Fall 2022

Tuesdays at 3:30 PM
E&MS A340


September 27, 2022

Speaker: Andy Fisher, UC Santa Cruz

Title: Opportunities and Incentives to Enhance California's Groundwater Supplies and Improve Water Quality

Abstract: Managed recharge is increasingly applied to enhance groundwater supplies and also offers opportunities to improve groundwater quality. Key considerations include the nature of water sources, the composition of soils, the potential presence of legacy contaminants, and biogeochemical processes that can reduce contaminant loads during infiltration. This presentation will summarize California's need to augment groundwater resources, and show results from recent field, laboratory, and modeling studies that show how and where improvements can be achieved. This work is being done in the context of a regional program to incentivize resource enhancement through net metering of groundwater pumping.

Andy

Host: Tamara Pico


October 4, 2022

Speaker: Kenichi Soga, UC Berkeley

Title: Granular mechanics in geotechnical engineering – critical state soil mechanics

Soga

Host: Emily Brodsky


October 11, 2022

Speaker: David Catling, University of Washington

Title: Causes and consequences of the rise of atmospheric oxygen in Earth history

David

Host: Jim Zachos


October 18, 2022

Speaker: Pedro Monarrez, Stanford

Title: Alternating macroevolutionary regimes: Do mass extinctions alter the rules of evolution?

Pedro

Host: Matthew Clapham


October 25, 2022

Speaker: Janin Guzman-Morales, UC Santa Barbara

Title: Southern Mexico and Central America Regional Precipitation Variability: Community-informed Science

Abstract: Southern Mexico and Central America (SMCA) is a geographically connected region that shares climate features as well as human livelihoods. The latest compilation of scientific work on the region (IPCC, 2021) is inconclusive regarding heavy precipitation trends during the observational period, both in direction and anthropogenic attribution. In contrast, case studies have reported food security hardship and labor migration due to severe hydroclimate variability and extremes especially in communities that depend on subsistence agriculture. However, communities’ accounts of changing rainfall patterns vary vastly across the SMCA region. This signals that drought and precipitation indexing based on regional averaging may obscure sub-regional differences in the climatological baseline and trending, leading to products or conclusions with little transferability to the fine grid of human experience and that are ultimately of scarce utility to rural agricultural communities. To elucidate SMCA’s precipitation spatio-temporal variability –particularly those most relevant to local communities’ agricultural practices– I am using a combination of climate science methods and social science methods. I have analyzed the sub-regional and sub-seasonal patterns of precipitation, as well as their changes in the observational period, using 70 and 40 years of daily gridded rainfall estimates from two different data set (ERA5 and CHIRPS respectively). Concurrently, I have integrated ethnographic information –collected during an exploratory ethnographic fieldwork during Nov 15 – Nov 30, 2021, in two agricultural-rural communities of eastern El Salvador– to the numerical results examination and interpretation that provides immense insight on precipitation variability and changes that influence the agricultural sowing-harvesting cycle via the traditional, collective, and trans-generational knowledge of climate.

Janin

Host: Tamara Pico


November 1, 2022 Special Seminar at 12:30PM

Speaker: Adina Pattan, UCSC

Title: Stable and Radiogenic Sr Isotopes in Barite Clues on Links Between Weathering, Climate and the C Cycle

Adina


November 1, 2022

Speaker: Sally Zhang, Johns Hopkins

Title: Response of tropospheric transport to abrupt CO2 increase: dependence on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

Sally

Host: Nicole Feldl


November 8, 2022

Speaker: Borja Reguero

Title: TBA

Host: Matthew Clapham


November 15, 2022 - Cancelled


November 22, 2022 - Cancelled


November 29, 2022 - Cancelled