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Research

How Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Fuel Record-Breaking Wildfires in 2020? New Study Explains

May 5, 2025

Photo depicts a firefighter and flames from the 2020 Apple fire in California.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted many facets of life, including health care, schools and the work environment. A new study by UC Merced researchers shows evidence that the pandemic also fueled an elevated number of wildfires in the United States that year. How? With schools...
Professor Anna Nierenberg

NSF Award Supports Young Faculty Member’s Research into Building Blocks of the Universe

Cosmology Professor Anna Nierenberg has received a CAREER award for a project that will vastly improve the study of the nature of dark matter in the universe. She is the 42nd researcher from UC...
UC Merced sociology graduate students

Sociology Graduate Program Debuts Strongly in U.S. News Rankings

Only 10 years after it began, the Ph.D. program in UC Merced’s Department of Sociology made an impressive debut in U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings of graduate-level...
An avocet

For the First Time, All Avian Evolutionary Relationships Revealed Through Collaboration

Professor Emily Jane McTavish and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have mapped the evolution of every known bird species. They created a complete evolutionary tree of bird species by...
Two Zachary Silva photos

UC Merced Student’s Photography Joins Exhibit of Young Valley Talent

Zachary Silva’s camera escorts us to extraordinary places. We see UC Merced from high above, the land around the campus warped by a fisheye lens. We look straight down a pole at a fluttering U....
Flames, the beach and the ocean are depicted in a scene from the January 2025 Palisades fire.

Researchers Look Ahead to Fire Season 2025

Pictures accompanying Professor John Abatzoglou's presentation on the 2025 fire season were blurry. That was intentional, he said, because so much about wildfire is unpredictable. "There...
Students Zeyi Moo, back left, and Yaying Wang, right, work with Professor Xuan Zhang, center, on her Alzheimer's-related research. Photo courtesy of Kate Marsh.

Link Between Dementia and Air Pollution Drives Research Collaboration

California’s Central Valley, famous for producing much of the food Americans eat, is also infamous for its inferior air quality and its high rates of poverty, housing insecurity and at-risk...
Sameen Yunus, left, and her faculty advisor, physics Professor David Strubbe

Graduate Student Earns Fellowship to Study Fusion at Livermore Lab

UC Merced physics graduate student Sameen Yunus has been awarded a prestigious fellowship allowing her to spend the next three years working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, conducting...
As Yosemite Likes It UC Merced performers

Into the Woods: Nature Works its Magic in Shakespeare in Yosemite

If Arden, the sprawling, wild forest in William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” were in the United States instead of the Bard’s imagination, it would certainly be a national...
Where's My Coffee Cup? film subject

Film Documents the Struggle of Growing Old Behind Bars

A UC Merced professor entered the bleak world of a fading, 64-year-old man in a Virginia state prison to illustrate the challenges of being elderly and incarcerated. “Where’s My Coffee...

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