- Author: Faith Kearns
Early in its development, Los Angeles bound itself tightly to the rest of California by securing a water supply piped in from locations across the state. The preference for distant water sources had far reaching ramifications for the region, including dependence on the happenings – weather and otherwise – in those faraway places. It also functioned to mask the local water supplies that LA actually has.
The penchant for long-distance water led to the creation of a vast and expensive infrastructure system. It also spurred the development of a plethora of agencies – over 100 at this point – created to manage that imported water.
In a
- Author: Faith Kearns
Evelyn Valdez-Ward is a doctoral student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine where her research focuses on the effects of climate change and drought on plants and soils.
Your research is on water transport in plants and how that might be shifting with climate change. Can you tell us a little more about what you are studying?
By 2050, earth's population is expected to double, which means that agricultural production has to increase by 70%...
- Author: Faith Kearns
You've been working on a project to analyze the impacts of California's drought on public health. Can you tell us a little more about the project?
Sure – I work with a wonderful team that includes Professors Kurt Schwabe and Bruce Link from UC Riverside, Professor Mindy Marks from Northeastern University, and Kate Choi from Keck Graduate Institute. Our project...
- Author: Faith Kearns
Albert Ruhi is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley.
You are new to UC Berkeley. Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
Sure! I'm a freshwater ecologist and study how animal communities respond to hydrologic variability and drought. I am from Catalonia, Spain, and studied biology and got my Ph.D. at the University of Girona. During my graduate work, I had the opportunity to visit the University of Georgia...
- Author: Faith Kearns
Parisa Parsafar is a doctoral candidate in Developmental Psychology at UC Riverside. Her work focuses on how children's experiences and management of negative emotions relate to differences in attention, memory, and learning.
You have recently written about the links between asthma and mental health in the Salton Sea area. Can you tell us a little more about that work?
Dust from the Salton Sea gets picked up by winds and distributed throughout the region, exacerbating air pollution problems. Salton Sea dust emissions are thought to contribute to the high asthma rates in the area, and this link between emissions and...