UC Davis News: Environmental Sciences

Blue Planet Prize awarded to UC Davis transportation expert

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:10:00 -0700

Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, is one of two recipients of the 2013 Blue Planet Prize. The prize, announced today by the Asahi Glass Foundation of Tokyo, has been described as the Nobel Prize for the environmental sciences.

Sperling is an international expert on transportation technology, fuels and policy, with a focus on energy and environment. His research is directed at accelerating the global transition to cleaner, more efficient transportation and energy, and mitigating climate change. The prize, which comes with a $527,000 (50 million yen) award, recognizes Sperling for his unique ability to bring together the top thinkers and strategists in academia, government and industry to develop new vehicle- and fuels-policy approaches that are models for the world.

“I am deeply honored to receive the Blue Planet Prize, and I share it with my many brilliant and passionate collaborators,” Sperling said. “I hope to use this time in the spotlight to promote universities’ tremendous reservoir of policy-relevant knowledge — particularly policy that averts the pending disaster of global climate change. My primary goal is to bring science to policy.”

Sperling was chosen to receive the Blue Planet Prize from among 106 candidates representing 27 countries.

“UC Davis faculty work every day to bring sound science to the world’s most pressing problems, and Dan Sperling is a wonderful example of that,” said UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi. “We are proud of his accomplishments and pleased that his efforts are being recognized through this prestigious prize.”

A professor of civil engineering and environmental science and policy, Sperling founded the Institute of Transportation Studies in 1991. ITS-Davis is now the world’s leading academic program in transportation technology and policy, thanks to Sperling’s talent for building enduring partnerships with industry, government and the environmental community; integrating interdisciplinary research and education programs; and connecting research with public outreach and education. Today the institute has 60 affiliated faculty members and researchers, 120 graduate students, and a $12 million budget.

ITS-Davis researchers pursue topics as diverse as consumer response to advanced vehicle technologies, such as hybrid and electric cars; biofuels production; hydrogen fuels infrastructure; telecommuting; and the potential for converting the globe to 100 percent renewable energy.

Sperling championed early research into lifecycle analysis, with his students going on to develop the world’s most widely used lifecycle-analysis models for transportation fuels, and led the effort to transfer lifecycle assessment from labs into policy. For transportation fuel, lifecycle assessment means accounting for the emissions that occur in every stage of a fuel’s production and use.

The lifecycle approach is a critically important tool used to calculate greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, and other emissions that harm the environment. It forms the basis of many new climate and environmental policies around the globe.

Sperling noted that this year, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in human civilization. Still, he is optimistic.

“Solutions are all around us,” he said. “New technologies and new behaviors will transform our cities and energy systems. It is not easy, but with great effort we can recover our healthy blue planet.”

In 2007, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Sperling to the California Air Resources Board. Sperling co-led the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard study, which formed the basis of the first standard of its kind to tackle carbon pollution from transportation fuel. The LCFS is in effect today in California and under consideration in other states. It is a model for similar polices in Canada and the European Union.

Sperling has authored or co-authored over 200 technical papers and 12 books, including “Two Billion Cars” (Oxford University Press, 2009). In 2010, he received The Heinz Award for addressing global change caused by the impact of human activities and natural processes on the environment.

This year is the 22nd year of the Blue Planet Prize. Previous recipients include: David R. Brower, chairman of the Earth Island Institute; Lester R. Brown, founder and president of the Worldwatch Institute; Paul R. Ehrlich, director of the Center of Conservation Biology at Stanford University; James Hansen, recently retired director of the U.S. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; and Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Also honored as a Blue Planet Prize recipient this year is Taroh Matsuno, principal scientist at the Research Institute for Global Change, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

Sperling will travel to Tokyo for the awards ceremony on Oct. 30 and give a commemorative lecture on Oct. 31.

About the Blue Planet Prize

The Blue Planet Prize was established in 1992 by the Asahi Glass Foundation of Tokyo. The award’s name was inspired by remarks of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, who observed that our blue planet is beautiful and we should work to preserve it. The Asahi Glass Foundation named the prize in the hope that “our blue planet will be a shared asset capable of sustaining human life far into the future.” http://www.af-info.or.jp/en/

Eastern Coachella Valley report finds elevated levels of air and water pollution

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:50:00 -0700

Residents of the Eastern Coachella Valley in Riverside County live every day with elevated environmental hazards in their air and water, according to a new University of California, Davis, study.

These hazards include drinking water with average chemical concentrations far above state and federal recommended levels.

Adjacent to the more urban Western Coachella Valley, which includes the tourist and resort towns of Palm Springs, Palm Desert and La Quinta, most of the eastern valley is impoverished, and lacks safe and affordable housing. Many area residents must commute to neighboring Western Coachella Valley and do not have the economic and political resources to address these environmental risks in their hometowns, researchers said.

"Those who care about rural communities need to understand that there are some places and populations that lack the resources to protect their health and achieve prosperity,” said Jonathan London, lead researcher for the report and director of the UC Davis Center for Regional Change.

