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Research

Rising Simultaneous Fire Weather Threatens International Firefighting Efforts

February 18, 2026

Depicted is a scene of burned-out trees and ash in the wake of the Caldor Fire.
High-risk conditions for fires are increasingly happening across countries at the same time, making wildfires even more challenging to tackle, new research reveals. Scientists from UC Merced and the University of East Anglia found this synchronized extreme fire weather — characterized by...
A grant from the Henry Luce Foundation is already making an impact on the Merced area through humanities community-engaged scholarship.

Humanities Grad Students Drive Community Engagement, Public Understanding Through Research

Since his undergraduate days in Environmental Studies at Humboldt State University, Ivan Soto has aspired to produce research with a positive impact on the public — not just to benefit the...

Biochemistry Researcher Named to NIH Review Board

Professor Andy LiWang has accepted an appointment to the National Institutes of Health’s Macromolecular Structure and Function B (MSFB) Study Section Center for Scientific Review. Over his...
Professor Strubbe stands in front of a research poster.

Physicist Researching Materials Chemistry to Build Better Solar Cells

Durable, reliable, affordable solar power is the future of energy, and UC Merced computational physicist Professor David Strubbe is diving into a new area of science to answer the call. Strubbe...
ShiPu Wang's curated exhibition titled “Chiura Obata: An American Modern” on display at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento.

First Sacramento, then the Smithsonian for Arts Faculty Member’s Curation

What is art’s place in turbulent times? How does an immigrant live and thrive in a host country with laws that render one’s existence alien? And how does one continue to see beauty even...
Stands of brown, dead trees throughout Sierra Nevada forests

Multiyear Drought Caused Massive Forest Die-off in Sierra Nevada

The most extreme drought event in hundreds of years caused a catastrophic die-off of the Sierra Nevada’s mature trees in 2015-2016. A study published today in Nature Geoscience details how...

Movements Can Lead to Lasting Change, New Sociology Book Demonstrates

A social movement’s cause can be as diverse as the people who spur it in the first place —examples abound, from community organizations initiating struggles for neighborhood sidewalks and...
pine tree seedlings in a greenhouse

Sierra Seedlings Illustrate Effects of Climate Change on Next Generation of Forests

Climate change is bad news for forests, and a new study by UC Merced Professor Emily Moran demonstrates one aspect of that news. Higher summer temperatures hurt tree seedlings’ growth and...

Computational Chemist Improving Modeling for Complex Processes

Professor Hrant Hratchian, with the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology in the School of Natural Sciences, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER award, the 24th recipient...

Field Station Planned for UC Merced's Vernal Pools and Grassland Reserve

At the northern tip of the UC Merced campus, an unremarkable aluminum gate leads into a field that extends, seemingly, into infinity. Perpendicular to the gate, the LeGrand Canal, drawn from Lake...

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