Environmental Engineering

Working to map every square inch, UC Merced master’s student Andrew Zumkehr found there are 111 million acres of abandoned farmland in the United States.

That’s a lot of space for growing biofuels that could replace between 5 percent and 30 percent of the United States' primary energy or liquid fuel demands, he said.

MERCED, Calif. — UC Merced honored the Pacific Gas and Electric Company with the School of Engineering’s inaugural Vanguard Award today with a special ceremony to thank the company for all it has done for engineering students.

“PG&E is honored to receive the inaugural Vanguard Award from UC Merced’s School of Engineering,” said PG&E President Chris Johns. “More than that, we’re proud to contribute to the foundations of this university — a diverse and environmentally minded campus that’s shaping the leaders and innovators of tomorrow’s energy workforce.”

Shrubs blooming in a specific area of Africa might hold the answers to feeding millions of people on that continent, and possibly others.

From the white, sugary sands of Hawaii to the white, powdery slopes of the Sierra Nevada, Natural Sciences Professor Stephen Hart has his eye on climate change.

MERCED, Calif. — Researchers at UC Merced are taking an important step toward a statewide water-monitoring system by installing wireless sensors across the American River basin.

The system, which is also being used in the Sierra Nevada, is designed to give continuous information about how much water is available to users, and could go live online at the beginning of 2013.

There’s a reason the UC Merced plasma lab is isolated behind a locking fence near the entrance to campus.

There’s some serious heat being produced down there.

The burning of sugarcane fields prior to harvest for ethanol production can create air pollution that detracts from the biofuel’s overall sustainability, according to research published recently by a team of researchers led by scientists at the University of California, Merced.

Runoff from the Sierra Nevada, a critical source of California’s water supply, could be enhanced by thinning forests to historical conditions, according to a report from a team of scientists with the University of California, Merced, UC Berkeley and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Using solar thermal energy to power an air conditioning unit can be difficult and expensive. But a team of researchers at the University of California, Merced, have added a game-changing advance to the process that could make it much simpler, less costly and more effective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thl53DGexFk

UC Merced graduate student Brandi McKuin recently returned from a trip to India, where she spent time studying the energy needs of rural villages that have been told by their government that they’ll never get electricity.