“This study provides a blueprint for collaborative action to lift up the rural eastern Coachella Valley as a sustainable and equitable region.”

The report, “Revealing the Invisible Coachella Valley: Putting Cumulative Environmental Vulnerabilities on the Map,” by researchers at the UC Davis Center for Regional Change was released today (Wednesday, June 12).

Researchers worked with local community leaders to identify high-priority issues and gathered the latest available public data for Riverside County to report their findings. They looked at both environmental hazards and a “social vulnerability index,” which includes housing quality and economic conditions, London said.

The Eastern Coachella Valley has much higher concentrations of pollution in its water bodies than the Western Coachella Valley and Riverside County overall, they found. Drinking water wells have average chemical concentrations far above the state and federal Maximum Contaminant Levels for arsenic, chromium 6, perchlorate, and nitrates, researchers said.

In addition, some areas in the Western Coachella Valley, such as La Quinta, have elevated levels of chromium 6. Portions of the western valley also show high degrees of cumulative environmental hazards and social vulnerability. These areas include Desert Hot Springs and parts of Cabazon, Sky Valley, West Garnet and Desert Edge.

Significantly higher levels of pesticides are applied in the Eastern Coachella Valley than the Western Coachella Valley and the rest of Riverside County, adding to pollution levels in air and water, researchers found.

This study was developed with a diverse set of community partners from the Eastern Coachella Valley who will use the report’s information in their efforts to promote sustainable and equitable growth in their region, London said.

This study was commissioned by the California Institute for Rural Studies. Funding was provided by The California Endowment through the foundation’s 10-year Building Healthy Communities initiative.

About the UC Davis Center for Regional Change

The UC Davis Center for Regional Change produces solutions-oriented research to inform the building of healthy, prosperous, sustainable, and equitable regions in California and beyond.

Stranded orcas hold critical clues for scientists

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:45:00 -0700

The development of a standardized killer-whale necropsy system has boosted the collection of complete data from killer-whale strandings from 2 percent to about 33 percent, according to a recent study from a team of scientists, including a University of California, Davis, wildlife veterinarian.

The study, published recently in the journal Marine Mammal Science, suggests that the data can help scientists better understand the life history of the orca species.

The killer-whale necropsy system was co-developed by Joe Gaydos, director of the SeaDoc Society -- a program of the UC Davis Wildlife Health Center within the School of Veterinary Medicine -- and Stephen Raverty, veterinary pathologist with the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture.

“Because killer whales are apex predators and flagship conservation species, strandings are sad events,” said Gaydos. “But this study confirms that if we make every effort to understand why the strandings occurred, we will ultimately improve the fate of the species.”

Gaydos and Raverty developed the standardized killer-whale necropsy system in 2004. The analysis of strandings since then has shown that the protocol, along with increased funding for southern resident killer-whale recovery, has increased the collection of complete data from killer-whale strandings. Traditionally, only one in 50 stranded whale cadavers would be analyzed; now one in three get a full examination.

The increased recovery funding was provided by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service and Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

For the study, researchers analyzed North Pacific killer-whale strandings dating back to 1925. The report noted that while orcas are some of the most widely distributed whales on Earth, very few dead ones are ever found. Over the last two decades, an average of just 10 a year have been discovered stranded across the entire North Pacific Ocean.

“Each stranded orca should be viewed as a unique opportunity to enhance our understanding of this magnificent species,” said co-author Raverty.

The study found that 88 percent of all reported killer-whale strandings are fatal, while only 12 percent of the stranded killer whales make it off the beach alive. The dead whales can provide critical clues to the species’ overall life history, genetics, and health, as well as the causes of death. With such limited opportunity to do comprehensive sampling and studies, the authors noted the disturbing fact that, until recently, less than 2 percent of dead killer whales were thoroughly examined.

While the study was designed to look at stranding trends and did not evaluate the causes, necropsies on beached orcas have shown that they absorb extremely high loads of manmade toxins, suffer from infectious diseases and, in the case of fish-eating populations, depend primarily on severely depleted salmon stocks. With the standardized protocol now in place -- providing much more complete data on strandings -- researchers are getting a clearer picture of killer-whale life and death.

“This was a herculean effort to learn more about one of the ocean’s top predators,” said lead author Michelle Barbieri, a former SeaDoc Society scientist and UC Davis graduate who is currently the lead veterinarian for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program.

“We could not have done this without the collaboration of dozens of killer-whale scientists from around the world, who provided stranding and population data from Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii, British Columbia, Mexico, Japan and Russia,” she said.

Climate change threatens extinction for 82 percent of California native fish

Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Salmon and other native freshwater fish in California will likely become extinct within the next century due to climate change if current trends continue, ceding their habitats to non-native fish, predicts a study by scientists from the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis.

The study, published online in May in the journal PLOS ONE, assessed how vulnerable each freshwater species in California is to climate change and estimated the likelihood that those species would become extinct in 100 years.

