Environment

Compelling storytelling is vital to ensuring the action needed to secure a habitable planet for future generations, according to an increasing amount of research.

UC Merced is recruiting students now to become the next environmental storytellers.

Students who are interested in creatively conveying the urgency of environmental issues can make that mission the focus of their studies when the new environmental humanities (EH) major begins at UC Merced in fall 2024.

UC Merced researchers will tackle climate changes in multiple ways through more than $4 million in grants recently awarded from within the university.

The Office of Research and Economic Development (ORED) issued nine awards totaling $4,096,197 for proposals that range from studying methane gas emissions to making electronic vehicles more accessible to people.

Professor Martha Conklin started her career at UC Merced at the Castle Research Facility, and it began with a frightening surprise.

“I had a baby rattlesnake in my office,” she said. “The whole building was snake-infested before UC Merced moved in. But it's a small thing — there were a lot of things to work out back then.”

Four UC Merced researchers will share in the new California Climate Action Seed Grants and Matching Grants, which are the result of an historic partnership between the University of California and the state of California.

The University today announced it is awarding over $80 million in climate action grants to spur implementation of solutions that directly address state climate priorities.

For UC Merced students working to maintain the campus's Experimental Smart Farm this summer, the day's tasks can range from the high-tech to the grubby.

Kat Corti and Austin Mercado, both fourth-year students come fall, are spending their summer tending the farm and preparing it for what's next. Also working at the farm this summer is Adam Mercado, Austin's twin brother.

Being able to accurately predict how the climate will change in the future is one of the most important quests of our lifetimes. A key to better prediction is the fundamental understanding of how particles in the atmosphere are connected to climate and climate change. One way to do that is to better understand the interactions between desert dust particles and radiation — from the sun and the Earth's surface.

UC Merced 's resident expert on the nightmarishly massive megalodon will play a role in Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, a celebration of the toothy creatures at the top of the oceanic food chain.

Professor Sora Kim will be featured in a show called “Jaws vs. The Meg,” in which she and other experts discuss and compare two of the largest predators to ever roam the oceans.

Incoming Bobcat Benji Thier already knows what he wants to do with his college degree: Save the planet.

“I am planning to study Environmental Systems Science because I did some environmental work in high school and I think it is a very important and relevant field,” he said. “I believe we need more people in this field because we need to save our planet.”

Thier, a Tiburon native and graduate of Redwood High School, visited the campus on Bobcat Day and was impressed with how much environmentally related research is being conducted.

UC Merced doctoral student Luis Rubén González Marquez was awarded the American Sociological Association Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (ASA DDRIG), funded by the National Science Foundation, for his research on renewable energy conflicts in Central America.

The grant started May 15 and helps support his summer research, and the coming fall and spring semesters.

Megalodon was the biggest shark in the world — 50 feet long or more — and one of the largest fish ever to exist. It roamed most of the world’s oceans from 23 million to 3.6 million years ago.

A new study by paleoecology Professor Sora Kim and colleagues shows the shark’s body temperature was considerably higher than previously thought and provides clues to the species’ demise.