Environmental Research

Multinational Effort to Map South Africa’s Biodiversity from the Air Earns NASA Award

October 15, 2025

BioSCape, a multinational research project co-led by UC Merced, the University at Buffalo and the University of Cape Town, which monitored Earth’s biodiversity from the air, has received a Group Achievement Award as part of the 2024-25 NASA Honor Awards. A new documentary also showcases...

Sierra Nevada Water Researchers Awarded $2M Grant

Researchers with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI) at the University of California, Merced, have received a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to expand on a prototype...

Researchers Unveil Innovative Solar Cooling Project

Using solar thermal energy to power an air conditioning unit can be difficult and expensive. But a team of researchers at the University of California, Merced, have added a game-changing advance to...

Impact: Engineers Building Sustainable Solutions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thl53DGexFk UC Merced graduate student Brandi McKuin recently returned from a trip to India, where she spent time studying the energy needs of rural villages that have...

Research Gets to the Root of California's Water Cycle

In a remarkable outdoor laboratory in the Sierra, a team of researchers led by UC Merced hydrologist Roger Bales is using sensors to gather a mother lode of data to greatly improve ecological...

Study: Climate Change to Increase Yellowstone Wildfires Dramatically

An increase in wildfires due to climate change could rapidly and profoundly alter the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, according to a new study authored by environmental engineering and geography...

Cap-and-Trade Trumps Carbon Taxes for Clean Tech Adoption

A cap-and-trade system is more likely than a carbon tax system to trigger the adoption of clean energy technologies, according to a study by Professor Yihsu Chen at the University of California, ...

Global Sustainable Engineering Network to Move to UC Merced

The University of California, Merced, will become the new headquarters of Engineers for a Sustainable World effective July 1, the university announced today. Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW)...

Study: Urban Rail Reduces Carbon Monoxide Air Pollution

The opening of a major urban rail system in Taiwan caused a meaningful reduction in air pollution, according to a forthcoming study by two professors at the University of California, Merced. “Despite...

UC Merced Scientist Awarded Fulbright Fellowship

Andrea Joyce, an assistant research scientist with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI) at the University of California, Merced, was recently awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study beneficial...