The researchers found that, of 121 native fish species, 82 percent are likely to be driven to extinction or very low numbers as climate change speeds the decline of already depleted populations. In contrast, only 19 percent of the 50 non-native fish species in the state face a similar risk of extinction.

“If present trends continue, much of the unique California fish fauna will disappear and be replaced by alien fishes, such as carp, largemouth bass, fathead minnows and green sunfish,” said Peter Moyle, a professor of fish biology at UC Davis who has been documenting the biology and status of California fish for the past 40 years.

“Disappearing fish will include not only obscure species of minnows, suckers and pupfishes, but also coho salmon, most runs of steelhead trout and Chinook salmon, and Sacramento perch,” Moyle said.

Fish requiring cold water, such as salmon and trout, are particularly likely to go extinct, the study said. However, non-native fish species are expected to thrive, although some will lose their aquatic habitats during severe droughts and low-flow summer months.

The top 20 native California fish most likely to become extinct in California within 100 years as the result of climate change include (asterisks denote a species already listed as threatened or endangered):

Klamath Mountains Province summer steelhead
McCloud River redband trout
Unarmored threespine stickleback*
Shay Creek stickleback
Delta smelt*
Long Valley speckled dace
Central Valley late fall Chinook salmon
Kern River rainbow trout
Shoshone pupfish
Razorback sucker*
Upper Klamath-Trinity spring Chinook salmon
Southern steelhead*
Clear Lake hitch
Owens speckled dace
Northern California coast summer steelhead
Amargosa Canyon speckled dace
Central coast coho salmon*
Southern Oregon Northern California coast coho salmon*
Modoc sucker*
Pink salmon

The species are listed in order of vulnerability to extinction, with No. 1 being the most vulnerable.

Climate change and human-caused degradation of aquatic habitats is causing worldwide declines in freshwater fishes, especially in regions with arid or Mediterranean climates, the study said. These declines pose a major conservation challenge. However, there has been little research in the scientific literature related to the status of most fish species, particularly native ones of little economic value.

Moyle saw the need for a rapid and repeatable method to determine the climate change vulnerability of different species. He expects the method presented in the study to be useful for conservation planning.

“These fish are part of the endemic flora and fauna that makes California such a special place,” said Moyle. “As we lose these fishes, we lose their environments and are much poorer for it.”

Co-authors of the study were postdoctoral students Joseph Kiernan, Patrick Crain and Rebecca Quiñones of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis.

Funding for the study was provided by the California Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission Instream Flow Assessment Program.

Jess Jackson Sustainable Winery Building opens

Wed, 29 May 2013 17:05:00 -0700

Supporters and wine industry leaders gathered today at the University of California, Davis, to celebrate the opening of the Jess S. Jackson Sustainable Winery Building.

This $4 million state-of-the art structure, when fully equipped, will enable the adjacent teaching and research winery, brewery and food-processing facility to operate in a self-sustainable manner through onsite capture of energy and water. It was made possible by a $3 million pledge from the late Jess Jackson and his wife, Barbara Banke, proprietor of Jackson Family Wines.

The one-story, 8,500 square-foot building will eventually house equipment and systems for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide from wine fermentation, and for filtering and recirculating water for wine, beer and food processing. It is expected to be the first building at any university to be certified Net Zero Energy under the Living Building Challenge and only the second such building in California.

“What you see in this building is the potential to achieve levels of sustainable operation never before seen in a commercial or research winery,” said David Block, chair of the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology.

“We are extremely grateful to Barbara Banke, Jess Jackson and their family for sharing our vision for sustainable wine making and partnering with the university to make this building a reality,” Block said.

“My family and I are proud to support UC Davis to create the Jess S. Jackson Sustainable Winery Building and its ability to educate and inspire winemakers for generations to come,” said Barbara Banke.

“The university continues to be one of the most important academic assets for our nation's winemaking community, and the opportunity to develop, build and share best practices in energy conservation, water management and other world-class sustainability standards was something we were honored to help bring to fruition,” Banke said.

The new sustainable winery building is adjacent to UC Davis’ nearly three-year-old Teaching and Research Winery and August A. Busch III Brewing and Food Science Laboratory. Both are located at the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science complex on the south side of the core campus and visible from Interstate 80.

The new building was constructed to include 10 dedicated, modular spaces that will accommodate equipment needed for a variety of processes including high-purity filtration of rainwater for use in cleaning fermentors and barrels in the winery. Ninety percent of the water and chemistry from each cleaning cycle will be captured, filtered through a semi-permeable membrane and reused in the next cleaning cycle, eventually being used as many as 10 times.

The water filtration and recirculation system is expected to be installed next year, and a system for sequestering carbon dioxide captured from all fermentations in the winery will follow. The carbon dioxide collected from the fermentations will be converted into calcium carbonate, or chalk, once the sequestration system is completed.

