College and K-12 Faculty Strengthen Collaboration for Central Valley Students
More than two dozen educators from kindergarten through college converged at UC Merced to discuss the challenges they're facing and the opportunities ahead.
More than two dozen educators from kindergarten through college converged at UC Merced to discuss the challenges they're facing and the opportunities ahead.
Wildfires are growing more frequent and severe across the western United States, and California's Sierra Nevada is ground zero. Decades of fire suppression have left these forests overstocked and vulnerable to catastrophic fires, drought and pest outbreaks.
Beyond destroying homes and infrastructure, high-severity wildfires release massive amounts of carbon, degrade water quality, erode soils, reduce timber supply and fill the air with hazardous smoke that threatens public health.
UC Merced has long been a place where students can thrive.
Now the university has been recognized for its commitment to increase the abundance of native and other pollinators.
The campus has become an affiliate of the Bee Campus USA program, joining other cities and campuses across the country in a united effort to improve their landscapes for pollinators.
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 the project’s impressive results.
In the United States, 20 percent of the population is Latino. By 2050, it’s expected that one in three people will identify as Latino. But less than 7 percent of doctors come from a similar background.
Dr. Michael Galvez, a board-certified pediatric hand surgeon at Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera County, is on a mission to change that number. In 2022, he cofounded National Latino Physician Day, which is aimed at raising awareness and is part of an effort to increase the minority health care workforce.
Fifteen years ago, UC Merced was designated as a Hispanic-serving institution. And though recent developments at the federal government have left what that designation means in limbo, the mission of serving the university’s largest demographic has remained unchanged.
More than 53 percent of undergraduate students are Hispanic, and 71 percent of enrolled students identify as first-generation (a student whose parents did not complete four-year college degrees).
Nearly half of the world’s worst wildfire disasters have occurred in just the past decade, new research from UC Merced’s Fire Resilience Center shows.
Storing carbon in forests is an essential, nature-based buffer against climate change. Yet forests packed with too many trees increase the threat of severe wildfires, which are becoming all too common in warmer, drier conditions.
A team of UC Merced and collaborating researchers evaluated the tradeoffs between two seemingly opposing scenarios:
Trees are critical because they pull carbon dioxide from the air and store it in their trunks, preventing carbon from adding to greenhouse effects that trap heat and warm the atmosphere.
An almond orchard in Parlier provides a look into the future of farming.
Researchers at UC Merced and the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources installed an irrigation system powered by artificial intelligence to deliver the precise amount of water needed and measure the results.
A new partnership focused on a popular snack nut will offer exciting opportunities for students, research potential for faculty and the latest technology for farmers.
Representatives of the University of California and the Almond Board of California signed a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, at the UC Merced campus on Sept. 10. The MOU calls for the entities to work together over the next five years in such vital areas as automation, sustainability and new almond varieties.
