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UC Toxics News: Fall 2000
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New Directions for the Ecotoxicology Lead Campus Program

 

 

Dr. Michael Johnson has become the new director of the TSR&TP Ecotoxicology Lead Campus Program headquartered at UC Davis. The former director, Dr. David Hinton, accepted an Endowed Chair position at Duke University in August 2000. Dr. Johnson, of the John Muir Institute of the Environment at UC Davis, has been instrumental in the TSR&TP-sponsored research and restoration of Mare Island Naval Shipyard. He was also one of the authors of the UC report on the health and environmental assessment of MTBE. His research interests are focused on ecological risk assessment and remediation. Dr. Johnson is happy to take command of the Ecotoxicology program. Following is a message from Dr. Johnson about his future vision for the program.

Dr. Michael Johnson, the new director of TSR&TP's Ecotoxicology Lead Campus Program

"The student trainees have been and will remain the strength of the Ecotoxicology Program. We have funded a large number of excellent students, and I look forward to continuing the support of outstanding students and their research. Dave Hinton guided the Ecotoxicology program in a slightly different direction from the one we traveled in the past. We began to focus our efforts to more formally examine problems from a watershed perspective.

Over the next few years, we will continue to utilize the watershed perspective, and we will attempt to combine the traditional strengths of our program, fate and transport, toxicology, and ecology, with two new elements, restoration of damaged ecosystems, and the economic impacts of contaminants in ecological systems. These two new areas help our program close the circle on a systems approach to ecotoxicology.

Over the last 20 years, science has grown increasingly more sophisticated in its ability to characterize environmental problems, but unfortunately, our understanding of how to actually rehabilitate or restore natural systems has not kept pace. We believe that our program can make a start in the development of methodologies for the restoration of impacted watersheds. As we begin to establish methodologies for restoration, we will be faced with the choice of prioritizing problems for solution, i.e., where does the limited funding go to provide the greatest benefit to society?

To help launch the additions to our program, we will devote a portion of our available funding to a single watershed and bring together individuals from several disciplines in an attempt to make a substantial start toward solving a specific problem. I believe that the model we can use for this approach is the MTBE project undertaken by the UCTSR&TP a few years ago. Concentrating several disciplines on that single project was very effective in defining the problem, characterizing the extent of the problem, and outlining potential solutions.

"I look forward to working with the current faculty and students to focus our program and to adding new researchers who can contribute to the Ecotoxicology Program. I also look forward to working with the Directors of the other lead campus programs to determine if there is expertise on other campuses that can add to our efforts."

-Michael Johnson, Ph.D.