Richard F. Ambrose, Ph.D.
rambrose@ucla.edu

Dr. Ambrose is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and Director of the Environmental Science and Engineering Program at UCLA. Dr. Ambrose's research focuses on ways to protect and maintain the ecology of coastal areas; much of his work is conducted at the interface between environmental biology and resource management policy. 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. At Mugu Lagoon, he is assessing the efficacy of using sewage sludge as a soil amendment in a wetland restoration project using controlled, large-scale field experiments in an adaptive management framework. 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.

Current Doctoral Students:

Ph.D.:
Gretchen Coffman
Steve Lee
Jayson Smith (co-chair with Peggy Fong in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology)
Irene Tetreault

D.Env.:
Matthew Buffleben (co-chair with Stan Trimble, Geography)
Jae Chung
Melissa Evanson
Felicia Federico
Laurie Ikuta
Stacey Jensen
Erik Larsen
Dan Swenson
Forrest Vanderbilt
Matthew Vandersande
Vada Yoon

Current M.S. Students:
Shanti Abichandani
Janel Marie Augello
Robert Gilbert
Terry Young

Selected Publications

Lafferty, K., C. Swift and R.F. Ambrose.  1999.  Extirpation and recovery of local populations of the endangered tidewater goby, Eucyclogobius newberryi. Conservation Biology 13: 1447-1453.

Ambrose, R.F.  2000.  Wetland mitigation in the United States : Assessing the success of mitigation policies.  Wetlands ( Australia ) 19: 1-27.

Boyer, K.E., P. Fong, R.R. Vance and R.F. Ambrose.  2001.  Salicornia virginica in a southern California salt marsh: seasonal patterns and a nutrient enrichment experiment. Wetlands 21 (3): 315-326.

Stein, E.D. and R.F. Ambrose.  2001.  Landscape-scale analysis and management of cumulative impacts to riparian ecosystems:  Past, present and future.  Journal of American Water Resources Association 37 (6): 1597-1614.

Sudol, M.F. and R.F. Ambrose.  2002.  The Clean Water Act and habitat replacement: Evaluation of mitigation sites in Orange County , California .  Environmental Management 30: 727-734.

Vance, R.R., R.F. Ambrose, S.S. Anderson, S. MacNeil, T. McPherson, I. Beers and T.W. Keeney.  2003.  Effects of sewage sludge on the growth of potted salt marsh plants exposed to natural tidal inundation.  Restoration Ecology 11: 155-167.

Forrester, G.E., B.I. Fredericks, D. Gerdeman, B. Evans, M.A. Steele, K. Zayed, L.E. Schweitzer, I.H. Suffet, R.R. Vance and R.F. Ambrose.  2003.  Correspondence between field-measured growth rates of fish from several California estuaries and the inferred toxicity of multiple sediment contaminants.  Marine Environmental Research 56: 423-442.

Shuman, C.S. and R.F. Ambrose.  2003.  A comparison of remote sensing and ground-based methods for monitoring wetland restoration success.  Restoration Ecology 11: 325-333.

Shuman, C.S., G. Hodgson, and R.F. Ambrose.  2004.  Managing the Marine Aquarium Trade:  Is Eco-Certification the Answer? Ecological Conservation 31(4).