If tree growth and seed production can’t compensate for the impacts of climate change, California’s trees will face difficulty filling in gaps left by wildfire and reaching areas that are becoming climatically suitable, studies now show.
California is the largest and the most diverse agricultural economy in the nation with revenue exceeding $50 billion — larger than the combined agricultural economies of the other 10 western states.
California’s Central Valley is on the front lines of climate change.
Professor Ajay Gopinathan has been elected the next vice-chair of the Division of Biological Physics (DBIO) of the American Physical Society (APS), the world's largest organization of physicists. He will serve as vice-chair in March 2023, then move into the positions of chair-elect, chair and past chair, each for one year.
UC Merced has earned the distinction of ranking No. 20 among the world's Rising Young Universities, according to the just-released Nature Index 2021 Young Universities — the only U.S. institution to place in the top 25.
Among the leading 150 Young Universities, UC Merced ranks No. 80, and for Leading 50 Young Universities in Life Sciences, it ranks No. 43. These rankings are a jump from 2019, when the campus placed No. 92 among Top 175 Young Universities.
Finding creative solutions to lessen humans’ impact on the environment and reduce reliance on fossil fuels is a core tenet of the renewable energy field, something engineering Professor Sarah Kurtz specializes in.
Even the tiniest organisms have a surprisingly huge effect on life in the oceans, eating up the last bits of oxygen in certain areas, preventing larger marine life from surviving there, a new study shows.
Students at UC Merced and those who might someday become Bobcats are the focus of FARMERS, Professor Rudy M. Ortiz’s training program funded again for $1 million by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
FARMERS stands for Facilitating Agriculture-Related Mentoring for Emerging Research Scholars, and the goal is to train 15 undergraduate and 10 graduate students a year over the next four years to conduct in-depth research into agriculture-related subjects.
An upside of the increase in forest fires in the West is that they reduce the amount of fuel available for other burns. That might provide a buffering effect on western fires for the next few decades, but the threat of climate-driven forest fires is not diminishing, a new study shows.
Without substantial changes in how people interact with wildfire in the western U.S., climate change will increasingly put people in harm’s way as fires become larger and more severe.
Just because there has been rain lately doesn’t mean California is drought-free.
