Laurel Larsen, PhD

2003 Hertz Fellow
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Laurel Larsen, PhD, is an associate professor of earth systems science in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley.

Larsen’s work focuses primarily on how flowing water structures the form and function of landscapes, with emphases on the Florida Everglades, wet meadows across the US, and intermittent streams in coastal California. Larsen’s Environmental Systems Dynamics Laboratory takes a complex-systems approach to environmental problems, seeking to understand the set of interactions and feedbacks that produce emergent phenomena. The lab’s approach to problems integrates field work and numerical modeling to identify the most critical drivers of landscape-scale change and generate predictions about how landscapes will respond to climate change or changes in management.

Her work has influenced restoration efforts in the Everglades, with ongoing work focusing on the Chesapeake Bay, streams and wet meadows of California, and the Wax Lake Delta, part of the greater Mississippi River delta complex. She remains committed to using a variety of tools, from field and laboratory work, to simulation modeling, to data-driven analysis, to understand environmental processes. As a Hertz Fellow, Laurel earned her PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and also trained at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Graduate Studies

University of Colorado
Earth Science
Hydroecological Feedback Processes Governing Self-Organization of the Everglades Ridge and Slough Landscape

Undergraduate Studies

Washington University in St. Louis

Related News

Dec 17, 2018
Since she was a child growing up in Florida, Hertz Fellow Laurel Larsen was intrigued with water, from the way it moved to the way it would change season to season.
Nov 19, 2015
Laurel Larsen’s research of the Florida Everglades and how it can continue to provide functions that humans value for the foreseeable future is part of a 30-plus year, multi-billion dollar restoration effort to rebuild wildlife habitats and re-create natural water flows. Assistant Professor Larsen is a Hertz Fellow and head of the Environmental Systems Dynamics Laboratory in Berkeley’s Geography Department. Professor Larsen is currently working on projects related to restoration of the Florida Everglades, floodplains within the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and greater Mississippi River Delta complex.