Students from civil engineering classes CE 112 (Water and Wastewater Systems Design and Operation) and CE 280 (Rock Mechanics), led by Professor Kenichi Soga, visited the Pardee Dam, one of California’s major water infrastructure sites. The field trip connected students' classroom lessons with real-world applications. See the full article.
Students in the CE281 Engineering Geology class embarked on the annual Sierra Nevada field trip on September 26 and 27, 2025. This was a two-day exploration through some of California’s and Nevada’s most geologically significant sites. The trip was a great opportunity for the students to get hands-on learning on the unique regional geology and rock formations, and how these shape and affect the geomorphology of the area and major infrastructure works. Furthermore, it provided a great setting for the students to connect, bond and collaborate outside the classroom.
The field trip stops included:
Auburn Dam Site, Auburn, CA: A unique opportunity to experience a dam site, without the dam! Once envisioned as a major dam on the American River, construction was halted in the 1970s following the discovery of nearby active faults and growing environmental concerns. This field trip stop provided an ideal setting to discuss dam design, active faulting, and seismic hazard.
Spaulding Dam and Spillway, Nevada City, CA: Students toured the dam and spillway structures, and were accompanied by engineers from the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD). Discussions centered on spillway design, field measurements of tectonic joints, and hydraulic plucking of fractured rocks.
Kingsbury Grade, Kingsbury, NV: A key stop for examining the complex geological processes of the region, the diverse rock formations and how these are applied in real world rock slope stability problems. Students analyzed spheroidal weathering, saprolites and real-world examples of stabilization techniques used along the grade.
Genoa Fault, Genoa, NV: The Genoa Fault is a normal fault that marks the boundary between the Sierra Nevada block and the Basin and Range Province. At this stop, students explored how tectonic evolution has shaped the geography of Western USA, and they had the opportunity to make field measurements on the fault.
Burke Creek, Stateline, NV: During this stop, Jacques Landy from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced the Lake Tahoe Clarity Restoration Project, an interdisciplinary effort to preserve one of the clearest alpine lakes in the world and its characteristic blue waters. He interacted with the students while presenting the causes of clarity deterioration in the lake and the restoration efforts of the past decades.
Inspiration Point, Emerald Bay State Park, CA: Overlooking the characteristic blue waters of Lake Tahoe, this stop offered an opportunity to discuss the glacial history which forms the landscape of Lake Tahoe. Students learned about U-shaped valleys and moraines, and the processes that formed and continue to shape Lake Tahoe.
Students camped at Zephyr Cove, Lake Tahoe, where they set up tents, cooked together, and gathered around campfires, sharing stories, experiences and some good laugh, fostering camaraderie within the group. Thankfully, no bears were encountered this year!
The trip was supervised by Professor Robert Kayen and GSI Andreas Kalyvas, who guided the students through discussions on geological processes and how these affect engineering design.
Kenichi Soga co-authored a new book, “Fundamentals of Soil Behavior, Fourth Edition.” Co-authors include Professor Emeritus James K. Mitchell and Geosystems alumna Professor Catherine O’Sullivan. The previous third edition attracted over 13,000 citations across geotechnical engineering and related fields like granular physics, soil science, and powder technology. This new edition has been thoroughly updated to provide the latest information on the physical properties of soil and the fundamentals of its behavior, with hundreds of tables and graphs illustrating correlations among composition, classification, state, and static and dynamic properties. Overall, each topic is addressed in a micro-to-macro sequence, considering behaviors at the atomic and/or particle scales to develop understanding of soil properties and behaviors at the macro-scale, which is relevant to engineering practice.
Two new chapters on special features of soil behavior and temperature-dependent soil behavior were added. Other chapters have been substantially updated to include the latest developments in imaging technology and particle level numerical simulations that have advanced research on the complexities of soil behavior, and recent experimental data. Its balanced integration of scientific principles with practical applications has shaped graduate education and professional practice worldwide, while also inspiring major research directions in environmental geotechnics, energy geotechnics, ground improvement, soil–structure interaction and granular physics.
