Albert Ruhi is a freshwater ecologist and Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley (Dept. Environmental Science, Policy, and Management).
Prof Ruhi’s seminar will review the different ways in which humans and climate change are altering river flows, and the challenge of studying hydro-ecology when both hydrological and ecological baselines are shifting. He will first show how changes in flow periodicity induced by hydropower dams (“hydropeaking”) promote or hinder particular organismal traits, leveraging time-series data and modeling techniques. He will also delve in food-web responses to a combination of water quantity and quality stressors, using observational approaches. Finally, he will show recent work developed by his lab, aimed at understanding the mechanisms by which natural intermittency and climate-change induced early snowmelt (and extended low flows) affect river ecosystem dynamics, based on field experiments in coastal and Sierra Nevada streams in California.