Professor Carolin Frank will collect $1.6 million over the next four years to continue researching the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live in pine needles and to work with the Sierra Foothill Charter School, which she helped found.
The discovery of a new, rare species of monkey flower by Professor Jason Sexton provides clues as to how new species are born.
Sexton, who researches the monkey flowers that grow wild throughout California, and are especially prolific in the Sierra Nevada, conducted this work with researchers Kathleen G. Ferris and John H. Willis, both from Duke University.
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.
Shy in high school, Rachel Fang didn’t want to follow the same pattern as a UC Merced student.