Prof. Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos was a guest at The Geotechnical Engineering Podcast (TGEP) hosted by Jared Green and supported by the Engineering Management Institute.
Prof. Athanasopoulos-Zekkos covered several topics, including the critical issues surrounding the liquefaction of gravelly soils and the importance of equity in earthquake resilience as well as what inspired her to become a geotechnical engineer!
You can listen at the podcast here or find it on iTunes here.
As part of our new monthly webinar series on "The Future of Infrastructure, Today!" we are pleased to announce the following webinar:
Title: Introducing the Berkeley Center for Smart Infrastructure
Speaker: Kenichi Soga, Professor, UC Berkeley, Director of the Center for Smart Infrastructure
Registration Link
Description: Many infrastructure assets are designed for a service life of 100 years, even with deterioration due to material degradation, extreme temperature, and external loads. But deterioration can accelerate because of poor design or workmanship, construction problems, unforeseen stressors, and inadequate maintenance and repair. Ideally, infrastructure should be designed to both meet immediate needs and be adaptable to future demands throughout its lifetime. Past design philosophy, however, was based on current demand prediction, creating a substantial risk that the infrastructure will be inadequate or obsolete before the end of its expected period of operation. In addition, the covid-19 pandemic changed infrastructure demands as teleworking continues to transform residential and travel patterns. Adopting new mobility platforms and increasing automation and electrification will affect future infrastructure.
Adaptation is no longer a choice but a requirement for sustainable living. Infrastructure must adapt to changes and threats that are here now. The need to improve the capability to predict, design for, and manage the life expectancy of infrastructure calls for smart infrastructure engineering with the sustainability, resilience, and equity of communities at its center. How can the built environment be rehabilitated or created so that future generations benefit from smart infrastructure? The talk will discuss the opportunities of emerging technologies to address these questions and the role of the new Berkeley Center for Smart Infrastructure can make to transform the way we design, build, maintain and reuse our infrastructure.
This event is sponsored by
About the Webinar Series: The “Future of Infrastructure Today!” is a monthly webinar series under the Auspices of the UC Berkeley Center for Smart Infrastructure (https://smartinfrastructure.berkeley.edu/ ).The webinar series aims to feature the latest scientific, technological, and computational advances in the field of infrastructure that are poised to have an impact in the infrastructure field, amplify forward-thinking ideas, and promote research advances, global education, and integration with the infrastructure industry. An explicit goal of the webinar is to bring together a synergistic community of stakeholders, engineers, community leaders, contractors, and the tech industry with the goal to achieve truly resilient, sustainable, and equitable communities.
On May 8-9 2023, UC Berkeley Faculty and colleagues will be offering again the popular 2-day short course on "New Technologies for Geotechnical Infrastructure Sensing and Monitoring." The course was offered the last two years and was very well received with a total of 334 participants from 34 US States and 42 countries. You can review the participants' feedback about the course here.
The course will provide a review of some of the latest technologies that are about to, or are already impacting the way we design, maintain, or operate geo-infrastructure and the way we manage risk. Technologies to be discussed are sensor-equipped Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (or drones), 3D model creation using optical (Structure-from-Motion) and LiDAR, infrared sensing, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), wireless sensing network fundamentals, ShapeArray Accelerometers and distributed sensing using fiber optics. The instructors (Soga, Kayen, Johnson and Zekkos) have significant expertise in the technologies presented and will outline the principles of operation and the advantages and disadvantages, as well as share examples of projects where these technologies have been successfully implemented.
The course accommodates participants in all time zones by making the recorded lectures available online for one month following the completion of the course, as well as arranging "office hours" and is offering PDHs.
More information, and registration for this course can be found here: https://www.geoengfdn.org/geomonitoring
As a new activity by the Center for Smart Infrastructure (CSI), Professor Kenichi Soga, Won-jun Cha, Shih-Hung Chiu, and East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) subject-matter experts, led by Clifford Chan (General Manager) and David Katzev, offered a new undergraduate course for Fall 2022: Water & Wastewater Systems Design and Operation (CE112). The course covers a variety of topics in the water industry, including design of water treatment and wastewater systems, pipeline systems, history of the water industry, and new challenges related to climate change.
