happening in your system. To be able to draw conclusions and just the nature of journals now and the quality of science. And there's a lot of these, I mean there should be more, but there was, for example, the national center for ecological analysis and synthesis as quad as NZ is. It was this federally funded institution [00:18:30] where basically they funded people to come from all over the world who were studying similar problems but just didn't have the chance to synthesize it information come up with a general model or general understanding of these processes. So in many of these systems you find that the rules are the same regardless of your, your bioregion or maybe the rules are totally subverted, but it's really essential to understand ecological systems or ecological and [00:19:00] human interactions at this global scale. So we definitely need more institutes like NCS or like these international synthesis groups. But it's happening a lot. And I think with, um, especially with connections like the Internet and international conferences, etc, you can really bridge across nations and get a better understanding of what's happening on a global scale 

Speaker 5:        in a sense to challenge your assumptions. Yeah. Yeah. By seeing [00:19:30] other people's work. Absolutely. But also I think there are some efforts to try and frame your research within some of these larger international contexts. There's been the millennium ecosystem assessment, which was done by the UN or 

Speaker 4:        red. So that was, yeah, it was done by the UN and I think there were a lot of people at Columbia also that are also working on that. But yeah, it was this international project where they had separate villages as millennium ecosystem villages [00:20:00] where they were monitoring ecosystem services, impacts ecological and the relationships between ecological systems and humans and in these different villages. And trying to come up with what the general governing principles are for how humans and ecological systems interact and sort of what ecosystem services humans can obtain from their ecological surrounding college or the system. So things like water infiltration and pollination service and um, [00:20:30] erosion control, etc. In order to come up with a general framework like this is these are the essential components of a sustainable society. 

Speaker 5:        And I think just in terms of when you do your research, you want it to touch upon, you know, these touchstone theories in to be able to examine those or connect to these bigger global issues that people are constantly examining and considering is important to policymakers to just people's basic livelihoods on a day to day basis. [00:21:00] So knowing that even though you have your local system that you're looking at, it has wider implications that you want to be able to tie it into. So it doesn't just exist in a bubble. 

Speaker 3:        Is your relationship to science changed as you've gone from high school to college to postgraduate work? 

Speaker 4:        Well, I think, you know, definitely as you spend more time working on science and writing papers, you get [00:21:30] a better understanding of how much work it takes to come up with a particular understanding of a system. And you, you start to realize that a lot of times when a certain theory or a certain principle finally gets public understanding of public public acknowledgment, it's because hundreds of scientists have worked on it and have really put all their efforts together. It really just takes that last a hundred and first [00:22:00] study to really have a strong feeling. This is the pattern that we see. Um, so I think one of the things that you learn or you gather as a scientist is that it's really a multi year multi person, you know, Multi University or multi research institute effort to understand the processes and that it requires a lot of collaboration. 

Speaker 4:        And I think the other thing is that you get a better understanding of uncertainty because in science there's always uncertainty. It's [00:22:30] never black and white. And so if you're looking for a true false answer to your question, you're just not going to get it because that's just not how nature works. There's always a gradient to things and there's always exceptions to the rule. And I think as a scientist you have to understand that there's always going to be a little bit of uncertainty, but you have to be okay with that. And you have to say that, well, there's a lot of power and there's a lot of value in saying that we are very sure about something. [00:23:00] You don't have to be 100% in order to take a certain management action or take a certain conservation or restoration action. 

Speaker 3:        How about for you Hillary? What's, what's changed in your, your view of it? 

