Water is a delicate balancing act in California. When the scales tip in the wrong direction, the consequences can have national effects. Nobody knows this better than UC Water Co-Director Joshua Viers.
When scientists at UC Merced seek to better understand California’s biodiversity, they turn to cutting-edge genomics. They also turn to their neighbors.
As the climate warms, sources of the water so critical to life everywhere on Earth are drying up.
By the end of this century, communities dependent on freshwater from mountain-fed rivers could see significantly less water, according to a new climate model recently released by University of California researchers.
For example, people who get freshwater from the Kings River could see a 26 percent decrease in river flow.
Extreme changes in seasonality in the Sierra Nevada can have lasting impacts on meadow health and could mean less water and carbon storage in high elevation wetlands, according to research conducted at UC Merced.
Researchers with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI) at the University of California, Merced, have received a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to expand on a prototype system that uses a network of wireless sensors to track snowpack depth, water storage in soil, stream flow, and water use by vegetation in the Sierra — information that is key to efficient usage of such a scarce resource.
Subalpine meadows are among the Sierra Nevada’s most enchantingly picturesque landscapes.
Kestrels are a fixture among the birds on the 
Shakespeare might have been right when he wrote “what’s past is prologue,” but not when it comes to modeling climate change.
When people get near California’s giant sequoias, they usually look up.