The new building also will be equipped to produce chilled water, using a solar-powered icemaker, and generate hydrogen gas by electrolysis, fueling a hydrogen fuel cell for nighttime energy use.

One room in the new building will house the control system and data hub for the many processing systems, and two areas will be held for future research projects and equipment trials related to any aspect of water and energy use or sustainable systems.

The building, which was constructed to be extremely “tight” and with exceptional thermal insulation to minimize temperature variation, was created by the design-build team of Pankow Builders, Siegel & Strain Architects and Guttman & Blaevoet Engineering, using environmentally sophisticated construction methods and materials.

For example, the roof overhangs on the east and west sides of the building form deep porches, protecting the structure against summer heat. And the roof area was increased to support a photovoltaic array that can be expanded to provide for future energy demands of the adjacent winery, brewery and food-processing plant.

Furthermore, the building is super-insulated, meeting R-59.5 insulation standards in the walls and R-76 in the roof, thus minimizing the impact of hot weather on the building’s interior temperature. In the evening, natural ventilation is used to flush warm air from the interior.

The building’s slab contains a tube system that will allow cold water to provide additional cooling in summer and hot water to provide winter heating, as well as pipework for a future, below-ground rock bed that will provide additional thermal mass to offset heat released from the various installed systems.

In order to decrease the carbon footprint of the new building, concrete blocks that permanently sequester — rather than emit — carbon dioxide were used, along with a 90-percent cement replacement mix. These techniques, intended to protect the atmosphere against emissions of this greenhouse gas, resulted in a 50-percent cement replacement in the building’s slab and foundations.

“Because of the building’s flexible design, these and each of the other operating systems can be removed and updated as research advances become commercially available,” said Professor Roger Boulton, a winery-engineering expert and the Stephen Sinclair Scott Endowed Chair in Enology at UC Davis.

“This is intended to be a building that encourages the adoption of evolving technologies in the areas of energy, water, carbon and byproduct streams, while at the same time operating the winery in a self-sustainable manner,” he said.

In December 2010, the Teaching and Research Winery became the first winery in the world to receive LEED platinum certification, the highest rating for environmental design and construction awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council. (LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.) Located in the same building, the August A. Busch III Brewing and Food Science Laboratory also became the first such facility to achieve LEED platinum certification.

About the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology

Established at UC Berkeley in 1880 by California legislative mandate, what is now the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology has been at the forefront of international grape and wine innovation for more than 130 years. The department partners with the California grape and wine industry through research, public service and equipping students with both scientific knowledge and practical skills.

The department includes 14 faculty members and enrolls 100 undergraduate students and 40 graduate students.

More information about the department.

New approach to heart valve replacement wins at Big Bang! business competition

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:05:00 -0700

A new approach to tissue preparation that makes heart valve replacements less likely to be rejected by the body’s immune system — potentially giving transplant patients longer, healthier lives — was the clear favorite in this year’s University of California, Davis, business plan competition — sweeping both the first prize and the People’s Choice award.

ViVita Technologies, a team comprising a UC Davis veterinarian and three biomedical engineering doctoral students, took home a total of $12,000 in the 13th annual Big Bang! Business Plan Competition, run by MBA students in the UC Davis Graduate School of Management: $10,000 for first place, decided by a team of judges, and $2,000 for the People’s Choice award, decided by a vote of the approximately 150 people who attended the awards ceremony Thursday evening (May 16) at the UC Davis Conference Center.

Second prize of $5,000 went to Davis Chem, a team that is working to commercialize a sustainable method of producing isobutryaldehyde, a common base chemical used in everything from paint to cosmetics, with genetically modified E. coli bacteria rather than with the petroleum products currently used in production.

ViVita Technologies was driven to create its product to address the current shortage of organs. “But unlike with current heart valve transplants, the patient would be free from a lifetime of drugs,” said Maelene Wong, chief executive officer of the nascent company.

The ViVita process removes substances that trigger patients’ immune response while preserving the structural integrity and functional properties of the replacement valve tissue. The method has been successfully tested on small animals, they said.

The proprietary process allows the patient’s own cells to join and grow with the transplant tissue — a process that the team says could eventually be used for any organ transplant. Such an organ transplant would allow the person to lead a normal, healthy life without fear of organ rejection and the need to spend a lifetime on anti-rejection medication. It would also allow for better transplant methods for children, who often need new transplants, and additional surgeries, when their bodies grow, Wong said.

She and two fellow biomedical engineers teamed with Leigh Griffiths, an assistant professor of cardiology and cardiac surgeon in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, to develop the technology. Last summer, they honed their business development skills to create ViVita through the Biomedical Engineering Entrepreneur Academy at the UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The second-place team of part-time MBA students initially thought of developing an application to monitor snowboarding velocity, but thought the better of it after learning of an existing UC Davis patent during a business development clinic last year. The patent is held by Shota Atsumi, an assistant professor of chemistry.

