Environment

Every faculty member has to set up their lab when they join a new campus. But Professor Danielle Edwards literally built a key component of hers from the ground up.

Students will soon be able to apply for a unique opportunity to go to Morocco — when travel is safe again — to study the environmental and socioeconomic aspects of the production of argan oil.

The oil is commonly seen in cosmetics in the United States, but it is also edible and in high demand around the world. Moroccan women are the main producers and they undertake long hours of manual labor to extract the oil from the nuts of the indigenous argan trees that live in a UNESCO-protected biosphere.

UC Merced’s largest research grant in its 16-year history aims to improve agricultural and environmental water resilience. The new $10 million collaborative focuses on water banking, trading and improvements in data-driven management practices to arrive at a climate-resilient future in water-scarce regions of the United States.

As the number of cases of COVID-19 surge again globally as a result of the delta variant, world leaders are searching for ways to make more informed decisions on how to contain the pandemic. Researchers at UC Merced and Michigan State University (MSU) know what can provide early signs of the virus and help with critical decisions — sewage.

UC Merced’s superb sustainability and environmental reputation continue to be a powerhouse, with The Princeton Review placing the campus among only three UCs on its ‘2022 Green Honor Roll.’ The campus also remains on the Times Higher Education Young University Rankings at No.3.

The over the counter, “safe,” organic-compliant insecticides people purchase at home-improvement stores could be causing a problem that goes far beyond the vegetable garden or farm field — antibiotic resistance.

It has been 186 years since Charles Darwin collected the samples of the Galapagos Islands species that led to his explanation of how the diversity of life on Earth has evolved and forever changed the way we understand the world.

During his five-week stay on the islands, Darwin collected dozens of samples, including one small, light brownish-grey snake on Floreana Island. That sample, now at the Natural History Museum in London, was the basis for describing a new species, the Galapagos (Floreana) racer.

With a new $20 million federal grant, UC Merced becomes part of a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of agriculture’s biggest challenges related to water management, climate change and integration of new technology into farming.

California is known for its beautiful coastline, where the Pacific Ocean meets sandy beaches and rugged cliffs. While many scientists have studied the land or the ocean independently, less is known about the nexus of the two.

With COVID-19 protections lifting, many people are eager to travel again. Among them is graduate student Elena Bischak, who is planning multiple trips to Haiti in the coming months to study improving sanitation and human waste processing in the Caribbean country.