#SLAWater
Speakers
Towards a Data Assimilation Framework for Evapotranspiration Over Urban Regions
Gonzalo Cortés is a project scientist at the UCLA Civil Environmental and Engineering Department. A civil engineer from Chile, he received his M.S.C. and Ph.D. at UCLA working with UCLA professor Steven Margulis on snow modeling and data assimilation of Landsat imagery over the extratropical Andes. His research is focused on developing large-scale high-resolution data assimilation frameworks for water resources estimation and evaluation of climate change impacts in hydrological systems.
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He is also a part-time researcher with the California Data Collaborative, and collaborator with the Universidad de Chile Mountain Hydrology group.
GONZALO CORTÉS
CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING
J.R. DESHAZO
LUSKIN CENTER FOR INNOVATION & PUBLIC POLICY
DENNIS LETTENMAIER
GEOGRAPHY
Developing Sustainable Water Supplies Through an Urban Water Market in Los Angeles
J.R. DeShazo directs the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and is the Chair of the Department of Public Policy in the Luskin School of Public Affairs. He holds joint appointments within UCLA's Institute of Environment and Sustainability as well as the Urban Planning and Civil and Environmental Engineering Departments. He has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning with a concentration in Economics from Harvard University, a master’s of science in Development Economics from Oxford University, St. Antony’s College where he was also a Rhodes Scholar, and a bachelor’s in Economics and History from the College of William and Mary. His academic and research areas include valuing health risk - reductions, environmental valuation, health and the built environment, as well as local public finance, clean technology, climate change policy, renewable energy policy, and sustainable transportation and water.
Dennis P. Lettenmaier (Ph.D., University of Washington, 1975) is a Distinguished Professor with interests in hydrologic modeling and prediction, hydrology-climate interactions, and hydrologic change. He is an author or co-author of over 300 journal articles. He was the first Chief Editor of the American Meteorological Society Journal of Hydrometeorology, and is a past President of the Hydrology Section of the American Geophysical Union.
Implications of Future Urban Ecosystem Management Alternatives for the Water Balance of the Los Angeles Basin
JESSICA CATTELINO
ANTHROPOLOGY & CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF WOMEN
Home Life: Gender, Kinship, and Residential Water Use
Jessica Cattelino, a sociocultural anthropologist, studies indigenous sovereignty, the cultural politics of water, and everyday American political processes and imaginations. Her first book was "High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty," and her current book and collaborative museum exhibition projects examine the cultural politics of water in the Florida Everglades. She also directs research on gender and household water use in Los Angeles.
GLEN MACDONALD
GEOGRAPHY
Regional and Urban Vegetation Browning and Recent Drought - A Preview of Los Angeles' Future?
KATIE MIKA
INSTITUTE OF THE ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY
Best Management Practices for Water Demand Reduction in Los Angeles County
Katie Mika a water quality and management researcher in the Los Angeles area. As an IoES post-doc working on the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, she has been researching the potential to improve water quality and maximize local water supply in the City of LA through implementing integrated water management and increasing water conservation efforts. During the course of her Ph.D. in the UCLA Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, she examined recreational water quality standards to better identify sources of human pollution to watersheds to help guide local governments to potential remediation sites and inform policies that protect human health. Previous career experiences include interning at the US EPA and American Rivers and teaching a course on Environmental Law and Policy focused on the evolution of California’s water system.
ERIK PORSE
INSTITUTE OF ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY
Dollars and Sense of Local Water Supply in Los Angeles County
Erik Porse is a research engineer at the CSUS Office of Water Programs in Sacramento and a visiting assistant researcher at UCLA. Erik has a wide background in systems analysis, environmental science & policy, and engineering. Most recently, he worked as a postdoc and Associate Research Director in UCLA's California Center for Sustainable Communities, where he led development of a Solar Prioritization Tool for LA County and the open-source Artes model of LA water resources. In the past, Erik worked as an analyst for Davis Energy Group, adjunct professor in Tanzania for Earlham College, and intelligence analyst for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. He has a PhD in civil and environmental engineering from the University of California, Davis.