“We didn’t even know how to pronounce the chemical at first,” said MBA student Sandeep Deshpande. “Wil (Agatstein, the instructor) helped convince us that this existing patent was a better way to go.”

Said Agatstein, who is executive director of the Child Family Institute: “And they took the idea and ran with it.”

The team plans to use the money to start a pilot project next year.

This was the first time the five finalist teams included second-year undergraduates — a change Agatstein said is due to more undergraduates interested in entrepreneurship at an earlier age. That young team, AmberCycle, which includes Akshay Sethi, 19, a biochemical and molecular biology student, Matthew Remich, 20, a managerial economics student, and MBA student Gerald Dion, developed a system to degrade plastics so that they are cheaper and easier to recycle.

Andrew Hargadon, faculty director of the Child Family Institute, said he had seen a change in the volume and quality of Big Bang! entries, and expects many of them to become businesses in the community — as multiple winners from past years already have. “To see them morph from class projects into real businesses is truly terrific,” he said.

Roger Akers, of Akers Capital, who judges the competition each year, said he has seen vast change in the competition. “Every year the quality improves — and it’s not just the business plan, it’s the quality of the people and their projects. It’s wonderful to see.”

This year, the Big Bang! received a $50,000 gift from Andrew Barkett, an engineering manager at Facebook and a 2009 graduate of the Graduate School of Management.

About the UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The UC Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship serves as the nexus for entrepreneurship education and research — and as a springboard for entrepreneurial initiatives on the UC Davis campus. To accomplish this, the institute brings science, engineering and business students and faculty together with experienced entrepreneurs, investors and corporate leaders in a highly collaborative environment that blends effective theory with hands-on participation and solution-driven innovation.

Under the direction of Professor Andrew Hargadon, the institute provides researchers, MBA students and others with the necessary skills, resources and network support to turn their ideas into action. Whether for profit or for social benefit — or both — the institute’s programs enable students to envision a better world and make it a reality.

The Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is a Center of Excellence at the Graduate School of Management.

Student Community Center earns LEED Platinum, UC Davis’ fifth

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Large skylights send a flood of natural light into the lobby of the new Student Community Center at the University of California, Davis, where students hold meetings, study on lounge chairs, or chat over compostable cups of coffee from CoHo South café. Upstairs in the media lab, they use computers powered in part by solar energy. Outside, students sit at patio tables shaded by umbrellas, next to a lawn-less landscape of drought-tolerant plants and permeable paving.

These simple details may go largely unnoticed by the students, but they are among the elements that have helped the Student Community Center, completed in January 2012, become UC Davis’ fifth LEED Platinum certified facility. The designation is the highest environmental rating awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council.

“The new Student Community Center is a great example of UC Davis’ commitment to create welcoming, productive spaces for our students while maintaining high standards for environmental sustainability,” said Administrative and Resource Management Vice Chancellor John Meyer.

The university currently has built more LEED Platinum facilities than any other UC campus. In addition to the Student Community Center, they include:

Gladys Valley Hall, a veterinary medicine instructional facility, LEED certified in 2012.
Conference Center and Maurice J. Gallagher Jr. Hall complex, certified in 2011. Gallagher Hall is home to the UC Davis Graduate School of Management.
Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, which in 2010 became the first brewery, winery and food-processing complex in the world to go platinum.
Tahoe Environmental Research Center in Incline Village, Nev., certified in 2007.

“The project met the high standards of the LEED Platinum designation without using rare or complex technologies — just smart, thoughtful design using the best practices of today,” said UC Davis campus architect Clayton Halliday. “But taken together, they make a big impact on the building’s overall sustainability.”

For example, sustainable design measures have made the building 32 percent more energy-efficient than California building code requires. Drought-tolerant vegetation is expected to need less than half the irrigation water that a normal lawn would demand. And more than 96 percent of construction waste was recycled or otherwise diverted from landfills.

The building’s other sustainable features include:

Low-flow water fixtures and “hydration stations,” which aim to reduce plastic bottle use.
Windows that open and close, allowing for natural ventilation.
High-efficiency lighting fixtures, selected with input from the UC Davis California Lighting Technology Center. The fixtures minimize artificial lighting when natural light is sufficient.
While solar panels are not installed on the Student Community Center itself, a portion of the renewable energy produced by solar panels at a south campus parking lot is earmarked for the center.
The center’s CoHo South café composts and recycles its food and food packaging. It is run by the Associated Students, University of California, Davis, which helped to create a composting program for the building.
During construction, students from the campus Waste Reduction and Recycling program developed a job-site composting program that trained construction crews to compost. The builders also donated scrap materials to the university’s student-run Aggie ReUse Store, which sells used and re-purposed goods.

BAR Architects of San Francisco designed the building, and MFDB Architects of Sacramento was the architect of record. It was constructed by Flintco Pacific Construction of Roseville.

The 44,000 square-foot building houses a café, open lobby, study areas, media lab, conference rooms, administrative offices and workspaces for several student life groups, including the Cross Cultural Center, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Student Recruitment and Retention Center.