Speaker 5:        I think a lot of people, like he said, they can, you see science is kind of this monolith that has the scientific process and it creates these results and that's what it is. But really it's this very iterative process that [00:23:30] is constantly reevaluating hypotheses. And in a lot of ways what you choose to focus on is based on what other people have seen. But it's also, I'm noticing a product of the social, political, economic 

Speaker 4:        paradigms of whatever time you're in that helps you decide on what to study, what questions to ask, what features did incorporate. So not that it's subjective because they're, you know, these standards that you can kind of incorporate to try and find out. But that [00:24:00] I do think it's very much driven by probably a lot more processes than we kind of give it credit for it and that it's not as sometimes when I talked to other people who are not scientists, they see it as very divorced from the rest of our social ecosystem. And I think it's very much embedded in it. And I think it comes back to her whenever our first discussion topic. So where do we get our funding to do the science? And so when we are applying to these different agencies, [00:24:30] we really have to think about, well what is it that they're interested in? Are we, are we meeting their target objectives? And those agencies write up those objectives based on the public and based on what you know, the public thinks is important.

Speaker 2:        Woo. 

Speaker 7:        [inaudible]

Speaker 1:        thanks to Shalani Shai and Hillary Sar Danios for joining us today. 

Speaker 7:        [inaudible]

Speaker 1:        [00:25:00] irregular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks in San Francisco. Tomorrow. There is a big splashy free Earth Day event being put on by a group named sustainable living road show. It is from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM they bill it as a carnival was [00:25:30] simultaneous events, a mixture of music, workshops, exhibits and speakers. The event is being held at the civic center and it is free. The website is Earth Day s f.com the art technology and culture colloquium presents a lecture titled Pure Engineering, decoupling technical innovation from utility and consumerism. The Speaker is Raphaelo deondrea professor of dynamic systems and control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [00:26:00] in Zurich. This event will take place at [inaudible] Hall on the UC Berkeley campus in the Beneteau Auditorium. April 25th, 2011 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden Spring Plant Sale Is April 29th and 30th Friday the 29th is for members only and will run from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM the public sale is April 30th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM the garden is located at 200 centennial [00:26:30] drive that is in Strawberry Canyon, east of Memorial Stadium. 

Speaker 1:        Steven squires and astronomer at Cornell University will present the Hitchcock lectures over two days. In May, the first lecture will be held at International House on the UC Berkeley campus in the Chevron Auditorium. May 2nd, 2011 at 2:00 PM Steven Squire's, his first lecture there. We'll describe his odyssey with NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. The second lecture [00:27:00] is the following day, May 3rd at the same location, international house, and the same time 2:00 PM the second lecture, we'll discuss the future of solar system exploration to news stories of interest. The Messenger spacecraft successfully entered the orbit of the planet Mercury March 17th, 2011 this is the first spacecraft to orbit mercury. It has taken six and a half years for messenger to reach mercury. It is now sending back images of [00:27:30] mercury than you can view on numerous websites. The home site for Messenger is Messenger Dot j h u a p l.edu. Those initials stand for Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. The Messenger mission is designed to answer six broad scientific questions. 

Speaker 1:        Why is mercury so dense? What is the geologic history of mercury? What is the nature of Mercury's magnetic field? [00:28:00] What is the structure of Mercury's core? What are the unusual materials that Mercury's poles? What volatiles or vapors make up the thin outer layer of the atmosphere? Messenger will gather data to answer these questions over the next year. Then the spacecraft will eventually fall out of orbit several years later and crash on mercury. Surface Messenger is part of NASA's discovery program. The agencies low cost, scientifically focused planetary missions. [00:28:30] The New York Times blog, the sixth floor on March 31st, 2011 speculated as to who designed the radiation symbol that is now ubiquitous. The Times attributed the design to Nell's garden and the health chemistry group at UC Berkeley in 1946 on April 1st in a reader comment to the blog, PJ Patterson of Berkeley offered up Cyril Orally, a mechanical engineer at the Lawrence radiation lab as the symbol designer or least version of the symbol hand painted on wood [00:29:00] is said to be on display at the Lawrence Berkeley lab. Does anyone in the radio audience have more information to further clarify the origin and evolution of the radiation symbol? If you do let us know, send an email to spectrum dot k a l [email protected] 

Speaker 2:        Musa character shows by the stone of David from his album, folk in acoustic, made available through creative Commons license 3.0 attributes. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We're happy to hear [00:29:30] from our listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot Calex and yahoo.com and join us in two weeks at the same time. [inaudible].

