Multimedia Features
The Delta Dialogue: Perspectives on Science and Policy
Original event date: 10.21.2008
Length: 93 minutes
Play using: Streaming Flash Video
In 2000, the California legislature created two scientific positions with considerable influence on water policy: the CALFED Lead Scientist and the Chair of an Independent Science Board (ISB). These positions are unique in that they report directly to the decision makers most important in determining water policy in California and provide a formal linkage between scientific research and policy. In this 1.5 hour forum, JMIE will bring together past and present Lead Scientists with the Chair of the ISB to re-imagine water and environmental management in California within the context of the debate over the future of the Delta. They will bring their unique perspectives to a discussion of the most important emerging issues in the Bay-Delta; and the role science and scientists in can play as future policies unfold. This will be an opportunity to hear (and participate in) a discussion of the most important needs for new science in the Delta and to hear views on the future of science programs relevant to the Delta.
Part of the 2008-09 distinguished speaker series on Environmental Solutions: Lenses on the Delta.
Partnerships for Environmental Justice: Fish Contamination in the Delta
Original event date: 05.08.2007
Length: 92 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media, QuickTime (MOV), QuickTime (MPEG-4)
Community activist LaDonna Williams thought contaminated soil was the biggest problem she faced until she found out about the fish she ate regularly. Fraser Shilling, UC Davis researcher, approached Laura Leonelli to find translators to convince Southeast Asians not to feed Delta fish to their pregnant wives and children. This discussion describes how community members, government agencies and universities engaged with policymakers in Delta communities in an attempt to bring all the stakeholders to the table to reduce the risks of eating local fish.
New Directions for Environmental Justice Policy and Advocacy in the Central Valley
Original event date: 03.13.2007
Length: 137 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media, QuickTime
The Central Valley has 75% of the nitrate contaminated wells in California, and 40% of their private wells have nitrate levels above legal standards. State Senator Florez describes the struggle of urban against rural interests, at the expenses of rural communities that become polluted with exported urban wastes. Activism engaging toxic waste in Kettleman City, Avenal, Arvin, Delano, Lamont, Orange Cove and other Latino rural communities is discussed.
Fishing for Diversity
Produced: 2006
Length: 3:51 minutes
Play using:Real Player, Windows Media
At Sagehen Creek Field Station north of Lake Tahoe, Peter Moyle and Virginia Boucher demonstrate that it is possible to recreate the thriving fish habitat of 100 years ago. Native Lahontan Trout can’t compete with introduced trout species, but researchers are helping them take back their original spawning waters.
Wireless "Eyes and Ears" for Quail Ridge
Produced: 2006
Length: 3:07 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Researchers at this UC Davis Reserve above Lake Berryessa are using wireless systems to watch wildlife without being there. UC Davis collaborator Mike Bernard can now monitor his favorite frogs from Michigan with technology developed in the Department of Computer Sciences. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation Center for Embedded Networked Sensing.
Community Rediscovers Putah Creek
Produced: 2006
Length: 3:10 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Residents along Putah Creek didn’t think much about the ecosystem in their own back yard until UC Davis graduate students taught local children how to restore the creek’s natural beauty. With community support from the Putah Creek Council and the Solano County Water Agency, the locals discovered a resource that provided hours of fun and educational activities.
Lake Tahoe Research Tour
Produced: 2006
Length: 4:31 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Geoff Schladow and Charles Goldman board the research vessel John LeConte to demonstrate the measurements that protect Lake Tahoe's renowned clarity, ending with a mini tour of the recently opened Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences in Incline Village.
On Salmon & Tribes
Original event date: 6.02.05
Length: 109 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
This panel discussion examins the state of the fisheries in the Klamath River watershed and how the lives of the Karuk Native American people are impacted by the loss of traditional foods, such as salmon, and their traditional way of life. Features Drs. Peter Moyle and Kari Norgaard of UC Davis, Ron Reed, Karuk Tribe of California, Russ Kanz, State Water Resources Control Board, and Kelly Catlett, Friends of the River.
