TED Audiences get the Dirt on Soil and Climate Change from Berhe
Soil is one of the foundations of life on Earth and could be an important part of the solution to climate change, if only we can stop treating it like dirt.
Soil is one of the foundations of life on Earth and could be an important part of the solution to climate change, if only we can stop treating it like dirt.
The American media lends too much weight to people who dismiss climate change, giving them legitimacy they haven’t earned, posing serious danger to efforts aimed at raising public awareness and motivating rapid action, a new study shows.
While it is not uncommon for media outlets to interview climate change scientists and climate change deniers in the same interviews, the effort to offer a 360-degree view is creating a false balance between trained climate scientists and those who lack scientific training, such as politicians.
Durable, reliable, affordable solar power is the future of energy, and UC Merced computational physicist Professor David Strubbe is diving into a new area of science to answer the call.
Strubbe’s new project aims to understand why two organic materials — that are cheaper and easier to produce than the prevalent silicon-based products — don’t last as long, and explore how to improve them.
The most extreme drought event in hundreds of years caused a catastrophic die-off of the Sierra Nevada’s mature trees in 2015-2016.
A study published today in Nature Geoscience details how UC Merced Professor Roger Bales and his colleague Professor Michael Goulden from UC Irvine tracked the progress of the devastation caused by years of dry conditions combined with abnormally warm temperatures.
The most extreme drought event in hundreds of years caused a catastrophic die-off of the Sierra Nevada’s mature trees in 2015-2016.
A study published today in Nature Geoscience details how UC Merced Professor Roger Bales and his colleague Professor Michael Goulden from UC Irvine tracked the progress of the devastation caused by years of dry conditions combined with abnormally warm temperatures.
Climate change is bad news for forests, and a new study by UC Merced Professor Emily Moran demonstrates one aspect of that news.
Higher summer temperatures hurt tree seedlings’ growth and survival.
But whether that is entirely bad depends on the degree of change in the number of young trees.
At the northern tip of the UC Merced campus, an unremarkable aluminum gate leads into a field that extends, seemingly, into infinity. Perpendicular to the gate, the LeGrand Canal, drawn from Lake Yosemite, snakes around campus into the emerald pastures, through farm rows and almond orchards across the highway. It’s the rainy season and bulbous cumuli foreground the rippled line of the Sierra Nevada that slices across the open sky.
Three big UC Solar projects are poised to be the next big breakthroughs in low-cost, accessible sustainable commercial and residential energy in California and far beyond.
Researchers are building working models of one project developed through a grant from the California Energy Commission for a solar unit that can provide electricity and heat to commercial and residential buildings.
A nine-year experiment by a UC Merced Department of Life and Environmental Sciences professor and his colleagues is illuminating the importance of soil carbon in maintaining healthy and functioning ecosystems because of its influence on the microbial communities that live in soil.
These communities’ health can help researchers understand the effects of climate change.
At UC Merced, research and education are inextricably intertwined – in the lab and in the classroom. Professors continually refine and advance their teaching methods and curriculum to convey knowledge, and to build the critical thinking skills that last throughout a lifetime.
Supporting these aims, the California Education Learning Lab has awarded a collaborative grant to UC Merced, CSU Bakersfield and Bakersfield College for “Improving Equity, Accessibility and Outcomes for STEM Gateway Courses.”
