Skip to content

 

News

YosemiteLand Has Launched!

July 16, 2018
Capital Public Radio's environmental reporter Ezra Romero just launched a new series about Yosemite National Park titled YosemiteLand. The first episode of the series features UC Merced Professors Catherine Keske and Jeff Jenkins. Additional UC Merced faculty will...

Sea Stars Started Dissolving. What Helped Some of Them Survive?

July 5, 2018
UC Merced researcher Lauren Schiebelhut was recently featured in a New York Times article on the research that she and others are doing here on campus.   NYT Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/science/sea-stars-genes.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/science SF...

Soil Can Sequester Planet-Warming Carbon. The Merced River is Helping Scientists Understand How.

July 2, 2018
Soils are carbon sinks, storing more planet-warming carbon than the atmosphere and all animal and plant life combined. But they can also release massive amounts of stored carbon into the atmosphere. Given carbon’s central role in climate change, understanding the forces that govern how soils absorb...

Merced River Helps Explain How Soils Capture and Store Planet-Warming Carbon

July 2, 2018
Soils are carbon sinks, storing more planet-warming carbon than the atmosphere and all animal and plant life combined. But they can also release massive amounts of stored carbon into the atmosphere. Given carbon’s central role in climate change, understanding the forces that govern how soils absorb...

Following a Devastating Pandemic, California’s Sea Stars are Evolving

June 28, 2018
In 2012, Environmental Systems graduate student Lauren Schiebelhut was collecting DNA from ochre sea stars living along the Northern California coast — part of an effort to study genetic diversity in various marine species that serve as indicators of habitat...

The importance of upper watershed management to California’s water supply

June 15, 2018
Click for more from the California Water Commission. With much of the state’s water supply originating in the mountains as precipitation on the forested landscape, the health and management of the upper watersheds are critically important to California’s water quality and water...

Berhe Selected by National Academies to Serve as “New Voice” for Science

June 8, 2018
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) just announced that they’ve selected Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe to serve as an inaugural member of the Academies’ newest initiative — New Voices in Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (SEM). Funded by a grant from the Gordon...

Climate change ruining California’s environment, report warns

May 8, 2018
Climate change ruining California’s environment, report warns   By Peter Fimrite   Bigger, more intense forest fires, longer droughts, warmer ocean temperatures and an ever shrinking snowpack in the Sierra Nevada are “unequivocal” evidence of the ruinous...

Fewer Trees, More Water: Study Finds Runoff Boost From Forest Thinning

May 7, 2018
A century of fire suppression has left Western forests overgrown. That has interrupted nature’s regular fire cycle and means that when fires do happen, they become catastrophic because there is plentiful fuel to burn. It also means forests are sucking up more water than they did historically...

Billions of Gallons of Water Saved by Thinning Sierra Forests

April 23, 2018
There are too many trees in Sierra Nevada forests, say experts from UC Merced, UC Irvine and the National Park Service working at the National Science Foundation Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory (NSF SSCZO). This comes as a surprise to those of us who see dense, verdant forests as a sign...

Pages