More event information: On Salmon & Tribes: The Deterioration of the Salmon Fishery and Health of a Northern Californian Tribe in the Klamath River Watershed
Nonlinear Dynamics, Modeling, and the Environmental Sciences: Ideas and Tools
Original event date: 12.01.05
Length: 60:25 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Liz Bradley (University of Colorado) begins with a review of some of the most basic ideas and tools of the field of nonlinear dynamics, and then covers a variety of examples ranging from environmental science and engineering to dance. Most tools were developed for low-dimensional systems and many require perfect models. Since these situations are rare in the environmental sciences, she explains how and when to use them, how to interpret the results, and how to recognize their failure modes.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Insights into Complex Networks
Original event date: 11.17.05
Length: 60:53 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Michelle Girvan (Santa Fe Institute) discusses the interplay between network structure and system dynamics in many of the aforementioned systems, reviewing recent advances in the field of complex networks. Examples include the Internet, the World-Wide Web, distribution networks, neural networks, biochemical networks, food webs, and social networks.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
The Prospects and Perils of Complex Systems Modeling
Original event date: 11.10.05
Length: 59:00 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Melanie Mitchell (Portland State University) reviews several prominent complex-systems models as examples of the prospects and perils of modeling techniques. These examples will range from explorations of the simplest cellular automata to detailed "agent-based" simulations of food webs, economic systems, and human behavior.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Natural hazards as self-organizing complex systems
Original event date: 11.03.05
Length: 62:00 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Three cellular automata models have direct applications to natural hazards: the sand-pile model to landslides, the forest-fire model to forest and wild fires, and the slider-block model to earthquakes. The relationship of these models to critical point phenomena is discussed by Don Turcott (University of California, Davis), in particular the relationship of the forest-fire model to the critical-point behavior of the site percolation model.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Networks, Power Laws, and Phase Transitions
Original event date: 10.27.05
Length: 58:24 minutes
Play using:Real Player, Windows Media
Raissa D'Souza (University of California, Davis) begins by surveying characteristic structures for different types of networks. An optimization model of "competition induced preferential attachment" is presented. Certain aspects of Internet growth that have not been captured by previous models emerge from the framework.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
From Complexity to Peace
Original event date: 10.20.05
Length: 74:00 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Carlos Puente (University of California, Davis) explains (a) how recent universal results pertaining to multiplicative cascades and fully developed turbulence entice all of us to seek peace in a condition typified by the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle; (b) how recent universal results pertaining to the transition from order to chaos via a cascade of bifurcations point us to a serene state, symbolized by the convergence to the origin in the root of a Feigenbaum's tree (c) how recent universal results pertaining to power-laws, self-organized criticality and space-filling transformations provide reminders that point us to unity as an essential element to achieve peace.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Endogenous versus Exogenous Origins of Crises
Original event date: 10.12.05
Length: 68:24 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
This presentation from Didier Sornette (University of California, Los Angeles) reviews a general strategy for understanding the organization of several complex systems under the dual effect of endogenous and exogenous fluctuations. Examples are: earthquake foreshocks, mainshock, aftershocks, Internet download shocks, book sale shocks, social shocks, financial volatility shocks, and financial crashes. Applications to illnesses and climate are discussed.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Exploring Chemical Reaction Networks in Science and Technology
Original event date: 10.06.05
Length: 64:10 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Network architecture has become increasingly important in understanding complex systems. Brian Higgins (University of California, Davis) focuses on chemical reaction networks in which arbitrary chemical species are connected by chemical reactions. He begins with a mathematical overview of stoichiometry, and proceeds with a review of several chemical reaction networks based on mass action kinetics that display varied dynamically properties.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Multiagent Dynamical Systems
Original event date: 6.02.05
