Earth Systems Science

University of California President Janet Napolitano announced this week the 2016 recipients of the President’s Research Catalyst Awards, and professors from UC Merced are contributors to three of the four projects.

Many species of trees and plants have begun migrating as the climate changes, but some, like California’s giant coastal redwoods, can’t just pick up and move.

The proximity of the ocean, which has unique effects on temperature and climate, makes it challenging to predict what the redwoods’ habitat will look like in the future. By using California’s historical climate data, UC Merced researchers have developed near-term predictions about the coastal habitat for the archetypal redwoods.

The trees will need to move north to keep up with the shifting climate.

While many young women her age are th

Note: This story originally ran in the Fall 2015 issue of UC Merced Magazine.

By Joel Patenaude

California, long envied by the rest of the country for its climate, beauty and natural resources, is four years into a drought and in the midst of a water crisis a century in the making.

With Gov. Jerry Brown imposing mandatory water restrictions on residents, the state’s staggeringly complex water woes have taken the sheen off at least some of the California dream.

Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the dirt under their feet.

UC Merced Professor Carolin Frank is helping figure out how a certain bacteria helps promote healthy tree growth by studying the bacteria’s genome sequence.

Research, te

Three UC Merced undergraduates are the recipients of a new fellowship under University of California President Ja

Researching oceanic oil spills can be difficult when you work at a landlocked university like UC Merced.

But thanks to a large consortium of researchers from around the country, that’s exactly what Professor Wei-Chun Chin is doing in the hopes of understanding the deeper, long-term effects of spills to better deal with them.

Several UC Merced faculty members will play important roles in a new UC systemwide effort to study the ecological effects of climate change across varied ecosystems.