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Associate Professor of Environmental Science, Policy & Management in the College of Natural Resources at UCB talks about his work in wildfire and forest management research. Wildfire suppression history and current policy is discussed.

Transcript

Speaker 1:        [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:00:30] [inaudible]

Speaker 2:        welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on KALX Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Scott Stevens and associate professor in the Environmental Science Policy and Management Department of the College of natural resources at UC Berkeley. This interview is prerecorded and edited. We're here with [00:01:00] Scott Stevens and Scott, thanks for taking the time to speak with us. Well, wanted to ask you about your research in wildfire management and forestry management and have you described the arc of your research over your career and where you're at now?

Speaker 3:        Well, I started here at Berkeley in 2000 actually, I was a graduate student here from 91 to 95 so I was phd student here and I came back to Berkeley in 2000 really started to work on [00:01:30] kind of looking at the effectiveness of different fuel treatments that can be used to try to reduce fire hazard and maybe reduce the negative impacts of wildfire on forest. So we started a project with a bunch of collaborators all over the United States that were the fire and fire surrogate study. That study looked at trying to reduce fire hazards in forest at once. Burn frequently with mechanical methods alone, prescribed fire methods alone, combination mechanical followed by fire and that controls. [00:02:00] And that study also had a pretty broad suite of ecological variables including soils and vegetation, insects, economics, some social fire behavior. So it tried to look at the stand scale, a hundred acres, 50 acres.

Speaker 3:        If a manager wants to go in and actually modify vegetation to try to reduce that potential for bad wildfire effects, what ecological similarities are different, just might be with all those treatments. That went on for about five years. And we have a research for us at Berkeley called [00:02:30] UC Blodgett forest, which is up near Georgetown campus. Got that donated to them in 1933 so it's a fantastic place to do your research. We did that work, um, in kind of with a bunch of other people in different states. Even this was a national study that included about 13 states. Each of us kind of doing a similar exercise, so you went through that funded by the u s joint fire sciences program. More recent research has moved away from kind of the stand level of trying to go to Morton landscape level. So happens when you actually [00:03:00] think about reintroducing fire into landscapes that have had fire exclusion for maybe a century and then maybe do that repeatedly over an area and look at the patterns of burning severity, mortality patterns, what's the size difference between landscape and stand?

Speaker 3:        That's a great point and the standards I think are on the order of 2050 a hundred acres or so and the landscape work we're doing now is much, much larger. It's 5,000 maybe to 25,000 acres, [00:03:30] so really, really watersheds or pieces of watersheds and sometimes even small watershed inside a large and really much, much larger kind of more of a functional unit where people might work in terms of planning at a landscape scale further work down the road. Now it's kind of changed a little bit also into fire policy. That was something I've always been interested in trying to understand how science actually interact with policy, how a policy is formed, trying to maybe look at some objectivity and some of the fire [00:04:00] science research. It could maybe help inform policy, not really shape it completely, but informant most recently we've worked with Australians on the policy of urban interface fire areas.

Speaker 3:        So this has been an interesting um, kind of partnership because Australia and us have a lot of similarities in fire policy and the urban interface and also some real market differences. And probably the, maybe the, the final area is trying to understand, um, dynamics also in struggling. So we've actually moved away from the forest [00:04:30] and moving into some struggling systems, chaparral, try to understand kind of the dynamics of fire and how you might modify fire behavior and m chaparral systems, which are really, really different than, um, say, um, force. So when we continue, I've got a great group of graduate students in my lab and um, all those folks have done great work. So it's a, it's kind of a group effort.

Speaker 2:        And the research proposals that you write, are you responding to requests from the field, so to speak, or are you driving [00:05:00] some of the subject matter?

