University of California, Merced - Patty Guerra

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

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 18:39:20 +0000

October 15, 2025

Professor Erin Hestir co-led the BioSCape project. Photo by Otto Whitehead, Fishwater Films

BioSCape, a multinational research project co-led by ��ý, 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.

The honor is given to NASA-funded groups that contribute substantially to the agency’s mission to Earth science, including climate, the sun, the solar system, and the larger universe. The BioSCape team was credited for “outstanding achievements in advancing the understanding of ecosystem structure, function, and composition and their change over time.”

BioSCape was NASA’s first biodiversity-focused campaign. Researchers used a combination of aircraft equipped with remote sensing technology and field work to collect data about South Africa’s Greater Cape Floristic Region, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.

Co-led by Proessor Erin Hestir of ��ý, Adam Wilson of the University of Buffalo and Jasper Slingsby of the University of Cape Town, the BioSCape team deployed advanced remote sensing technologies on aircraft throughout 2023.

Two NASA aircraft and one South African aircraft flew missions over the cape to collect ultraviolet, visible, thermal and other images, which can provide insights about everything from the surface temperatures of the sea to the amount of nitrogen in a forest canopy. Meanwhile, scientists gathered additional data on the ground, such as recording bird and insect calls and extracting environmental DNA from water samples.

“To understand life in the universe, we have to start with life on Earth,” said Hestir, a civil and environmental engineering professor. “BioSCape is about seeing life on Earth in a completely new way, from genes to leaves to landscapes. BioSCape is a team effort to see life in all its dimensions from the air, the ground and space. This award is a reminder that discovery is something we do together.”

The team is now synthesizing its data and writing studies. Since the beginning of the project, the team has published over 40 studies and scientific presentations in various journals. The data is publicly available online on the NASA website . All of the data collected is open access, meaning anyone can see and use it.

“The 283 people named on this award represent a wide range of contributions, including students who spent time in the field collecting data, engineers who built the instruments, pilots who spent weeks flying the research lines, professors who designed study components, postdocs who analyzed the observations, and data scientists who processed and archived everything,” said Wilson, associate professor of geography in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. “This award is a wonderful milestone that honors the dedication and persistence of everyone involved.”

The researchers hope BioSCape has laid the foundation for monitoring biodiversity from even higher up — that is, from space. NASA uses some of the tools used in the project to study other planets and stars outside our solar system.

“By gathering this kind of data from a plane, we learn more about how we could do the same thing from satellites,” Wilson said.

BioSCape is also the subject of a new documentary, “The Spectrum of Life,” which premiered at the 2025 Buffalo International Film Festival this month and is expected to show in Merced early next year.

The 36-minute film was directed by the founders of Fishwater Films, South African ecologists and filmmakers Otto Whitehead and Jeremy Shelton, who accompanied the BioSCape team members on the ground and in the air as they conducted their research.

“Otto and Jeremy synthesized our complex science into a compelling narrative. They crafted a much larger and more captivating story about how this project resonates with the human experience and global efforts to understand our place in the universe,” Wilson said. “The film really puts BioSCape in the broader context of the human experience and our connection to the fabric of life.”

“What Otto and Jeremy achieved goes far beyond documenting a field campaign,” Hestir said. “They captured the wonder and purpose behind the science, showing that exploring life on Earth is inseparable from exploring who we are and where we fit in the vast story of the universe.”

The film premiered Oct. 10 as part of “BIFF Shorts: Climate Stories + Earth Works,” which features films about “how we value, measure, monitor and conserve ecosystems around the world; as well as what's at stake on a cultural and personal level.”

Need for More Latino Doctors Highlighted at ��ý Event

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 19:34:19 +0000

By Patty Guerra, ��ý

October 13, 2025

Michael Galvez is a board-certified pediatric hand surgeon.

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.

Galvez brought his effort to ��ý, where he spoke on the appointed day, Oct. 1.

“It’s not just about patient-by-patient care but the whole health care system,” Galvez said. “We need to have respect for culture and language and lived experiences.”

