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G. Mathias KondolfProfessor of Environmental
Planning and Geography
Chair, Portuguese Studies Program Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning 202 Wurster Hall, University of California Berkeley, California 94720-2000 kondolf (at) berkeley.edu Telephone 642-2904 is no longer valid Please contact by email or via departmental receptionist |
News: Leaf Litter Interview with Professor Kondolf (Winter 2008)BiographyStudentsResearchSee other research areas described below under Research TopicsPublications
Recent SymposiaSemester Courses
The River in Film (LA 24)
Office hours most Thursday mornings 10AM-1PM, but varies week to week. Always check the signup sheet. |
There is something vital about rivers,
and irresistible. Whether seeking the flash of a salmon, or feeling your
boat pulled into the next rapid, or falling asleep to the sound of water
roaring down a steep mountain channel, moving water exerts strong magic on
most of us, inspiring no shortage of analogies. Life is a river, a river
is life. More than this, rivers provide drinking water to tens of millions
(most of California certainly), and we depend on their self-cleaning abilities
for our basic needs. Our rivers on the Pacific rim support runs of anadromous
salmon, a rush of life that can still awe in Alaskan waters, where commercial
fishing is still a potent economic force. Pity that we have lost so many
of our wild stocks of Pacific salmon and steelhead trout in California. Before
the Anglo invasion in 1849, two to three million Chinook salmon, mostly spring-run,
passed through the Golden Gate and ascended the rivers of the Sacramento-San
Joaquin system during the annual snowmelt. We have efficiently exterminated
most of these runs, and will probably succeed in wiping out more during our
next drought. The reasons are many: overfishing, pollution, dams and diversions
that block access to natal streams and alter flow regimes, river channels
transformed to canals, banks rip-rapped and leveed, floodplains that no longer
flood (in most years) and which are colonized by industrial agriculture or
spreading suburbs, gravel extracted from river bottomlands, leaving pits
that function as lakes where none existed naturally – creating ideal habitat
for exotic species like large-mouth bass that can consume the majority of
the salmon young on their way to the sea.
More and more we seek to restore rivers. If there is something about rivers that is vital and elemental to humankind, restoring rivers is spiritual renewal, it is community, it is often grassroots, a new, mature environmentalism. It is also an industry supporting small rural practitioners and government bureaucracies. And it does not always work, frequently because humility is lost and we impose our ideal forms on the river, without taking the time to learn the river's history, to measure her processes, to understand what has been irretrievably lost to ‘progress’, to see with vision what processes can be restored. When we try to fix the river, we can treat each intervention as an opportunity to learn about the river, so next time perhaps we can do better. My research and teaching focuses on rivers, their transformations by humans, their resilience and their active restoration. I work on salmon-bearing rivers and Mediterranean-climate rivers, and effects of human alterations like dams and gravel mining. In my classes, I emphasize understanding of physical and ecological process and river history as a basis for restoration strategy, the need to learn from each restoration project, and the need for scientific rigor when approaching restoration.
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Research Topics
River Restoration |
Effects of Dams and Diversions |
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Cumulative Effects and Catchment Management |
Gravel Mining in Rivers |
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Flow Releases from Dams and Diversions |
Spawning Gravels of Salmon and Trout |
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Stream-Groundwater Interactions |
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River-dog Clyde (1992-2005) and friends
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