Joleah Lamb
Assistant Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology | UC Irvine
Irvine, CA, UNITED STATES
Joleah Lamb studies natural buffers for mitigating infectious diseases that threaten coral reefs in coastal regions.
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Biography
Dr. Joleah Lamb is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Irvine where she leads the UCI Healthy Oceans and People Laboratory, an innovative and interdisciplinary research program that aims to benefit ecosystems and the services they provide to society.
Worldwide media attention associated with her research on disease outbreaks in the ocean has generated over 1,200 popular articles, documentaries and podcasts, including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic, New Scientist, Time, The Economist and Scientific American. Lamb is a science-based policy co-author on human-driven impacts on coral reefs for the UN Environmental Programme and co-author of the new chapter on conservation biology and global change for the 12th edition of Campbell Biology, a widely used university-level biology textbooks. She serves on numerous international working groups, including the IUCN and UN FAO committee on sustainable aquaculture and food systems, NASA program on ecological forecasting of ocean disease outbreaks and the World Bank initiative to value coral reef and related ecosystem services to support human livelihoods in developing regions.
Lamb ignited a new field of study with her discovery that plastic waste is a 21st-century vessel for disease transmission in the ocean (Lamb et al. 2018, Science). This finding brought attention to plastic as an emerging threat and sparked an entirely new field bridging medicine and human health, biosecurity, conservation, engineering and materials science. Lamb also uncovered a groundbreaking ecosystem function for seagrass, revealing its use as a natural buffer for human pathogen removal for coastal communities with limited wastewater infrastructure (Lamb et al. 2017, Science). Her research provides evidence and the data needed to inform critical environmental policy decisions.
Lamb is a rising thinker in the integration of public and ecosystem health systems. For outstanding contributions to transformative solutions-based research, communication and service in this field, Lamb was selected as a nominee for the 2020 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius, an international recognition for environmental innovators and problem-solvers that range from scientists to communicators, sustainable business leaders and economists to social justice advocates under the age of 40. She was also elected as one of eight 2020 Early Career Fellows of the Ecological Society of America.
Areas of Expertise (6)
Coral Reefs Ecosystems
Conservation Biology
Ocean Health
Ocean Pollution
Disease Ecology
Marine Protected Areas
Accomplishments (3)
Early Career Fellow (professional)
2020 Ecological Society of America
Outstanding Science & Engineering Early Career Alumni Award (professional)
2018 James Cook University
University Dean's Scholar (professional)
2014 Australian Institute of Marine Science & James Cook University
Education (3)
James Cook University: PhD, Marine Biology 2014
James Cook University: MS, Tropical Marine Ecology & Fisheries Biology 2009
University of Oregon: BS, Biology 2005
Links (4)
Media Appearances (7)
Researchers discover eelgrass superpower in Puget Sound
The Seattle Times online
2024-08-14
In Puget Sound, scientists found that mussels placed near eelgrass had 65% fewer pathogens than mussels placed in areas without eelgrass. The exact filtering mechanism is unknown and invites further research. … Joleah Lamb, an author on the paper, and now an associate professor at the University of California Irvine, noted some of the mussels sampled had a strong smell of sewage — but not the ones growing in eelgrass meadows. … Pollution, sedimentation and damage by propeller chop, scour, structures that shade the eelgrass and shoreline development that eliminate habitat all damage, limit and destroy it. It can be very hard to reestablish if lost.
Gov. Newsom signs new law taking aim at single-use plastics
KCBS Radio
2022-07-01
Governor Newsom signed a new law yesterday that limits plastics in the state and is widely considered the most comprehensive legislation aimed at reducing plastic pollution. The law will reduce plastic packaging and limit single-use plastics across the state. For more, KCBS Radio news anchors Megan Goldsby and Bret Burkhart spoke with Joleah Lamb, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Irvine.
The Surprising Scale of the Seagrass Sanitation Service
Hakai Magazine online
2022-05-04
Several years ago, a spate of illnesses hit the members of Joleah Lamb’s dive team. Lamb, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Irvine, was investigating coral disease in Indonesia with her colleagues when they were afflicted by dysentery, a type of gastroenteritis. This common ailment can be caused by ingesting water contaminated with bacterial pathogens such as Enterococcus. Though symptoms are usually mild, gastroenteritis can be fatal. Each year, gastroenteritis and related illnesses kill millions of people around the world—particularly children under the age of five. Lamb and her colleagues’ experience led to a scientific discovery: the concentrations of Enterococcus pathogens that can cause gastroenteritis are lower in some parts of the ocean than in others. Notably, gastroenteritis-causing pathogens are less common among seagrass meadows.
The thick of it: Delving into the neglected global impacts of human waste
Mongabay online
2022-01-11
This isn’t an isolated case of ecosystem degradation. Joleah Lamb, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine, who led the Myanmar research, is carrying out a similar study in the Seattle area in collaboration with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Cornell University, and the Washington Department of Natural Resources. Previously, she says, anti-depressants, chemotherapy drugs, heart medications and opioids have been found in Seattle area mussels, potentially linked to wastewater treatment plants and combined sewer overflows.
