Research Groups

Information Center for the Environment

Website: http://ice.ucdavis.edu
Location: 2120 Wickson Hall

The Information Center for the Environment (ICE) is a cooperative facility supporting projects of an interdepartmental faculty, with funding from over a dozen agencies and programs. The Center is housed within the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis.

The Center is housed within the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis. Begun as an agricultural extension school, the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences maintains a long history of developing and applying natural resource science to environmental issues of local, regional, and national significance.

ICE continues this tradition, providing the following services: Geographic information system (GIS), database, and modeling development and support Development of easy-to-use public access to a wide variety of environmental information through our Web server. Our ICE Web server hosts data, maps, models, reports, and other related products.

Institute of Transportation Studies

Website: http://www.its.ucdavis.edu
Contact: its@ucdavis.edu

Since its founding in 1991, the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis (ITS-Davis) has evolved into a multi-faceted center with 40 affiliated faculty members and more than 70 graduate students. It maintains leading programs in transportation research, education, and outreach. It receives funding from government agencies, foundations, and companies (including most of the major international car and oil companies), and a variety of prestigious academic and research institutions. Research programs on travel behavior, advanced vehicle technology, and environmental impacts of transportation are internationally recognized as among the best in the world. The Institute also houses the innovative Transportation Technology & Policy graduate program, the recipient of a $2.6 million award from the National Science Foundation for outstanding interdisciplinary graduate education. The outreach program includes ongoing seminars, workshops, and conferences, featuring leaders and experts from around the world in industry, government, and academia.

Center for Environmental Conflict Analysis

Website: http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/research/ceca
Contacts:
Paul Sabatier - pasabatier@ucdavis.edu
Mark Lubell - mnlubell@ucdavis.edu

The Center for Environmental Conflict Analysis (CECA) is comprised of a team of researchers using scientific methods to understand how people resolve conflicts over environmental resources.

Environmental conflicts involve deeply held values and beliefs of stakeholders who may disagree about scientific uncertainty, the magnitude and aspects of a policy problem, its causes, and its policy solutions. Our research involves understanding the factors that facilitate or prevent conflict resolution, with a focus on comparing alternative policy institutions. Many of the projects are designed to assess the effectiveness of collaborative processes intended to facilitate stakeholder cooperation. The conflicts studied in CECA cross policy domains including watersheds, forests, marine/coastal systems, and biodiversity. Common features of most CECA studies are the use of multiple theoretical frameworks and the use of scientific methods of data acquisition and analysis to help unravel these complex policy disputes.

Tahoe Research Group (TRG)

Website: http://trg.ucdavis.edu

Traditionally, UC Davis research at Lake Tahoe has been directed toward the basic scientific understanding of ecological processes in high mountain aquatic environments. However, during the last decade the focus has expanded to include watershed and lake management. If the lake is to regain its environmental health, further study that includes predictive modeling and consistent monitoring combined with close working relationships with public agencies, homeowners and the business community must be conducted in order to develop public policy that balances human and environmental needs. A multidisciplinary approach that encompasses a much larger scope than was previously addressed is now being undertaken.

In concert with public and private partners within the basin and at UC Davis, the TRG has presented a comprehensive outline for future research at Tahoe that has broad applicability to the entire Sierra Nevada.

Theoretical Ecology

Contacts:
Alan Hastings - amhastings@ucdavis.edu
Marcel Holyoak - maholyoak@ucdavis.edu

Theoretical ecology refers to the use of approaches, typically employing mathematics or computers, to understand the dynamics of populations, communities and ecosystems. Work currently under way focuses primarily on questions in which a spatial component is important. Specific issues include understanding the dynamics of invasive species, such as Spartina alterniflora, an introduced salt marsh cordgrass, and the design and placement of marine reserves to preserve diversity and maintain fish stocks. Other issues under study include food web dynamics and the dynamics of organisms in marine systems off the west coast of the United States. Collaborators in these efforts include other faculty at Davis, at other UC campuses and others throughout the world. These efforts also lead to new advances in the filed of nonlinear dynamics.