Environmental Research

Sustainability being a campus hallmark, it’s no surprise the UC Merced campus takes Earth Day very seriously, even though the events planned are fun.

Each April 22, people around the country mark Earth Day, which began in 1970 and is seen by many as the start of the modern environmental movement.

As everyone knows, space is limited on the UC Merced campus.

But with a little money and a lot of persistence, Engineers for a Sustainable World has found a way to carve out a little room for a community garden.

The theory that temperature limits how far up in the mountains trees can grow looks like it’s true, but not in the way researchers had expected.

Working with Professor Lara Kueppers, UC Merced postdoctoral researcher Andrew Moyes’ examination of how warmer temperatures affect alpine-area trees has been published in the international journal Oecologia.

Researchers at the university in your backyard are delving into issues of great importance to the San Joaquin Valley, the state, the nation and the world.

You can learn more about their work at the eighth annual UC Merced Research Week, from March 4 through 8, on campus and in downtown Merced.

Research at UC Merced encompasses cancer; diabetes; climate change; water, soil and air quality; water availability; nanotechnology and robotics; history; mapping; archaeology; human genes; and much, much more.

Graduate student Sharon Patris likes spending time at a lake in the middle of the forest on an uninhabited island in the western Pacific.

The marine lake named Ongiem’l Tketau and informally known as Jellyfish Lake, is home to the golden jellyfish, a species Patris studies as part of her work with UC Merced School of Natural Sciences Professor Michael Dawson in Palau.

UC Merced School of Engineering Professor Elliott Campbell has co-authored a paper showing that mountaintop removal mining will dramatically accelerate the regional effects of global warming by turning natural carbon sinks into sources of carbon emissions, some within the next 15 years.

Sometimes, what goes on behind the scenes is as important as what happens in full view – especially when it comes to UC Merced’s pledge to uphold and develop new sustainable practices.

MERCED, Calif. — UC Merced honored the Pacific Gas and Electric Company with the School of Engineering’s inaugural Vanguard Award today with a special ceremony to thank the company for all it has done for engineering students.

“PG&E is honored to receive the inaugural Vanguard Award from UC Merced’s School of Engineering,” said PG&E President Chris Johns. “More than that, we’re proud to contribute to the foundations of this university — a diverse and environmentally minded campus that’s shaping the leaders and innovators of tomorrow’s energy workforce.”

As UC Merced’s new energy manager, it’s Varick Erickson’s job to watch every kilowatt hour used on campus and identify ways to save them.

“It’s a lot like rummaging around in the couch and looking for change,” Erickson said.

Except the spare kilowatt hours he finds could save the campus hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Professor Roland Winston knows a jellyfish that can help people see more clearly.

But it’s not the kind found in the ocean. It’s one that’s about to earn Winston and UC Merced a U.S. patent, and is the solution to a problem that vexed many famous scientists.