The $22 million construction project was funded largely from student fees. The student body voted to authorize the fees in 1999 and 2002.

The University of California recently set a minimum requirement that all new buildings meet standards equivalent to LEED Silver certification. New buildings are also required to be at least 20 percent more energy efficient than required by California code.

But the Davis campus has set its own bar even higher: New buildings should be at least 25 percent more energy efficient than California's energy code requires.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is an internationally recognized green building certification system that provides a framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance approaches. The Green Building Council is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit committed to achieving a sustainable future through cost-efficient and energy-saving green buildings.

Sustainability at UC Davis

UC Davis has long served as a proving ground for innovations in environmental sustainability. Sierra Magazine named UC Davis the nation’s #1 Cool School in its 2012-13 ranking of the country’s greenest colleges. In 2011, UC Davis West Village opened its doors with a goal of becoming the nation’s largest zero net energy community. Aggressive recycling, composting and reuse efforts prevented nearly 75 percent of campus waste from entering landfills in 2012. Through its Climate Action Plan, the campus has reduced greenhouse gas emissions below 2000 levels and expects to return to 1990 levels by 2020. The campus also boasts more than 42 miles of bike paths and more than 20,000 bike racks, earning it a platinum Bicycle Friendly Business award in 2013 from the League of American Bicyclists.

H1N1 discovered in marine mammals

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:25:00 -0700

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, detected the H1N1 (2009) virus in free-ranging northern elephant seals off the central California coast a year after the human pandemic began, according to a study published today, May 15, in the journal PLOS ONE. It is the first report of that flu strain in any marine mammal.

“We thought we might find influenza viruses, which have been found before in marine mammals, but we did not expect to find pandemic H1N1,” said lead author Tracey Goldstein, an associate professor with the UC Davis One Health Institute and Wildlife Health Center. “This shows influenza viruses can move among species.”

UC Davis researchers have been studying flu viruses in wild birds and mammals since 2007 as part of the Centers of Excellence in Influenza Research and Surveillance program funded by National Institutes of Health. The goal of this research is to understand how viruses emerge and move among animals and people.

Between 2009 and 2011, the team of scientists tested nasal swabs from more than 900 marine mammals from 10 different species off the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California. They detected H1N1 infection in two northern elephant seals and antibodies to the virus in an additional 28 elephant seals, indicating more widespread exposure.

Neither infected seal appeared to be ill, indicating marine mammals may be infected without showing clinical signs of illness.

The findings are particularly pertinent to people who handle marine mammals, such as veterinarians and animal rescue and rehabilitation workers, Goldstein said. They are also a reminder of the importance of wearing personal protective gear when working around marine mammals, both to prevent workers’ exposure to diseases, as well as to prevent the transmission of human diseases to animals.

H1N1 originated in pigs. It emerged in humans in 2009, spreading worldwide as a pandemic. The World Health Organization now considers the H1N1 strain from 2009 to be under control, taking on the behavior of a seasonal virus.

“H1N1 was circulating in humans in 2009,” said Goldstein. “The seals on land in early 2010 tested negative before they went to sea, but when they returned from sea in spring 2010, they tested positive. So the question is where did it come from?”

When elephant seals are at sea, they spend most of their time foraging in the northeast Pacific Ocean off the continental shelf, which makes direct contact with humans unlikely, the report said.

The seals had been satellite tagged and tracked, so the researchers knew exactly where they had been and when they arrived on the coast. The first seal traveled from California on Feb. 11 to southeast Alaska to forage off the continental shelf, returning to Point Piedras Blancas near San Simeon, Calif., on April 24. The second seal left Ano Nuevo State Reserve in San Mateo County, Calif., on Feb. 8, traveling to the northeast Pacific and returning on May 5. Infections in both seals were detected within days of their return to land. The report said exposure likely occurred in the seals before they reached land, either while at sea or upon entering the near-shore environment.

The research, led by scientists Goldstein and Walter Boyce at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s One Health Institute, was conducted with collaborators Nacho Mena and Adolfo García-Sastre at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, who sequenced the virus isolates and characterized their phenotypic properties.

“The study of influenza virus infections in unusual hosts, such as elephant seals, is likely to provide us with clues to understand the ability of influenza virus to jump from one host to another and initiate pandemics,” said García-Sastre, professor of microbiology and director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine.

The research was funded primarily through the Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance, a program supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and the Tagging of Pacific Predators program, a project of the Census of Marine Life.

About the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine

As a top veterinary school internationally, and a leader in preventive medicine and wildlife health, UC Davis has an extensive research and training record in the fields of epidemiology, surveillance, zoonotic diseases, comparative medicine, diagnostics, wildlife pathogens and conservation, food safety, disease prevention and outbreak response. The school has trained more than 800 international veterinarians from 75 countries, including hot spots in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Its One Health Institute and Wildlife Health Center manage One Health programs for people and animals ranging from the Pacific Northwest to Africa’s Congo Basin and Rift Valley.

