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Earth Systems Science

September 11, 2025

Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
When Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe arrived at UC Merced in 2009, she and her husband, Professor Teamrat Ghezzehei, were leaving major research institutions to join a brand-new campus in California’s Central Valley. It was a leap of faith — one made easier by the Sierra Nevada Research...
This year's Hellman Fellows: Adeyemi Adebiyi, Qian Wang and Meredith Van Natta
As the Hellman Fellowships celebrate their 30th year, three more researchers, one from each of UC Merced’s schools, have joined the prestigious ranks of recipients. Electrical engineering...
A sign posted on a tree in Eastern Europe warns of active land mines.
More than 100 million land mines remain buried around the world, posing a threat in approximately 70 countries and territories, and killing or injuring about 5,000 people, most of them civilians,...
Hurricane Bud left some surprising changes in its wake, UC Merced researchers found.
With careful planning and a little luck, researchers found a surprising upside to hurricanes after a Category 4 storm disrupted their expedition off the coast of Mexico. The team was able to...
Two UC Merced graduate students wearing blue
Two UC Merced graduate students and an alum from the School of Natural Sciences were recently awarded fellowships from the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship...
The Central Valley is a major contributor to a growing dust problem, in large part because of agriculture, researchers say.
An average of more than 1 million acres of idled farmland a year is a significant contributor to a growing dust problem in California that has implications for millions of residents’ health and...
Sugar pine cones
Sugar pines are the tallest pine species in the world, and they only grow along the West Coast of North America. They are a valued source of timber with cones as large as an adult’s forearm....
A group of researchers at UC Merced has found that climate change means it takes about three months longer for California to recover from drought, and probably longer. “Climate change has...
The latest installment of North State Public Radio’s Blue Dot podcast focuses on the UC Natural Reserve System and the national parks and features a segment about the UC Merced ¿field...
As climate warms, the snowline, or rain/snow transition elevation, moves to higher elevations, placing some historically snow-dominated sites in the rain zone. Photo by Roger Bales at Crane Flat in Yosemite National Park
A new study co-authored by UC Merced researchers assesses the effect of a warming climate in pushing the elevation of snow to rain higher during a storm, increasing runoff and the risk of flooding...

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