Half of the World’s Coastal Sewage Pollution Flows from Few Dozen Places
Scientific American online
2021-11-12
But the impacts of human sewage receive far less attention, says Joleah Lamb, a marine scientist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the study. Part of the reason may be that, unlike trash or oil spills, sewage can be invisible in the water. “I’ve been taken to beaches that look beautiful and clean,” Lamb says. “But then we start testing the water, and there are significant levels of human pathogens in the water.”
Marine researchers focus on the tiniest victims of Orange County oil spill
Los Angeles Times online
2021-10-09
The scientific effort to understand how spilled oil affects Southern California's coastal environment has suddenly become a hot topic of study at UC Irvine, where microbiologist Joleah Lamb and her students are collecting samples of seawater and kelp at nearby Newport Bay so that they can analyze and catalog the types, sizes and compositions of contaminants they contain. "Every ecosystem on Earth—from the human gut to oceans and wetlands—has been colonized by a microbiome that is important to its well-being and health," Lamb said. "And that is where oil spills in the ocean have their biggest and potentially longest lasting impacts—the microbial worlds that produce half the oxygen we breathe and decompose organic matter."
Wildlife official: 4 oiled birds collected so far in OC spill, 1 euthanized
Spectrum News 1 online
2021-10-04
Joleah Lamb, a UC Irvine professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said the damage from the spill could last for year and is difficult to gauge. The impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 are still being felt, Lamb told City News Service. "I think 'cleaning up' is a phrase that is overstated in both cases," Lamb said. "Even after Exxon Valdez 32 years later we're still seeing tremendous effects on those beaches. Even if we think we're cleaning it up there's a lot of subsurface chemicals, particulates on the ocean floor."
Articles (5)
Coastal urbanization influences human pathogens and microdebris contamination in seafood
Science of The Total EnvironmentRaechel A Littman, Evan A Fiorenza, Amelia S Wenger, Kathryn LE Berry, Jeroen AJM van de Water, Lily Nguyen, Soe Tint Aung, Daniel M Parker, Douglas N Rader, C Drew Harvell, Joleah B Lamb
2020 Seafood is one of the leading imported products implicated in foodborne outbreaks worldwide. Coastal marine environments are being increasingly subjected to reduced water quality from urbanization and leading to contamination of important fishery species. Given the importance of seafood exchanged as a global protein source, it is imperative to maintain seafood safety worldwide.
Science-based solutions to plastic pollution
One EarthT Galloway, M Haward, SA Mason, JO Babayemi, BD Hardesty, S Krause, J Lamb, IA Hinojosa, A Horton
2020 Galloway, T and Haward, M and Mason, SA and Babayemi, JO and Hardesty, BD and Krause, S and Lamb, J and Hinojosa, IA and Horton, A, Science-based solutions to plastic pollution, One Earth, 2 pp. 5-7. ISSN 2590-3330 (2020) [Non Refereed Article]
Plastics and Shallow Water Coral Reefs: Synthesis of the Science for Policy-Makers,
UN Environment ProgrammeMichael Sweet, M Stelfox, Joleah B Lamb
2019 The overall purpose of this brief is to provide policy and management recommendations for addressing and reducing the impacts of plastics on shallow water coral reefs, based on current scienti c knowledge. In doing so, the brief will contribute to achieving the related global, national and regional goals and targets, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Social–environmental drivers inform strategic management of coral reefs in the Anthropocene
Nature Ecology & Evolution volume2019 Without drastic efforts to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate globalized stressors, tropical coral reefs are in jeopardy. Strategic conservation and management requires identification of the environmental and socioeconomic factors driving the persistence of scleractinian coral assemblages—the foundation species of coral reef ecosystems. Here, we compiled coral abundance data from 2,584 Indo-Pacific reefs to evaluate the influence of 21 climate, social and environmental drivers on the ecology of reef coral assemblages.
Reduced diversity and stability of coral-associated bacterial communities and suppressed immune function precedes disease onset in corals
Royal Society Open ScienceF. Joseph Pollock, Joleah B. Lamb, Jeroen A. J. M. van de Water, Hillary A. Smith, Britta Schaffelke, Bette L. Willis and David G. Bourne
2019 Disease is an emerging threat to coral reef ecosystems worldwide, highlighting the need to understand how environmental conditions interact with coral immune function and associated microbial communities to affect holobiont health. Increased coral disease incidence on reefs adjacent to permanently moored platforms on Australia's Great Barrier Reef provided a unique case study to investigate environment–host–microbe interactions in situ. Here, we evaluate coral-associated bacterial community (16S rRNA amplicon sequencing), immune function (protein-based prophenoloxidase-activating system), and water quality parameters before, during and after a disease event.
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