Patty Guerra

UC Merced campus photo of sign

Multinational Effort to Map South Africa’s Biodiversity from the Air Earns NASA Award

BioSCape, a multinational research project co-led by UC Merced, the University at Buffalo and the University of Cape Town, which monitored Earth’s biodiversity from the air, has received a Group Achievement Award as part of the 2024-25 NASA Honor Awards.

A new documentary also showcases the project’s impressive results.

Need for More Latino Doctors Highlighted at UC Merced Event

In the United States, 20 percent of the population is Latino. By 2050, it’s expected that one in three people will identify as Latino. But less than 7 percent of doctors come from a similar background.

Dr. Michael Galvez, a board-certified pediatric hand surgeon at Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera County, is on a mission to change that number. In 2022, he cofounded National Latino Physician Day, which is aimed at raising awareness and is part of an effort to increase the minority health care workforce.

UC Merced Celebrates 15 Years as a Hispanic-serving Institution

Fifteen years ago, UC Merced was designated as a Hispanic-serving institution. And though recent developments at the federal government have left what that designation means in limbo, the mission of serving the university’s largest demographic has remained unchanged.

More than 53 percent of undergraduate students are Hispanic, and 71 percent of enrolled students identify as first-generation (a student whose parents did not complete four-year college degrees).

Wildfire Disasters Surged in the Past 10 Years, Study Shows

Nearly half of the world’s worst wildfire disasters have occurred in just the past decade, new research from UC Merced’s Fire Resilience Center shows.

Forest Carbon: Store it or Burn it? Actually, Both is Best

Storing carbon in forests is an essential, nature-based buffer against climate change. Yet forests packed with too many trees increase the threat of severe wildfires, which are becoming all too common in warmer, drier conditions.

A team of UC Merced and collaborating researchers evaluated the tradeoffs between two seemingly opposing scenarios:

  • Trees are critical because they pull carbon dioxide from the air and store it in their trunks, preventing carbon from adding to greenhouse effects that trap heat and warm the atmosphere.

AI-Powered Irrigation System Offers Opportunities for Communications as well as Farming

An almond orchard in Parlier provides a look into the future of farming.

Researchers at UC Merced and the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources installed an irrigation system powered by artificial intelligence to deliver the precise amount of water needed and measure the results.

UC Merced Celebrates 20 Years of Firsts

Twenty years to the day after students first crossed Scholars Bridge into the campus, UC Merced celebrated its milestone birthday with a party, a drone show, and the university’s first NCAA Division II sporting event.

Damaging Lightning-Caused Wildfires Likely to Increase in a Few Years, Researchers Find

Lightning from thunderstorms rolling through Central California on Sept. 2 ignited numerous wildfires, including several large fires in the Sierra Nevada foothills that had burned more than 19 square miles by Wednesday morning. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services recorded more than 9,000 lightning strikes in a single day.

Lightning is a major source of wildfire ignition in the western United States every summer.

Boosting AI and Science: NSF Invests $600K in OpenDOTA Project at UC Merced

The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded nearly $600,000 to support a groundbreaking project at UC Merced aimed at accelerating the future of artificial intelligence and scientific research.