This course provides an opportunity to learn about real water and wastewater systems and how the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) rehabilitates or builds infrastructure that is sustainable and resilient so that future generations do not experience the infrastructure challenges we are currently facing today.
In this project-based course, students research and investigate how to introduce innovations in the planning, design, construction, operations, and maintenance of water and wastewater systems, and support community resilience against natural/manmade hazards through resilience planning and design. Furthermore, students have a great opportunity to visit major water and wastewater treatment facilities, including Pardee dam, Camanche dam, San Pablo dam, Pipeline construction site, and EBMUD water and wastewater treatment facilities.
Early on Friday, September 30, 2022, the GeoSystems Master students in CE 281 Engineering Geology left for the Sierra Nevada Foothills. The first stop of the trip was Auburn Dam. The students were able to see the foundation for Auburn Dam, which was never built and learned about the surrounding geology. The second stop of the trip was another dam, Spaulding Dam. PG&E hosted the class and took the students to the spillway of the dam in order to learn about joint sets and to make strike and dip measurements on the rock to use for stability analysis.
Day 2 of the trip started with a stop at Genoa Fault in Nevada. This is one of the most western normal faults in the Sierra Nevada Basin and Range complex. Here the students measured strike and dips of the fault plane and learned their pacing in order to more accurately estimate distances and heights of geologic features.
The afternoon of the second day was dedicated to learning about the geology of Lake Tahoe and learning about water quality protection measures from Jacques Landy from the US Environmental Protection Agency.
The GeoSystems Master Students enrolled in CE 281 Engineering Geology travelled with the CE 112 Water and Wastewater Systems Design and Operations students to Pardee Dam and Camanche Dam. The students were joined by Clifford Chan of EBMUD who explained the operation of Pardee Dam and Camanche Dam. Pardee Dam is a cold water dam and provides most of the drinking water to the Bay Area.
The students were taken on a tour of the inside of Pardee Dam where everyone climbed 300 steps to the "Complaint Department" and was able to write their name on the inside of the dam!
The students were allowed to walk on the Pardee Dam spillway and learned about the low-grade metamorphic rocks that are being eroded away from the high pressure the water on the spillway is putting on the rocks.
Camanche and Pardee Dam are operated together. Camanche Dam is an earthen dam that is primarily used for recreation, flood protection, and is an active fish hatchery. 20-40% of the fish caught in the ocean near the Bay Area is contributed to the Camanche Dam hatchery. To obtain the correct water temperature for the fish, cold water from Pardee Dam is sent to Camanche Dam which holds much warmer water.
With a month into the term, the GeoSystems Master students who are enrolled in CE 281 Engineering Geology took their first field trip of the semester. The class visited a total of six different sites to learn about geology and its role in engineering.
The first stop of the trip was at Treasure Island where the students learned about the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and how there were two seismograph stations a mile apart, one on rock and the other on soil, which was the first concrete evidence of how site conditions matter and how site conditions can amplify ground shaking.
The second stop on the trip was Sansome and Telegraph. This site is located just below Coit Tower and shows impressive engineering efforts put in place to prevent rock fall failures of the slope. The students learned about different techniques used to reduce rock slope failure impacts such as rock bolting, shotcrete, and wire meshing.
Other sites visited included Corona Heights Park where the students were able to make strike and dip measurements of an exposed fault face and trend and plunge measurements of the striations on the fault. They were able to apply the knowledge they learned in lab to real world geologic formations.
Twin Peaks in San Francisco was also visited to learn about the sea mounts that helped create the area and to look at the famous Marin Headlands Chert. This site also provided students with gorgeous views of San Francisco.
In the afternoon, the students visited Devil's Slide along the coast of California to look at tunnels and highly weathered granite slopes.
The day was wrapped up at Montara State Beach where students were able to make strip and dip measurements of an exposed reverse fault trace and see aeolian sand deposits in person.