Researchers propose tool to improve stream habitat in California’s Scott River

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:25:00 -0700

A team of University of California, Davis, scientists is developing a groundwater management tool that could lead to better streamflow conditions for salmon and steelhead in northern California’s Scott River Valley, which provides critical fish habitat within the Klamath Basin.

This mountain valley also supports an agricultural economy composed of small family farms and ranches, raising alfalfa hay, pasture, and cattle. Regulatory agencies, farmers, ranchers and the local community are working to find win-win solutions for both fish habitat and agriculture.

“For most other rivers in California, summer and fall water flows are entirely dictated by dams that have water behind them,” said Thomas Harter, a Cooperative Extension groundwater hydrologist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources who led the study. “Scott River is very dependent on the groundwater system."

The 57-mile-long, undammed Scott River is a tributary of the Klamath River, and portions of it are designated as a federal and state Wild and Scenic River. A combination of irrigated agriculture in Scott River Valley, a lack of streamside shade on the river, and climate change has led to warmer river temperatures and reduced late summer and fall stream flows on the river, particularly in dry years, Harter said.

In a recent report to the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, the researchers summarized the hydrology of the Scott Valley, gathering data about rainfall, climate, soils, land use, irrigation and groundwater flows distributed across the basin for the past 21 years. Harter will combine this information into an integrated hydrologic model, expected to be complete in early 2014.

Scott Valley is addressing the issue on multiple frontiers, including riparian management and the recent development of a groundwater management plan. The UC Davis tool will be used to evaluate future groundwater management scenarios, which could include: How do irrigation management practices affect flow and temperature in the river? What are the effects of allowing for more beaver dams? How can additional water recharge during spring and early summer be used to support the aquifer during the critical late summer period?

“The local community and other stakeholders have a number of ideas on groundwater management that could benefit the stream flow,” Harter said. “This hydrologic model will provide the physical framework to evaluate those ideas. It will provide guidance on the possible direction that groundwater management can take in the Scott Valley.”

The hydrologic tool could help inform decision-makers and regulatory agencies involved in the issue of balancing salmon protection and water management along the Scott River.

As agencies, decision-makers, farmers, fishermen, and the public grapple with the questions posed by a changing climate and a changing river, the UC Davis hydrologic tool is expected to help provide science-based answers.

Background

The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board adopted a Total Maximum Daily Load implementation program pursuant to the Clean Water Act. The program requested Siskiyou County develop a groundwater study plan to understand how surface water temperature might be made cooler through its connection with groundwater. The county approached Harter to oversee the development of the plan, which was funded by the board and adopted by the county in 2008. The county Board of Supervisors established the Scott Valley Groundwater Advisory Committee in 2011 to address groundwater issues. The committee served as a resource for the new report, which is part of the original study plan effort and was also funded by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

'Dinner with a Scientist' helps students choose their futures

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:11:00 -0700

Junior high and high school students and their teachers from throughout the Sacramento region will gather tonight for dinner and inspiration for future careers at a “Dinner with a Scientist” event at the Twin Rivers Unified School District offices in North Highlands.

The keynote speaker will be immunologist James Hildreth, dean of the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences, who will discuss his journey to becoming a scientist.

That journey started at Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in chemistry in 1979. He then went to Oxford University in England as a Rhodes scholar, where he earned a doctorate in immunology in 1982. In 1987, he earned a medical degree at Johns Hopkins’ School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Before joining UC Davis in 2011, Hildreth served as chief of the Division of Research for the National Institutes of Health’s National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. He also directed the Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research at Meharry Medical College in Tennessee, where he was a professor of medicine.

Dinner with a Scientist, now in its second year, brings about 180 students and teachers together for a science knowledge game, dinner and dessert with about 20 scientists from UC Davis, Sacramento State, state agencies and private industry. The goal is to increase young people’s interest in study and careers in science, technology, engineering and math, commonly known as “STEM” subjects.

“Our plan for the first Dinner with a Scientist event was to start small,” said Arthur Beauchamp, director of the Sacramento Area Science Project. The project is a collaboration between the UC Davis School of Education and Sacramento State, working with Sacramento’s Powerhouse Science Center.

“We were pleasantly amazed when the first event last year exceeded capacity,” Beauchamp said. “The response has been tremendous. Students are eager to talk with scientists, and scientists and engineers are willing to convey their enthusiasm to students.”

Tonight’s event is the third Dinner with a Scientist. In all, more than 260 middle and high school students from nearly 50 area schools and 40 practicing scientists have attended one of the dinners with their teachers. School districts including Sacramento City, Natomas, Elk Grove, Twin Rivers, Folsom-Cordova, Vacaville, Washington, Camptonville and others will be represented at the event.

New book outlines impacts of climate instability on Southwest

Thu, 02 May 2013 11:35:00 -0700

In an era of increasing climate instability, the southwestern United States faces strained water resources, greater prevalence of tree-killing organisms, and potentially significant alterations of agricultural infrastructure.

