Sierra Nevada Research Institute

It is said that rainforests are the Earth’s lungs, capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, building it into lush vegetation and releasing oxygen and water back into the air.

Wildfire seasons are intensifying because of climate change. That means reforestation efforts will increase, making it important for scientists and resource managers to understand how to make sure restorations will thrive in the future.

There’s a whole world of activity beneath your feet. Soil holds a large proportion of Earth's biodiversity, and is the place where organisms interact with each other and with plants, serving important functions for their ecosystems.

Change is everywhere at UC Merced this year, from hiring a new chancellor to the completion of a major campus expansion. The Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI), an early hallmark of research excellence at UC Merced, is also making a change: After a 13-year tenure, Faculty Director Professor Roger Bales has stepped down and Professor Tom Harmon is taking the reins.

About 4.5 billion people around the globe do not have access to adequate sanitation, and what they do have — typically pit latrines and lagoons — are responsible for widespread illnesses and a portion of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.

UC Merced Professor Rebecca Ryals and a group of colleagues have a solution that not only increases safety, sustainability and jobs, but reduces greenhouse gas emissions and waste-borne illnesses while producing an effective fertilizer for agriculture.

UC Merced celebrates Research Week from March 2-6 to highlight the ground-breaking work taking place at the University of California’s newest campus.

The annual week of events, sponsored by the Office of Research and Economic Development , is an opportunity for all to see the innovative projects emerging from UC Merced.

Even a little forest management significantly increases water runoff in the Central Sierra Nevada and other semi-arid regions, while drier forests need more extensive treatments, according to a new study published recently in the journal Ecohydrology.

“The result is more runoff to downstream water users,” said UC Merced Professor Martha Conklin , who led the study.

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.

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.