CITRIS

Half a world away from California’s Central Valley is a place with similar climate but an unparalleled diversity of plants, marine animals and ecosystems. From deserts to shrubland to montane forests, the diversity of life in South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) is the subject of NASA’s first biodiversity campaign led by UC Merced Professor Erin Hestir.

After the COVID-19 pandemic struck, scientists across the globe realized they could track the virus by testing sewage water. School of Engineering Professor Colleen Naughton pioneered a dashboard to host the global findings.

One way Naughton finds who and where wastewater research is being performed? Twitter.

Many students don’t think about internships until later in college, but at UC Merced undergraduate students can take advantage of hands-on training with faculty before even starting regular classes. Through the FACTS Bridge Program, first-year and transfer students get a head start on research and much more.

Covering the 4,000 miles of California’s water canals could save billions of gallons of water and generate renewable power for the state every year, according to a new study.

Two new projects designed and led by UC Merced researchers will address challenges facing many Californians — wildfire recovery and agricultural labor — but will also have global reach.

One of the biggest challenges in managing crops, especially in large fields, is knowing how much water each section of a field needs. Determining that accurately is a cumbersome process that requires people to hand-pluck individual leaves from plants, put them in pressure chambers and apply air pressure to see when water begins to leak from the leaf stems.

That kind of testing is time consuming and means that farmers can only reach so many areas of a field each day and cannot test as frequently as they should.

Imagine pouring farm-fresh milk down the drain or crushing perfectly good eggs that could feed families. This has been the reality for farmers during the COVID-19 epidemic.

Bird species usually are counted twice a year by wildlife surveyors: once during the breeding season and again during the Christmas Bird Count .

New technology, however, is increasing the accuracy of bird population studies. A team of UC Merced researchers is developing a model to recognize bird calls.

Researchers at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute at the University of California have launched a new public-private pilot initiative to bring telehealth services to underserved rural residents in Merced County.

Everyone will have opportunities to learn about collaborative research at the intersections of COVID-19 and topics related to the environment, health and equity through a series of online conference sessions this fall.