The lack of minority doctors means more than just a potential language barrier. Galvez pointed to significant health care barriers, inequalities and poorer outcomes in the Latino/Latina/Latinx patient population.

“The lack of Latino physician representation provides additional barriers to culturally and linguistically concordant care, leading to worse health care outcomes,” the National Latino Physician Day website says.

His own route into medicine was untraditional, Galvez said.

“My parents are from Lima, Peru. We spoke Spanish at home,” he said. And he wasn’t a stellar student in high school.

“I had a 2.8 GPA. I had A’s in PE,” he said. But he attended a community college, where he got to experience working in a lab. “I saw the work I was doing was valuable,” he said.

Galvez finished his undergraduate years at UC-Berkeley, then attended medical school at Stanford University. He completed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute research fellowship, then finished his residency in plastic and reconstructive surgery at Stanford, where he was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society.

He completed training in combined hand and microvascular surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle and completed a second fellowship in pediatric upper extremity surgery at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas.

“Of the 100 surgeons where I trained, only three were Latino or Latina,” Galvez said. “I was one of the only doctors who spoke Spanish at Stanford. Those numbers are terrible.”

Those statistics helped spur him to start the National Latino Physician Day effort.

“Really, it started as a tweet,” Galvez said. “That first year (2022), it got 14.1 million views.”

Now, more than 100 hospitals and medical institutions are partnering to advance the project.

“This year, we have over 25 events across the country,” Galvez said. “Last week, we had 400 people in an auditorium at UC Riverside.”

He said programs like the SJV Prime+ medical education pathway at ��ý will help.

“The mission that ��ý has is working toward that,” Galvez said. “To help all communities and understand that language and culture are helpful for this population.”

Students attending the presentation asked Galvez what brought him to the Central Valley and what his typical day is like. He said the lack of specialists available in the area was one attraction.

“When I was in the Bay Area I would see patients from the Central Valley, and I knew it was hard for them to get there,” he said.

There was also a personal connection.

“My wife was a big factor,” he said. A clinical lab scientist, she attended ��ý and her family went to Fresno State.

His days are occupied by his work as a doctor, his advocacy and his family.

“Essentially, the life I chose is pretty hectic,” Galvez said. “Yesterday, I saw 25 fractures.”

Outside of that, he spends time with his wife and three children and works on making headway in his passion project.

“I don’t golf,” Galvez said. “I do this.”

��ý Celebrates 15 Years as a Hispanic-serving Institution

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 19:23:12 +0000

By Patty Guerra, ��ý

October 8, 2025

Students often express their culture at events such as commencement.

Fifteen years ago, ��ý 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).

Merced is one of five University of California campuses designated an HSI. The others are Riverside, Santa Cruz, Irvine and Santa Barbara.

Tonantzín Oseguera, vice chancellor for student affairs and engagement at ��ý, said there are a lot of misconceptions about what being an HSI means.

“If you look at the history of how HSIs came to be, for schools that had high enrollments of Hispanic or Latino students, it provided better infrastructure,” she said. “Things like better labs and programs, aimed at helping underrepresented students, that are open to everyone.”

It’s not, she said, direct aid to any particular group of students. In California, that kind of aid from a public university would be illegal, because Prop. 209 prohibits preferential treatment “based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.”

What an HSI does not do is exclude other populations or communities.

��ý has developed programs, including Summer Bridge, and math and writing classes that are available to the entire student population.

“A rising tide lifts all boats,” Oseguera pointed out.

Oseguera spoke about attending her first ��ý commencement ceremony. She came from a school in Southern California that was predominantly Latino, but here she saw so many graduates honoring their heritage with cowboy hats and boots.

“It’s really unique to the Valley,” she said.

And at the annual Bridge Crossing event, she said, the deejay played mainstream hits from the 1980s and ’90s, but when “La Chona” came over the speakers, “that’s when people went wild, at 9 o’clock in the morning.”

The university takes care to represent and respect the multitude of cultures represented on its campus.