LAWREN SACK
ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY
DANIEL SWAIN
INSTITUTE OF ENVIRONMENT & SUSTAINABILITY
Increasing Climate Whiplash in 21st Century California
Daniel Swain is a climate scientist in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. His research focuses on atmospheric processes that cause droughts and floods, along with the changing character of extreme weather events in a warming world. Daniel also authors the widely-read Weather West blog (www.weatherwest.com), which provides unique perspectives on weather and climate in California and the Western U.S.
Lawren Sack is a Professor of Plant Physiology and Ecology and Vice Chair in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. He has authored and co-author of more than 130 peer-reviewed papers. He trained for his PhD at Cambridge University and conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University, and has been a faculty member at University of California, Los Angeles since 2007, a full professor since 2011, with a strong focus on quantifying and predicting plant responses to drought and climate change in urban and natural ecosystems.
Terahertz Laser Leaf Scanner to Reduce Urban Ecosystem Water Expenditure
TOM GILLESPIE
GEOGRAPHY
Tom Gillespie is a professor of geography and an expert on biodiversity whose research focuses on conservation and protection of endangered forests and species, primarily by using remote sensing via satellites to determine biodiversity to influence global conservation priorities.
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In his work to save what many have called the world’s most endangered forests, Gillespie has surveyed the tropical dry forests in such biodiverse hotspots as Hawaii, Sundaland, Indo-Burma, New Caledonia and the Caribbean, using satellites. His research has yielded valuable information on global conservation priorities, the management of natural resources and tropical ecology. By using remote-sensing data, he hopes to predict how species spread or the probability of extinction in these fragile environments.
MARK GOLD
SUSTAINABLE LA
RICHARD KANER
CHEMISTRY & BIOGEOCHEMISTRY
Anti-fouling Membranes for Water Purification
Richard Kaner received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984 working with Prof. Alan MacDiarmid (Nobel Laureate 2000, deceased). After postdoctoral research at Berkeley, he joined UCLA in 1987, earned tenure in 1991 and became a Distinguished Professor in 2012. He has published over 350 papers in top peer reviewed journals and holds 29 U.S. patents. According to the 2014, 2015 and 2016 Thomson-Reuters rankings, he is among the world’s most highly cited authors. Professor Kaner has received awards from the Dreyfus, Fulbright, Guggenheim, Packard and Sloan Foundations along with the Materials Research Society Medal, the Buck-Whitney Research Award, the Tolman Medal and the Award in the Chemistry of Materials from the American Chemical Society for his work on refractory materials including new synthetic routes to ceramics, intercalation compounds, superhard metals, graphene and conducting polymers. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Materials Research Society (MRS) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC).
Integrated Water Management Strategies for the L.A. River
Professor Mark Gold is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. His research focuses on integrated water management, coastal resource management, and urban sustainability. He is spearheading UCLA's first ever Grand Challenge: Thriving in a Hotter Los Angeles by 2050: a Path to 100% Renewable Energy, 100% Local Water and Enhance Ecosystem and Human Health. In addition, Mark serves on Mayor Garcetti's Water Task Force and is a city representative on the Metropolitan Water District. Prior to working at UCLA, Mark was the President of the environmental group, Heal the Bay, for 18 years. Mark and researchers from UCLA and Colorado School of Mines just completed a comprehensive series of studies on sustainable water management (water quality, stormwater, recycled water, groundwater, conservation, and carbon embeddedness in water sources) in the city of Los Angeles.
Glen MacDonald is a UCLA Distinguished Professor and the John Muir Memorial Chair in Geography. He also holds appointments in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Glen is the UCLA-PI for the Department of Interior’s Southwest Climate Science Center. Glen’s research is focused on climate change and its impacts on ecosystems and people. He is a Member of the National Academy of Science and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union.
Turf Removal Program