Calendar of Events

Topic: “Mitigating climate change by sequestering carbon in wetlands: scientific and policy issues”Rich Ambrose, ProfessorUCLA Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public HealthDepartment of Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability Dr. Ambrose’s research focuses on ways to protect and maintain the ecology of coastal areas. Current research focuses on (1) restoration of degraded habitats, especially for coastal marine environments, and (2) assessment of the health of coastal ecosystems. He is current working on several tidal wetland restoration projects in California. He and his students have studied the cumulative effects of impacts to riparian systems and the success of wetland/riparian mitigation required under Sections 404 and 401 of the Clean Water Act. Dr. Ambrose’s research on ecosystem health includes a program to monitor rocky intertidal habitats (with a particular focus on being able to detect short-term effects, such as caused by oil spills, as well as long-term effects of global climate change) using a network of sites throughout southern California. In a related project, he is assessing the nature of human activities in rocky intertidal habitats and determining ways to restore degraded intertidal communities in Santa Monica Bay. Dr. Ambrose’s research in coastal watersheds focuses on establishing a link between land use and aquatic community health. Additional research projects focus on assessing the impacts of contaminants on coastal wetland species, developing performance standards for determining the success of habitat restoration projects, and evaluating how coastal wetlands influence the delivery of fecal indicator bacteria to the ocean. All of these projects provide information on the status of important coastal ecological communities, including the nature and extent of anthropogenic impacts to them, which serves as the foundation for their management and protection.Bio: Richard F. Ambrose is Director of the Environmental Science and Engineering Program and Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA. He received his B.S. in Biological Sciences from University of California, Irvine and his Ph.D. in Marine Ecology from University of California, Los Angeles. After conducting postdoctoral research at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, he spent seven years at the Marine Science Institute at University of California, Santa Barbara before returning to UCLA in 1992. Professor Ambrose is a member of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment’s Executive Committee and serves on the university’s Campus Sustainability Committee. He teaches graduate courses covering environmental assessment, restoration ecology and conservation biology. Professor Ambrose serves on a variety of different advisory boards and committees. He chairs the Scientific Advisory Panel of the California Coastal Commission overseeing a large mitigation project, the Ballona Restoration Project’s Science Advisory Committee (co-chair), and the Technical Advisory Committee for the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission (SMBRC), and serves on the Southern California Wetland Recovery Project’s Science Advisory Panel and the SMBRC Marine Protected Area Technical Advisory Committee. He was recently appointed to the Environmental Advisory Board (EAB) for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He has provided advice about environmental restoration issues to a wide variety of government and private organizations, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California State Water Resources Control Board, California Coastal Commission, California State Lands Commission, California Coastal Conservancy, California Department of Transportation, City of Malibu, Pacific Gas and Electric, Aspen Environmental Group and Geosyntec Consultants.