“For many people of color, this is their entry point to higher education,” Oseguera said. “They came here to go to college.”

The university has been recognized for its efforts. In 2023, ��ý received a Hispanic-Serving Institution Impact Award from Angeles Investors, a national group of angel investors focused on finding and funding Hispanic and Latino ventures. In 2021, ��ý was one of only 10 institutions nationwide to be recognized with the prestigious Seal of Excelencia by Excelencia in Education, a national organization dedicated to advancing Latino student success in higher education. That award was recertified last year.

��ý has several organizations that reflect and support the Latino culture. They include:

La Familia de ��ý, a Latinx-serving professional organization that aims to facilitate personal growth and betterment. The group provides resources, support and access to an "endless network of tios and tias" for all members.
Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) has a mission to change lives by empowering the Hispanic community to impact the world through STEM awareness, access, support and development. SHPE provides members with academic assistance, professional development and access to a global network of Hispanic engineers, scientists and mathematicians.
El Club de Español, which creates a space on campus for Spanish speakers and non-Spanish speakers alike to learn more about Español and each other's culture.Weekly meetings are open to the entire Bobcat community — students, staff and faculty. Club President César Chávez Guzmán said in addition to helping students learn more about the Spanish language and Spanish-speaking countries, the club connects them with other students who share their interest in learning more about the culture through activities, music and games, where they can meet new people and practice their Spanish. “Seeing the number of Hispanic/Latinx students on campus made me feel welcomed and excited about the possibility of becoming a Bobcat,” said the third-year Spanish major from Santa Maria. “El Club de Español had caught my eye, and I became a member during my first year. It made me feel welcomed and excited to come to ��ý; it felt like I had found a second home.”
Hermanas Unidas is aimed at being a welcoming and inclusive space for hermanas, or sisters, to be their authentic selves through three pillars of community service, academics and social networking.
Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) fosters the development of scientists from underrepresented minorities. ��ý's SACNAS chapter puts on workshops throughout the year on topics including traveling abroad, resume building and various professional careers.
Hispanics in Healthcare is dedicated to fostering a supportive and united community for students with an interest in medicine who identify with Hispanic heritage. “We aim to support Hispanic students with every aspect relating to achieving their goals of becoming medical professionals,” said Zinedine Valdez-Delgado, a third-year biological sciences and public health double major from Stockton who is the club president.
Ballet Folklorico de ��ýpreserves the bright, colorful and rich culture of Mexican dance. The club caters to both beginners and more advanced dancers, preparing them for live performances at events on campus and in the community. Members perform dances from regions all over Mexico, including Jalisco, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Veracruz and Baja California Norte.
El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlá, or MEChA, is a student organization that promotes advocacy for marginalized communities while creating a safe space for social, political, and cultural ideas/opinions. The organization was built on a Chicano-based movement that has been developed to help amplify the voices of all marginalized communities.

Although the federal government recently announced it would eliminate $350 million in grants earmarked for Hispanic-serving institutions, along with cuts to programs serving other minority groups, that doesn’t mean the university’s dedication to that population has wavered.

“We will continue to serve the demographic of students who come to us,” Oseguera said. “It’s not about celebrating a week or a holiday. It’s about the fabric of who our students are and being responsive to that in culturally appropriate ways.”

Wildfire Disasters Surged in the Past 10 Years, Study Shows

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 19:09:35 +0000

October 2, 2025

The Los Angeles fires in January caused an estimated $65 billion in damages. Photo by Cal Fire

Nearly half of the world’s worst wildfire disasters have occurred in just the past decade, new research from ��ý’s Fire Resilience Center shows.

A study published Thursday in the journal Science reveals that 43 percent of catastrophic wildfire disasters struck in the past 10 years. Researchers analyzing 44 years of disaster data found that economic disasters increased more than four times and fatal disasters causing 10 or more deaths tripled since 1980, with particularly sharp increases in recent years.