Length: 56:45 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Modeling multiagent systems using dynamical systems theory is possible by deriving a class of macroscopic differential equations that describe mutual adaptation in agent collectives. Starting from a discrete-time stochastic (microscopic) model, the resulting dynamical systems show that the agents' adaptation is a dynamic balance between optimization of actions that achieve rewards (exploitation) and randomization that chooses suboptimal, but novel actions (exploration). Jim Crutchfield from the University of California, Davis presents.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Ants and Genes: Lessons from Collective Intelligence From Social Insects to Gene Regulatory Systems
Original event date: 5.26.05
Length: 69:03 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Computer sciences professor Christian Jacob (University of Calgary) gives examples of how to use evolutionary computing to breed swarm behaviors. Using an agent-based model of a gene regulatory system as example, he expands the notion of swarm intelligence to the simulation of processes within a bacterial cell, which makes highly complicated biological processes more accessible to computer-based investigations. He concludes by demonstrations of SwarmArt, an exploratory art project.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Process Pattern, Prediction: Understanding Complexity in Driven Dynamical Systems
Original event date: 5.19.05
Length: 62:17 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
The ability to forecast the extreme events of the future is limited by the dynamical process of interest, the space-time patterns that can be observed, and the accuracy of the predictions that are desired. Using space-time patterns and whatever is known about the dynamics of high-dimensional nonlinear earth systems, John Rundle (University of California, Davis) explains that it possible to construct numerical simulations that can be used to make predictions about the space-time evolution of systems and the possible occurrence of extreme events such as earthquakes.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science.
Nonextensive Statistical Mechanics - Introduction and Applications
Original event date: 5.12.05
Length: 77:44 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Boltzmann-Gibbs Statistical Mechanics is constructed upon hypotheses that many nonlinear dynamical systems do not satisfy. It is nevertheless possible to theoretically handle important classes of them through a generalization of the Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy. Its dynamical foundations are provided with illustrative applications. Constantino Tsallis from the Santa Fe Institute speaks on this subject.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Some Thoughts About Stochastic Hydrologic Modeling Inspired by the Canadian Wilderness
Original event date: 4.28.05
Length: 58:47 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Career hydrologist Vit Klemes (National Hydrology Research Institute of Environment Canada) presents possible ways of “irrigating the dry logic” of stochastic hydrological modeling. Most scientific predictions about the behavior of the real wet water are often based on the behavior of rather dry logical constructs, mathematical models fitted to pure numbers whose original hydro meaning does not enter the picture.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Transient Dynamics: The Key to Ecological Understanding
Original event date: 4.21.05
Length: 60:17 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Mathematics Professor Alan Hastings (University of California, Davis) presents relevant ecological time scales and the relevance of asymptotic analysis. Arguing through the use of examples, and using ideas drawn from dynamical systems, he discusses the importance of transients, and how their presence may be analyzed mathematically.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
The Effect of Connectivity of Microscopic Elements of Disordered Systems on their Macroscopic Properties: Introduction to Percolation Theory
Original event date: 4.14.05
Length: 71:49 minutes
Play using: Real Player, Windows Media
Chemical Engineering Professor Muhammad Sahimi (University of Southern California) describes percolation theory in simple terms, to quantify the effect of the connectivity of the microscopic elements of disordered systems on their macroscopic properties. Applications to problems include motor vehicle routes, conductivity, oil extraction, chemical reactivity, and voting behavior.
Seminar series information: Advanced Modeling Concepts For Environmental Science
Integrated Water Resources Planning from a Southern California Water Agency Perspective
Original event date: 6.09.04
Length: 52 minutes
Play using: Real Player
A conservation champion that cut her teeth saving Mono Lake is saving water for the water district with one of the fastest growing populations in Southern California. Martha Davis (Inland Empire Utility) explains how the district’s unique portfolio plans to meet future needs with local water and without increases in inter-basin transfers. Strategies include energy from dairy manure, capturing runoff to recharge groundwater, and implementing water reuse and water saving devices and technologies.
Seminar series information: The New Geography of California Water, Spring 2004
Restoring Hetch Hetchy and California’s Water Future
Original event date: 6.02.04
Length: 93 minutes
Play using: Real Player
Just prior to the release of their 2004 report, environmental attorney Tom Graff (Environmental Defense) talks about water supplies to Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Modesto and Turlock, and the squeeze that restoring this Yosemite valley would put on the Metropolitan Water District and the other major recipients of Hetch Hetchy’s reservoir.
