Earth Systems Science

Study Indicates Human-caused Dust Events are Linked to Fallow Farmland

June 2, 2025

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 the state’s climate. A new study published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment...

Graduate programs in the natural sciences are among the many UC Merced graduate programs included in the newest U.S. News rankings of Best Graduate Schools.

Grad Programs Make U.S. News Rankings Debut

For the first time, UC Merced’s doctoral programs in the sciences have been ranked among the best in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2019 edition of Best Graduate...

Five Students Score Big at SACNAS Conference

Five UC Merced students brought home awards for their research at this year’s Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) Diversity in STEM conference...

Study: Climate Change, Drought Threaten Giant Sequoias

A new study published online in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences finds that the giant sequoia, a fixture of California’s Sierra Nevada forests for the past 2.6 million years...

Two men pose with an oversized check on stage at a check presentation ceremony for the PG&E award to SNRI.

PG&E Funds Critical SNRI Work on Sierra Forest Resiliency

A team of UC Merced researchers was recently awarded $100,000 from Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) to identify ways to improve drought resilience and reduce the risk of wildfire in Sierra...

Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe stands in front of a wall wearing a light blue lab coat and holding a tray of cake tins filled with soil samples.

Earth Scientist Targets Sexual Harassment With NSF Grant

Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is a biogeochemist who studies the impact of climate change on Sierra Nevada soils. She’s also active in efforts to recruit and retain women in science,...

A man in a blue jacket, blue jeans and sunglasses stands in a snowy forest repairing an electronic sensor device.

Massive Sensor Network Helps Scientists Monitor Mountain Water Resources

Scientists from the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, UC Merced, UC Berkeley and the USDA Agricultural Research Service have designed the first ever wireless sensor network (WSN) capable of...

Study: Critical Sierra Meadows Being Overtaken by Forest

Subalpine meadows are among the Sierra Nevada’s most enchantingly picturesque landscapes. These sparsely wooded, grassy expanses are home to plants and animals found nowhere else, and they play an...

Study: Wildfires, Climate Change Could Make Sierra a Polluter

What if nature were to become a polluter, discharging millions of tons of planet-warming carbon into the atmosphere in much the same way as diesel-fueled trucks or coal-fired power plants? This...

Community Members Aid Cutting-Edge Research in ‘BioBlitz’ Project

When scientists at UC Merced seek to better understand California’s biodiversity, they turn to cutting-edge genomics. They also turn to their neighbors. On a sunny Saturday in April, scientists...