These changes are among those detailed in a new book, "Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States," which features contributions from several researchers at the University of California, Davis.

The book, released today, May 2, through Island Press, is one of 10 regional technical contributions to the 2013 National Climate Assessment, which was released in draft form earlier this year. The NCA provides input to the United States president and Congress every four years on the status of climate change.

Projected increases in temperature and changes in precipitation in the Southwest — from the California coast to the plains of eastern Colorado and New Mexico — will present challenges for managing ecosystems, water, agriculture, energy supply and delivery, transportation, and human health, the book reports.

“Climate change is affecting ecosystems and society across the Southwest,” said Mark Schwartz, an environmental science and policy professor and director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment at UC Davis. “These changes affect California from the Sierra to the sea, where everything from how we produce our food, obtain our water, and protect our natural heritage are impacted. Human communities need to make decisions about where and how they wish to live as climate changes. This volume is a major step in informing critical adaptation decisions.”

The book includes major contributions from several other scientists affiliated with the John Muir Institute at UC Davis. Environmental science and policy researcher Erica Fleishman and civil and environmental engineering professor Debbie Niemeier were lead authors on the ecosystems and transportation chapters, respectively.

Other UC Davis contributors include:

Louise Jackson, professor in the land, air and water resources department
Beth Rose Middleton, assistant professor of Native American studies
William Reisen, research entomologist in the Center for Vectorborne Disease
Christopher Barker, an assistant adjunct professor in the Center for Vectorborne Disease

The book is a product of the Southwest Climate Alliance, a consortium of researchers from six institutions: UC Davis, UCLA, University of Arizona, University of Colorado, Desert Research Institute, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. The scientists are affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessment Program and the U.S. Department of the Interior Southwest Climate Science Center.

The volume blends the contributions of 120 experts, affiliated with more than 30 institutions, in climate science, economics, ecology, engineering, geography, hydrology, planning, resource management and other disciplines.

The new book stresses the choices available to society to reduce the causes and effects of climate change in the region. It notes the steps governments, businesses, organizations, and individuals are taking to improve energy efficiency, improve water supply reliability, decrease wildfire risk, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

About the John Muir Institute of the Environment

The John Muir Institute of the Environment champions science and technological innovation, provides campuswide leadership, hosts centers and projects, and seeds research and educational initiatives to solve real-world environmental problems. The institute links science and technology to policy by providing the intellectual setting for interactions between researchers, regulatory agencies, policymakers and the public.

Health defects found in fish exposed to Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:10:00 -0700

Crude oil toxicity continued to sicken a sentinel Gulf Coast fish species for at least more than a year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to new findings from a research team that includes a University of California, Davis, scientist.

With researchers from Louisiana and South Carolina, the scientists found that Gulf killifish embryos exposed to sediments from oiled locations in 2010 and 2011 show developmental abnormalities, including heart defects, delayed hatching and reduced hatching success. The killifish is an environmental indicator species, or a “canary in the coal mine,” used to predict broader exposures and health risks.

The findings, posted online in advance of publication in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, are part of an ongoing collaborative effort to track the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Gulf killifish populations in areas of Louisiana that received heavy amounts of oil.

Other species that share similar habitats with the Gulf killifish, such as redfish, speckled trout, flounder, blue crabs, shrimp and oysters — may be at risk of similar effects.

“These effects are characteristic of crude oil toxicity,” said co-author Andrew Whitehead, an assistant professor of environmental toxicology at UC Davis. “It’s important that we observe it in the context of the Deepwater Horizon spill because it tells us it is far too early to say the effects of the oil spill are known and inconsequential. By definition, effects on reproduction and development — effects that could impact populations — can take time to emerge.”

Killifish are abundant in the coastal marsh habitats along the Gulf Coast. Though not fished commercially, they are an important forage fish and a key member of the ecological community. Because they are nonmigratory, measurements of their health are indicative of their local environment, making them an ideal subject for study.

The researchers collected Gulf killifish from an oiled site at Isle Grande Terre, La., and monitored them for measures of exposure to crude oil. They also exposed killifish embryos in the lab to sediment collected from oiled sites at Isle Grande Terre within Barataria Bay in Louisiana.

“Our findings indicate that the developmental success of these fish in the field may be compromised,” said lead author Benjamin Dubansky, who recently earned his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University.

Whitehead said the report’s findings may predict longer-term impacts to killifish populations. However, oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill showed up in patches, rather than coating the coastline. That means some killifish could have been hit hard by the spill while others were less impacted.

Whitehead said it is possible that some of the healthier, less impacted killifish could buffer the effects of the spill for the population as a whole.

The research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative and the National Institutes of Health.

The other researchers in the study are Fernando Galvez, associate professor of biological sciences at Louisiana State University; and Charles D. Rice, professor of biological sciences at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina. The researchers have tracked the impact of the oil on killifish since the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred in April 2010.