Speaker 3:        Well, what's happened in my program, there's a program called the U s joint fire sciences program, which is funded by the US Department of Agriculture in the u s department of Interior. And they put out a call for proposals every year in the fall. They just came out here recently and they actually put on their website the areas they're most interested in. So most of my research proposals is when I look at those calls, I look at the USDA, look at maybe another competitive research grant [00:05:30] proposal system, look what's being proposed, and then see how that Meld with the interest I've had maybe in the last few years and tried to say, oh, there's an opportunity, we can do something. Um, let's go ahead. It's interesting. One thing has happened is the success rate on the proposals has gone way down in terms of percentage, but this started around 97 98 or percentage of successful proposals. Maybe about 40%. Most recently it's going between 10 and 15. So it has gotten more competitive to get the um, the research proposals [00:06:00] funded.

Speaker 2:        Is there a general consensus within the research community, a fire, wildfire management community on what the best practices are, where the research should be going?

Speaker 3:        Well that, there is, I think a lot of consensus with some debate. Um, what's happened in the joint fire sciences program, which I think has happened too many research programs, United States that I'm aware of is calls used to be a little bit more broad in terms of what they were asking for. Kind [00:06:30] of more of a broad question and then maybe you could come up with many different ideas that might fit that question. And I've seen more and more of that. The questions seem to be getting more and more narrow. And I think in some cases they're probably tied to um, you know, entities such as, um, organizations that need information they think is really, really important. Um, maybe also this evolution of science where more certainly known, there's probably young questions are getting maybe more focused in some ways. I think that's a lost opportunity because it allows certainly you to look at what's [00:07:00] being proposed and see if you fit it, but it also doesn't allow maybe the more general research to happen that maybe isn't a tie to an exact objective. And I, I know NSF National Science Foundation does that better where you're able to put in a proposal that may meet that objective, but also it doesn't have to really directly be on right on top of it for a short term, particularly in the fire science research community, we're talking about both Australia, Europe and the United States. More and more research is actually being targeted to questions that managers have on a time scale, [00:07:30] probably less than five years.

Speaker 2:        What do you see as the time frame that you would need to have for having an impact on a large forest ecosystem?

Speaker 3:        Well, I think the timeframe for a large one is, is going to be decades. And then continuous, um, places that we've worked at were fire has been reintroduced saying you sent me a national park since about 1974. Um, lightning fire milliwatt creek basin has been allowed to burn kind of unabated with a little bit of suppression for [00:08:00] the last 35 years or so. And it really took decades for that place to be sculpted by fire once again is before 74 fire was excluded and Yosemite really for a hundred years. Totally. So when fire gets back into those systems and seeing the patterns that we see today for some papers with Brandon Collins and others, it really has started to really have an incredible impact the dynamic on that forest. But it took, you know, 2030 years or so. And then when we do things on the other side mechanically, [00:08:30] when we try to maybe reduce fire hazards with mechanical means, thinning, chipping, things of that nature, there are, I think, similar timeframe.

Speaker 3:        You're talking about decades because the project sizes are so large and one of the big challenges is so much area that really does need some treatment for both fire and also restoration versus what is able to be done annually. And that's really a huge disconnect. What can be done is a tiny drop in some ways connected to what really needs to be done. So I think they all say that it's going to be a [00:09:00] longterm view decades and decades. And once you kind of get into that philosophy of management, you're changing your learning. Since forests never are static, they're always changing. Sense of that means a manager is going to be basically doing things continuously forever.

Speaker 4:        [inaudible] [inaudible] [00:09:30] [inaudible] [inaudible]

Speaker 2:        uh, to put it in perspective, the idea of forest management and fire abatement, was it about a hundred years ago that the, the process of trying to put fires out began?

