Mary E. Power

Professor of the Graduate School

Email: mepower@berkeley.edu
Phone: (510) 643-7776
Lab Webpage: https://ib.berkeley.edu/labs/power/

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Research Description

My research interests center on river food webs. I have studied interactions among fish, birds, invertebrates, and algae in temperate and tropical rivers. I am particularly interested in how attributes of species affect food web structure and dynamics, and how strengths of these interactions change under different environmental regimes. We have studied, for example, the interplay of trophic dynamics with hydrologic and productivity regimes in northern California rivers, as well as impacts of invading alien species, and linkages between rivers and their watersheds. Much of our current field work takes place in the South Fork Eel River, within the Angelo Coast Range Reserve in Mendocino, CA, one of the University of California Natural Reserve System's 35 research and teaching reserves. I have also recently started collaborating with Jill Banfield, a geomicrobiologist at Berkeley in a study of the microbial interactions that generate acid mine drainage, and with earth scientists in a newly funded NSF Science and Technology Center, the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics, in studies of the evolution of linked eco-geomorphic systems in watersheds.

Selected Publications

Suttle, K.B., M.E. Power, J.A. Levine, and F.C. McNeely. 2004. How fine sediment in river beds impairs growth and survival of juvenile salmonids.Ecological Applications, in press.

Power, M.E., W.E. Rainey, M.S. Parker, J.L. Sabo, A. Smyth, S. Khandwala, J.C. Finlay, F.C. McNeely, K. Marsee, and C. Anderson. 2004. River to watershed subsidies in an old-growth conifer forest. In Food Webs at the Landscape Level, eds. G.A. Polis M.E. Power and G. Huxel, pp 217-240. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Power, M.E. and W.E. Dietrich. 2002. Food webs in river networks. Ecological Research 17:451-471.

Finlay, J.C., S. Khandwala, and M.E. Power. 2002. Spatial scales of energy flow in food webs of the South Fork Eel River. Ecology 83:1845-1859.

Power, M.E. and W.E. Rainey. 2000. Food webs and resource sheds: Towards spatially delimiting trophic interactions. In Ecological Consequences of Habitat Heterogeneity, ed. M.J. Hutchings, E.A. John and A.J.A. Stewart. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Scientific, pp. 291-314.