Climate Change

Making an entire campus sustainable takes a lot of planning, education and work.

But those efforts are what earned two of UC Merced’s sustainability leaders systemwide recognition.

http://www.ucmerced.edu/sites/www/files/news/images/120601miltonchennpi.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 254px; " title="Milton Chen, an international authority on mass media and education, speaks to participants of the National Parks Institute Executive Leadership Program in April.

More than two dozen executives from around the world who are responsible for conservation of some of the most treasured places on earth are coming to California for help in making sure there’s a future for national parks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06VNtISfSycClimate change is leading to higher temperatures around the world, forcing plants, trees and animals to adapt to new conditions or relocate, often to higher elevations. But the process is gradual, and the effects of climate warming can usually only be observed over the course of years and decades.

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.

An increase in wildfires due to climate change could rapidly and profoundly alter the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, according to a new study authored by environmental engineering and geography Professor Anthony Westerling of the University of California, Merced.

A cap-and-trade system is more likely than a carbon tax system to trigger the adoption of clean energy technologies, according to a study by Professor Yihsu Chen at the University of California, Merced.

The study — coauthored by Chung-Li Tseng of the University of New South Wales in Australia and published this month in The Energy Journal, a quarterly journal of the International Association for Energy Economics — also found that the volatile pricing of a cap-and-trade system could lead to earlier adoption of clean technology by firms looking to hedge against carbon cost risks.