Key Points:
Elephants function as a keystone species, producing large amounts of nutrient-rich dung that sustain diverse dung beetle populations and support wider ecosystem health.
A 15-year field experiment showed that removing elephants leads to sharp declines in dung beetle...
Earth Systems Science
Soil is one of the foundations of life on Earth and could be an important part of the solution to climate change, if only we can stop treating it like dirt.
That’s the message Professor...
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...
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...
A nine-year experiment by a UC Merced Department of Life and Environmental Sciences professor and his colleagues is illuminating the importance of soil carbon in maintaining healthy and functioning...
Most people wouldn’t think sharks can teach researchers about the planet’s distant past and its more immediate future.
UC Merced paleoecologist Professor Sora Kim isn’t most...
Graduate student Vicky Espinoza shared the plight of some San Joaquin Valley families with a wide audience this spring in her role as a Next Generation delegate to this year’s Chicago Council...
A rigorous, first-of-its-kind global study provides new insights into the natural history of soil biodiversity and shows that changes in soil pH during soil development is a major driver of most of...
A $4.6 million grant to UCs Merced and Irvine will help researchers develop new tools and methods for better managing the state’s forests, shrub lands and grasslands.
The Innovation Center...
UC Merced researchers have evidence that California’s forests are especially vulnerable to multi-year droughts because their health depends on water stored several feet below ground.
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