Speaker 3:        It sure was. It was really about 1905 is one of the forest service was created by Congress. And when the forest was created, they really had a few really critical missions put out by the, [00:10:00] um, the congress and also from the president. One was to try to safeguard the timber resources for the nation and try to actually create it to continuous supply timber. The other was actually create continuous and good quality water supplies. So even back in 1905 they were talking about water. There was actually enacted debate in the early 19 hundreds whether or not fire was seen as a menace or possibly couldn't be used as a tool. The debate went on for several years. In fact, California was a big part of that debating particular private land [00:10:30] owners of forest around lake Amador and other places. After a little bit of debate, some study, it was decided that fire was the enemy, both from a water standpoint, timber stand standpoint and Ryder early 19 hundreds 1910 1905 we really have a national fire suppression policy that happens in the western us. The southeast United States continues to debate longer. They have a much longer kind of connection to fire on land based on just immigrants and other things down there and they basically [00:11:00] didn't take the western line for a long time, but around 1905 we really do see an active fire suppression system and things like federal dollars from Congress actually having to be procured to states only. They actually adopted policy.

Speaker 2:        That's what's built up this incredible amount of fuel. And density of forest in North America that has created a real hazard for wildfire. But then you were saying that in the past 20 [00:11:30] or 30 years that's been rethought and now fire is allowed in areas and there's active management to try to remove fuel than that. You're starting to see the effects of that

Speaker 3:        currently actually has quite a history in this. There was a professor, Harold Vizquel Isabel came here in 1947 and he retired about 1972 so he was one of the earliest that basically started to ask those exact questions, is fire always the enemy? Can we use it actually for some purposes that actually would make sense? Do [00:12:00] we always want to exclude it? You know? So Harold had his career really during that time and there was massive debate and also a massive bias to fire me. Always the enemy. He had a thick skin. Yeah, he was basically, I'm beat up in political settings from comments and written comments, but he persisted and um, did a marvelous job and it has changed. It has changed. It's been slow. It's been really slow. You know, most areas in California, since we're in a Mediterranean climate, really [00:12:30] did have fire at really, really short intervals in the past, say maybe 10 years, 15 years, 20 years.

Speaker 3:        So we have a lot of places that used to burn with a lot of frequency, very, very common grasslands. You know, um, woodlands, the Savannah Woodlands, Oak Woodlands, many of the forests, mixed conifer, Ponderosa Pine, even wetlands from native American burning. So there was a great area of California that used to burn. Very, very common. And then there are other places in California, high elevation [00:13:00] forests, um, Alpine environments, deserts like the Mojave desert were fired, we think was actually a pretty minor factor maybe once in awhile, but maybe on a century scale. So we really had the gamut here. We had some that burned very, very frequently and others that had very, very little fire. And as you alluded to, the places that used to burn frequently, you take fire out for a hundred years. Those are the places that changed. And it's also past management such as harvesting the way we've harvested, forced partially cut force and left a lot of fuel on the ground that has also had [00:13:30] a profound impact.

Speaker 2:        And so is there within the community a bit of debate really just around the edges of the issue or are there some people that really have very different takes on, on how management should be done?

Speaker 3:        You know, there are apps, there are, there are. Both are absolutely both. Um, there are some, there's a debate going on in California right now about high severity fire. So the eye high severity simply means that you killed the majority of you overstory. So when a forest, you're killing maybe 75% [00:14:00] of the overstory or more to the fire, that causes great change. And interestingly, some people would argue that maybe there's too much high severity fire in California because of the fuel build up in the other things we alluded to, others actually may argue that they're sufficient or there's actually a deficit. That high severity fire working on our forest is not a bad thing. And it actually is something that maybe some people argue is an a low number. Science tries to come in and help inform that debate. And it's not [00:14:30] easy because we don't have a lot of good data to understand what high severity fire really did in most of our forests.

