Energy & Environment

UC Merced Aerial Picture
New Consortium Seeks to Expose Students to a Galaxy of Opportunities
November 13, 2018
Imagine exploring the cores of stars to understand — and ultimately control — the type of fusion that’s taking place. High-energy density (HED) science is the study of properties and behavior of matter and radiation in extreme temperatures... Read More
UC Merced Secures First Platinum Certifications in Labs, Offices
October 29, 2018
It’s the crown jewel of sustainability — a platinum certification signifying all the steps to making a space sustainable have been met. For UC Merced, platinum certification had eluded the Green Labs and Green Offices programs. That... Read More
Students Take the Lead in LEED Certification of SE1 Building
October 8, 2018
As UC Merced continues to lead the way in sustainability on university campuses, a new wrinkle has been added to the process of certifying buildings. Recently, the Science and Engineering 1 (SE1) building achieved gold certification under... Read More
Emergence, Extinction of Massive Ancient Shark to be Explored with NSF Grant
October 1, 2018
Forty million years after dinosaurs went extinct, one of the largest predators that ever prowled Earth’s oceans emerged, feeding the imaginations of modern scientists and the nightmares of modern movie audiences. Megalodon — the name means... Read More
Professor’s Novel Mercury-Mapping Project Wins State Grant
September 19, 2018
Civil and environmental engineering Professor Erin Hestir’s proposal for a unique system of mapping mercury in the waters of the San Francisco Delta has won her and her team of collaborators a $1.7 million grant from the California... Read More
UC Climate-Change Research is One Focus of Global Summit, New Reports
September 11, 2018
California aims to lead the nation — and the globe — in climate change research, policy and action — in large part through climate-focused research conducted at University of California campuses and labs. Some of that research, including... Read More
CAREER Award Will Help Professor Predict How Species Respond to Climate Change
August 10, 2018
Paleoecology Professor Jessica Blois recently became the campus’s 19th recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award. The NSF describes as the CAREER as its “most prestigious... Read More
Campus Earns Kudos for Sustainability Best Practices
July 10, 2018
UC Merced demonstrated that it’s living up to its reputation for being “green from the ground up” by winning five awards — more than any other University of California campus — in the 14th annual Higher Education Energy Efficiency and... Read More
Merced River Helps Explain How Soils Capture and Store Planet-Warming Carbon
July 2, 2018
Soils are carbon sinks, storing more planet-warming carbon than the atmosphere and all animal and plant life combined. But they can also release massive amounts of stored carbon into the atmosphere. Given carbon’s central role in climate... Read More
Following a Devastating Pandemic, California’s Sea Stars are Evolving
June 19, 2018
In 2012, Environmental Systems graduate student Lauren Schiebelhut was collecting DNA from ochre sea stars living along the Northern California coast — part of an effort to study genetic diversity in various marine species that serve as... Read More