Dr. Richard Ambrose, Director and Professor, joined UCLA in 1992. He received his B.S. in Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine (1975) and his Ph.D. in Marine Ecology at UCLA (1982). After postdoctoral research at Simon Fraser University in Canada, he joined the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara.

Current research

Professor 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. A major restoration project (with Dr. Richard R. Vance) assesses the feasibility of restoring an abandoned sewage oxidation pond back to a salt marsh. Large-scale field experiments have been used to see whether the sewage sludge from the pond can be used as a soil amendment, and to determine if contaminants in the sludge might be harmful to the salt marsh ecosystem. Professor Ambrose is also developing criteria for judging the success of the restoration project once it is implemented, in particular evaluating the consequences of using different reference sites and different methods for establishing performance standards.

A second general area of research focuses on assessment of the health of ecosystems. Professor Ambrose has established a network of monitoring stations at intertidal sites from Orange County to San Luis Obispo County in order to be able to detect any large ecological impacts that might occur to this section of coast, including short-term impacts such as an oil spill and long-term effects from global climate change. He is also assessing the impacts of anthropogenic inputs (especially metals and excess nutrients) on the health of coastal wetlands. His work in coastal watersheds includes studies determine the link between land use and aquatic community health. 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.

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.

Publications

Current Courses

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