Speaker 3:        In California, we have a few places. Um, one is that Illinois at basin and Yosemite that's been working at least for the last 35 years with unabated fire in there, Brandon Collins led him to work at high severity fire at least in the last couple of decades. Brian, 15% of the landscape, so about 50% of it burning when it burns very frequently every 10 years. Every 15 years is really killing majority of trees. [00:15:00] But at what spatial scale? That's another good question. It's just not how much percentage, but how is it distributed? So the high severity fire there, most patches are less than say five acres in size with many on the order of one acre in size. And then there's a few, a few out there, maybe 200 acres, very few. Um, so the distribution of severity on that landscape is also incredibly important. And there's no doubt that when we look at some of our contemporary wildfires, like the moonlight fire and some others in California we've [00:15:30] had in the last seven decade or so, that the patches of high severity can be a thousand acres, can be maybe even a little larger.

Speaker 3:        And the patches down in that one acre realm are almost intimate because there just don't exist. So that's one area. It's great debate. The other great debate really is whether or not when forest service goes in to federal land and tries to reduce fire hazard, should they really just focus on fire hazards alone and then try to work with those? Or do they [00:16:00] also added maybe a commercial tree harvest that can supplement the costs of that, maybe make it then available over a larger land basis versus just getting money from Congress to do it. So that's another real real debate is whether or not federal lands in California of the forest service should they actually have an objective that maybe a second tier objective, the fire objective, maybe it's number one, but then maybe the second objective is also removing some green timber that could help pay for their treatments on them around.

Speaker 3:        That's [00:16:30] a, that's a fierce debate and how does that fit into the roads? No roads debate as well. That's a good question because the road, no road to me is also another one that exactly connected to it because some would argue that we need these roads to access these forests to then somehow do a treatment to then reduce their hazard. My answer to that is somewhat is that there are so many wroted acres in California, millions and millions and millions of acres that are rooted already and many of those millions of vast majority, probably 90% of [00:17:00] the treatment. So I think where the roads are, yes. You think about maybe some of those treatments like mechanical prescribed, burning, chipping makes a lot of sense, but I can't imagine myself saying we need to road areas that are unroasted so then we can do the mechanical work when we have such a base already that needs to be worked and we can't even touch it. I think the unroasted areas, if they're remote, we should basically allow more managed wildfire to work those landscapes.

Speaker 4:        [00:17:30] [inaudible] you are listening to Spec a l x Berkeley.

Speaker 3:        In your research, are you actively seeking

Speaker 2:        new technologies and capabilities to extend your understanding of what's going on in the forest?

Speaker 3:        We do use a lot of different technologies to try to help us understand [00:18:00] the forest and one is spatial data, so the idea of you're getting data over large areas like we alluded to, maybe a 15,000 acre area, you know that's a big area at 20,000 acres. It's just impossible to go out there and do some sort of field sampling that you're going to be able to get some information over such an extent. But you can go out certainly and do some field sampling with a stratification maybe based on forest type or aspect or slope. And then use things like a geographic information system or remotely sense data from satellites [00:18:30] and space than to try to use your field data and combine it with that remotely sense data. It actually create a map, like a spatial map of the area that we're interested in. So that spatial data, you know, the remote sensing technology to work on spatial data, just critical, critically important. And even the technology of just instruments we use in the field nowadays to measure things like heights, diameters, um, reflectance of vegetation, things of that nature. All of that is just incredibly useful. So the technology continues [00:19:00] to help us try to make assessments at broad scales and also try to answer questions sometimes that aren't easy.

Speaker 2:        Are you using a quantitative modeling? To some extent,

Speaker 3:        we sure do. And then the models are just critical in some ways. The fire models are ahead of things like ecosystem models. You know, fire is really a physical process. It really is about combustion oxidation. Fire modeling really began in earnest in this country in the early seventies mostly Missoula, Montana, [00:19:30] and has certainly been able to kind of change over time and we're continuing to try to make it better. But the fire models we have today actually do a pretty good job, not perfect job, but a pretty good job of actually forecasting on a gis landscape work. Fire's gonna move in a landscape. How fast is it going to move? Maybe what kind of flame lights might you expect so that those modeling systems are really used a great deal in our research to try to understand that probability of fire occurrence. What happens to that probability?