Seminar series information: The New Geography of California Water, Spring 2004
Water Management Tools and Water Supply Reliability: How Do They Fit Together?
Original event date: 5.26.04
Length: 87 minutes
Play using: Real Player
Formerly at State Water Contractors and the CA Department Water Resources, Steve Macaulay (California Urban Water Agencies) represents education and science for nine large water purveyors in CA. Watch a futuristic video in video British/Dutch short on water in 2023, followed by water storage options and a thorough overview on reliability.
Seminar series information: The New Geography of California Water, Spring 2004
Panel Discussion: Mark Lubell, Richard Howitt, Graham Fogg, and Jay Lund
Original event date: 5.19.04
Length: 54 minutes
Play using: Real Player
Fast forward through 9:24 minutes set up to view Lubell’s political science review of collective action problems, Howitt’s economic overview on markets and trading mechanisms, and Fogg’s practical insight on managing groundwater quality. Lund does only introductions.
Seminar series information: The New Geography of California Water, Spring 2004
Legislative Leadership and Expectations in California Water Policy
Original event date: 5.12.04
Length: 65 minutes
Play using: Real Player
Mike Machado (California State Senate) gives insight into a political view of water. Things really take off in the Q&A session, where topics such as beneficiary pay reservoirs, aquifer ordinances, water’s impact on jobs, and the loss of policy expertise due to term limits are discussed.
Seminar series information: The New Geography of California Water, Spring 2004
Water Marketing and Groundwater Storage: Policy and Management
Original event date: 5.05.04
Length: 97 minutes
Play using: Real Player
Greg Thomas (Natural Heritage Institute) knows about using groundwater. All the details of the feasibility of groundwater storage for environmental usage, and an overview of water law and institutional constraints in federal reclamation projects. Thomas’s final reports are available at the NHI website, and are reported to have influenced water banking in California.
Seminar series information: The New Geography of California Water, Spring 2004
Sustaining California’s Agricultural Water Supplies
Original event date: 4.25.04
Length: 112 minutes
Play using: Real Player
Water attorney, Tom Birmingham (Westlands Water District), explains how the Westlands irrigation district supplies water to farmers in spite of growing pressures for environmental water. Conservation, water transfers, groundwater, and litigation are some of the strategies he presents through examples of legal battles for California water.
Seminar series information: The New Geography of California Water, Spring 2004
Water Quality and Water Policy in California
Original event date: 4.21.04
Length: 104 minutes
Play using: Real Player
Fast forward past 20 minutes of sound glitches to get a first hand glimpse of the state water board and their decisions on the Salton Sea, Colorado River, Mono Lake and other Southern California water crises. Richard Katz (State Water Resource Control Board Member) speaks on a grab bag of topics including desalination, conservation, water markets, water law, groundwater contamination, and even city charters that forbid water meters.
Seminar series information: The New Geography of California Water, Spring 2004
Trends in California Water Management: Where Have We Been, and Where Are We Going?
Original event date: 4.14.04
Length: 99 minutes
Play using: Real Player
B.J. Miller (Consulting Engineer, Berkeley) shares the big picture of California water policy, including sources, quantities, users, and an excellent overview of what went wrong. Miller sorts technical from political issues and approaches them with pragmatic solutions that remain relevant.
Seminar series information: The New Geography of California Water, Spring 2004
Managing Water for People and Fish in the 21st Century
Original event date: 4.07.04
Length: 92 minutes
Play using: Real Player
Tim Quinn (Metropolitan Water District of Southern California) talks about how the largest water wholesaler in California delivers water to Southern California even during droughts; how farmers benefit by selling water, and how water quality is traded and banked in complex water markets enabled by California’s vast infrastructure of water conveyances.
Seminar series information: The New Geography of California Water, Spring 2004