Professor

Research Expertise and Interest

climate change, global change, greenhouse gases, ecosystem ecology, biogeochemistry, grasslands, tropical forests, carbon sequestration, environmental sensing

Research Description

Whendee Silver's research interests are in the fields of biogeochemistry and ecosystem ecology, and include the causes and consequences of climate change, possible solutions, feedbacks to the global climate system, tropical ecology, rangeland ecology, and redox sensitive biogeochemical cycling.

In the News

UC Berkeley leads new assessment of Bay Area climate impacts

California today issued its latest assessment of the many challenges the state faces from climate change — including wildfires like those still raging throughout the state – and highlighted for the first time the regional impacts with nine deep-dive reports spearheaded by University of California scientists.

Can ‘carbon ranching’ offset emissions in California?

Could cultivating dense fields of weeds help mitigate climate change by soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? Berkeley scientists Dennis Baldocchi and Whendee Silver are exploring that possibility in California’s agricultural heartland, the San Joaquin Valley. National Public Radio reports.

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.
August 31, 2018

Improving soil quality may slow global warming

Food Magazine
Iqra Farooq

Simple practices that enhance soil quality on farms -- such as planting cover crops, composting, and sowing legumes -- could slow climate change by drawing significant amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, a new study led by environmental science, policy and management professor Whendee Silver has found. "As someone who has been working on carbon sequestration for a long time, I have always had this question in the back of my mind, 'Will sequestration in soils make a difference with climate change at a global scale?'" Professor Silver says. "We found that there are a wide range of practices deployable on a large scale that could have a detectable worldwide impact. A big take-home message is that we know how to do this, it is achievable." For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News. Other stories on this topic appeared in AZo Cleantech, Advocator, Courthouse News Service and Xinhua.

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