Mindful Gas Decommissioning
California’s goal of decarbonizing the state’s energy sector by 2045 requires an accompanying strategic approach to the decommissioning of the extensive gas infrastructure.
Projects
2023 Open for Good Transparency Index
The mission of the Open for Good‘s initiative is to provide transparent, unbiased, and accessible insights into corporate sustainability. In the last decade, we have seen an encouraging shift by…
Assessing the determinants of collective behavior of seed dispersing ants at the UC Sedgwick natural reserve
Awardee: Sean O'Fallon, Ph.D. student in the Pinter-Wollman lab. His research focuses on the collective behavior of ant colonies.
Characterizing the Evolutionary History of Southern California UC Reserves with an Integrated Computational Approach
Awardee: Maya Chari, senior Computational Biology student, interested in mathematical and computational applications to Ecology. Maya has worked both field and computational jobs and enjoys collecting data and processing it.
Developing Novel Coastal Infrastructure Habitat Through Beneficial Reuse of Carbon Sequestration Spoils and Cutting-Edge Biosurvey Methods.
Awardee: Gabriela M. Carr, IoES Ph.D. student focused on improving coastal infrastructure as marine habitat.
Effects of interspecific competition on habitat use by Stephens’ kangaroo rat
Awardee: Janine Fischer, Ph.D. student co-advised by Dr. Grether and Dr. Shier at UCLA. Janine is interested in how aggressive interference between species influences their coexistence and habitat use.
Environmental Monitoring with Drones at Sage Hill
Drones have quickly become an essential tool for environmental science and conservation. IoES affiliated professor Dr. Kyle Cavanaugh (Geography) has been using Sage Hill as a field site for research…
Impacts of domestic dogs on gray fox behaviors in the Santa Monica Mountains
Awardee: Madeleine Zuercher, Ph.D. candidate advised by Greg Grether and Debra Shier in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Madeleine is interested in how invasive species affect native carnivore behavior and ecology.
Investigating Local Adaptation of Heteromeles arbutifolia using a Common Garden Approach.
Awardee: Laurel Thomas, undergraduate student completing her degree in Environmental Science with minors in Conservation Biology and Environmental Engineering. Laurel is passionate about conserving and increasing access to California native plants and their respective ecosystems
Leveraging community science and museum collections to evaluate impacts of wildfire smoke on California’s backyard birds
Studying how wildfire smoke impacts California’s birds to guide conservation and protect vulnerable species.
Modeling the impact of invasive annual grasses on wildfire behaviors in Southern California.
Awardee: Bowen Wang, undergraduate student with majors in Climate Science and Geography. Bowen has a wide interest in both the physical and social impacts of anthropogenic climate change, particularly in droughts, floods, and wildfires in the Western US and tropical cyclones, and he likes to develop and run models to represent these processes.
Physiological mechanisms enabling species survival of drought in southern California
Awardee: Nidhi Vinod, 2nd year Ph.D. student in Dr. Lawren Sack and Dr. Elsa Ordway’s labs researching how ecosystems across the US respond to changes in climate by connecting field based physiological functions and traits to ecosystem level processes such as carbon and water cycles.