Patty Guerra

Wildfire is reshaping the forests of California's Sierra Nevada and affecting the water those forests supply to downstream users.

A paper published in Hydrology and Earth System Science reports that the effect of wildfire on potential runoff from the state's main water-supply watersheds has increased in the period 1985-2023, most markedly since 2019.

UC Merced is no stranger to solar panels. The campus, built to be sustainable from the beginning, is home to thousands of them, and they provide a good chunk of the electricity that powers the university.

But one very special panel was recently installed on the top of the Science and Engineering 2 Building.

The panel was crafted by Tandem PV, a Fremont company that uses perovskite-silicon tandem technology to make high-efficiency solar panels that integrate into existing manufacturing supply chains.

This is part of a series of profiles of new UC Merced Bobcats enrolled for the fall 2026 semester.

Anthony Savala Alvarez comes to UC Merced this fall with several accomplishments under his belt: He graduated high school with a grade point average of 4.1, earned the California Seal of Biliteracy, and took part in several sports, including varsity soccer, cross country and track and field.

Step into Ross Greer’s lab — gingerly, because there’s a makeshift racetrack on the floor — and you will see multiple projects aimed at making autonomous vehicles smarter and safer.

And these projects are getting global recognition.

Hundreds of University of California technology professionals will converge on UC Merced's campus this week for a conference aimed at sharing ideas, highlighting best practices and collaborating across the system.

But UC Tech, as it's called, is also an opportunity for the host campus to show off the community around it, and UC Merced is leaning into that with events that will bring attendees downtown into stores and cafes.

Key points:

• Researchers found that heat waves are a critical enabler and driver of wildfire-burned areas across the western U.S.

• The findings suggest that heat waves contribute not only to increased flammability, but to longer burn periods and increased lightning.

• Burned area in forests during the summer more than doubled between 2001 and 2024. Most of this recent increase - 64 percent - occurred during heat waves.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine calls for the U.S. Department of Energy to develop innovative technology and infrastructure at the intersection of the nation's water and energy systems.

The country's energy and water systems are profoundly interconnected, and disruptions can cascade rapidly across both, says the report from the Committee on Enabling DOE Regional Energy-Water Technology Pilots.