Carbon Neutrality Initiative fellows seek to reduce our carbon footprint

UC Berkeley doctoral candidates Jose Daniel Lara, Allegra Mayer and Carmen Tubbesing, UC ANR's Carbon Neutrality Initiative (CNI) fellows for 2017-18, are studying new sources of renewable energy and strategies to cut carbon emissions.

The UC President's Carbon Neutrality Initiative Student Fellowship Program, established in 2015, funds student-generated projects that support the UC system's goal to produce zero-net greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

Each fellow will receive $3,000 to fund their sustainability-themed project.

The 2017-18 CNI fellows:

Jose Daniel Lara of San Jose, Costa Rica, is a first-year Ph.D. candidate in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. Lara aims to determine the feasibility of producing electric power from dead trees. To analyze the resources available from tree die-off, he will develop a method to simulate harvesting of dead trees and evaluate the cost of harvesting dead biomass for electricity production. These results will inform policies regarding the use of biomass feedstocks to generate electric power and help mitigate the consequences of massive tree die-offs in forest communities throughout California.

Allegra Mayer of Palo Alto is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley. Mayer is studying the potential for storing carbon in grassland soils across California to reduce global temperatures. Allegra will combine laboratory incubations with a state-of-the-art carbon model (DayCent) to measure and predict the effect of compost applications on grassland soil. She will then apply these results to quantify the potential change in grassland productivity and soil carbon storage associated with compost amendments. This will allow her to model the impact of climate change on the carbon cycle at these sites. 

Carmen Tubbesing of Redmond, Wash., is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley and a fellow in the Graduate Student Program in Extension. The recent California drought led to a massive tree die-off, particularly in the southern Sierra Nevada, that will have long-term impacts on forest carbon storage. To gain a better understanding of the impact of carbon from dead trees, Tubbesing will calculate forest carbon transfers from live tree pools to dead pools between 2012 and 2016.

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