Speaker 3:        Let's say if you treat 20% [00:20:00] of the watershed and reduce the hazard, what happens to the probability of the areas that are treated? What about the 80% that are untreated? It turns out they can also have a reduction in probability. The ecosystem models are so much more challenging than you're asking what happens to the soil? What happens to water, what happens to wildlife habitat. So those become much more challenging that basically, um, generate and also tests. So the fire modeling in some ways is well ahead of those because I think it's more of a physical known system even though there's great [00:20:30] research to try to make it better. But the firewall that we have today a pretty good,

Speaker 2:        and then there's also the idea that the forests in the equator equatorial area are much more valuable than the, the forest north and south of that area. What sort of feeling do you have about that?

Speaker 3:        I think that's Friday and that and the carbon debate, that's a really interesting, um, separation because people have shown really conclusively that, you know, removing forest in the equator area is that dramatic [00:21:00] reduction in carbon sequestration. Also the sustainability of those sports. So I think the carbon question when we look at the equator is really clear about trying to keep forced, forced to keep forest alive. Right? Keep that force there and let it allow it to sequester carbon, hold it. But then when we move away from the kind of the equator, we go up into places that are more temporary. Like California. Here we have fire that works on landscapes, fireworks on landscape, just done in the past. It continues [00:21:30] today, fires different, but it's still a big issue. So there I think the debate becomes not just trying to keep Forrest at forested, but also what kind of forest have the ability to hold onto carbon.

Speaker 3:        It's a question for the long term and then you go to the boreal and my goodness, the boreal forest and now been shown like in northern Canada and Russia, some of the biggest carbon stocks in the planet. These are huge, enormous areas. And actually we know this year Russia had one the biggest fire years in [00:22:00] his history. So talk about, you know, the context of fire and climate is profound and fire force and boreal is going to be the most sensitive to climate change. People have already forecasted that. I think it's already been seen. Temperatures are up even more severely in the boreal regions versus down here and the temporary. So those places should probably be even more important to understand in terms of the dynamics of carbon and fire and forest and even we are a, so how did you get started in science? What was it that got you interested in [00:22:30] becoming a scientist?

Speaker 3:        It's a great question. It's one that's hard to answer. I mean my background has always been kind of curious about scientific things. I actually had my undergrad degree and masters degree in engineering. I grew up really in a forestry family, my grandfather and my dad and uncles working around forest. But I think for me being so close to it for a while, not for my whole life, but while young childhood life who was so close and I really enjoyed it, but it was also something that I took for granted, right? That just didn't think it was something they wanted [00:23:00] to study and pursue. And somehow I was interested in kind of technology engineering, still got into engineering field. Then I started actually contemplating doing a phd. Then this realize what discussions with my wife, Mary and others that I was so much more interested in the natural world.

Speaker 3:        So once I started to actually study that, which actually happened at UC Davis in 1988, it just lit a fire. I mean, I didn't, at that time I wasn't really gonna study fire, but it lit a fire and me just a curiosity. This idea of um, natural [00:23:30] systems on soils and plants. I'd never studied any of that in my previous career. It was just, it was just fascinating to me. Then I just decided, um, I thought I'd come down and meet a couple of faculty here at Berkeley at the time, Bob Martin, um, learned that he actually had a bs degree in physics. So in some ways we had some similarities and they just realized that the kind of the quantitative engineering world had some real connections to the natural scientists. And it was really where my heart was. There's no doubt about it. Great. Well thanks very much. [00:24:00] You're welcome.

Speaker 4:        [inaudible]

Speaker 5:        special thanks to Gretchen Sanders before editorial assistants, one occurred during the show is from a low star David Alpha and titled Folk and Acoustic. It's made available [00:24:30] via creative Commons license 3.0 Patrick. Thank you for listening to spectrum. We're happy to hear from our listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot Cadillacs had yahoo.com

Speaker 4:        [00:25:00] [inaudible].

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