“The rise in wildfire disasters isn’t just a perception, it’s reality,” said co-author Professor Crystal Kolden, director of the Fire Resilience Center. “For decades, wildfires primarily impacted largely unpopulated areas, but contemporary catastrophic fires are killing more people and destroying more homes and infrastructure.”

"We're witnessing a fundamental shift in how wildfires impact society," said lead author Professor Calum Cunningham from the University of Tasmania's Fire Centre.

The study examined wildfire events that killed 10 or more people or ranked among the 200 most economically damaging. This escalation has occurred despite massive increases in firefighting investment. Federal fire suppression spending in the United States increased 3.6-fold to $4.4 billion by 2021, yet disasters continued to accelerate.

“A majority of global fire disasters occurred with hellacious fire weather that overwhelmed fire suppression efforts,” said co-author Professor John Abatzaglou, a climatologist at ��ý. “Moreover, such extreme fire weather conditions are becoming more likely, increasing the odds of disastrous fires. While we have seen this play out in catastrophic fires in California, the same factors have played out across the globe.”

Damage peaked catastrophically in 2018 at five times the 44-year average, totalling $28.3 billion globally. Half of all 43 fire events that caused $1 billion or more in damage since 1980 occurred in the last decade alone.

The researchers found disasters occur where three factors converge: intense daily fire activity, populated areas and valuable infrastructure. Mediterranean-type forests found in southern Europe, California, southern Australia and Chile, along with temperate conifer forests in places like western North America, experience disasters at rates far exceeding their land area.

Critically, half of all disasters struck during the most extreme weather conditions on record: the worst 0.1 percent of days that occur only once every few years. These extreme "disaster weather" conditions have become dramatically more common, with severe fire weather increasing more than two-fold, atmospheric dryness increasing 2.4 times, and severe droughts increasing 3.4 times since 1980.

"We're dealing with fires under weather conditions fundamentally more dangerous than previous generations experienced," said co-author Professor David Bowman from the University of Tasmania.

The research team's risk model successfully forecast major disasters that occurred after the study period, including the devastating Los Angeles fires in January 2025, which caused an estimated $65 billion in damages, likely the costliest fire disaster in history. Chile's deadly Las Tablas Fire in 2024, which killed 135 people, also struck in an area the model identified as extremely high risk.

"This provides a roadmap for where the next catastrophic disasters are most likely to occur," Bowman said. "But climate change has fundamentally altered the game. We need to adapt how we live with fire, not just fight it."

The true impact extends far beyond recorded direct losses. While Indonesia's 2015 fires caused $1.2 billion in direct damage, the World Bank estimated total economic costs at $19.9 billion. Smoke from landscape fires kills an estimated 1.5 million people annually worldwide, yet these deaths are absent from disaster databases.

Already, the current fire season has seen activity above normal in both Northern and Southern California, according to Cal Fire. High grass fuel loads and drying conditions, particularly in Southern California, have increased the risk of large fires across various fuel types, including timber and coastal grasses.

The study calls for urgent and comprehensive adaptation strategies that combine Indigenous fire management techniques with modern approaches, including fuel reduction, building standards and evacuation planning.

“The warming climate further exacerbates the risk of fire disasters already escalated through increased population in or near fire-prone areas and fuel accumulation in adjacent lands,” Abatzoglou said.

Forest Carbon: Store it or Burn it? Actually, Both is Best

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 19:57:27 +0000

September 25, 2025

The study looked at carbon storage and wildfire risk in the 2,000-square-mile American River basin. Photo by Brie Anne Coleman, PCWA

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 ��ý 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.
The increasing severity and danger of wildfires call for the thinning of overly dense forests.

The researchers found that the best approach is a combination of both.

In a paper published in Ecological Modeling, they report that forests can provide wildfire safety and be effective carbon collectors if trees are selectively harvested and turned into long-lived wood products.

“Given the increasing risks of high-severity wildfire in our overstocked forests, and rapid growth of shrubs and small trees, it is becoming more important to periodically burn or remove small-diameter material to maintain wildfire security,” said co-author Safeeq Khan, a professor of watershed hydrology at ��ý. “Our research provides information on the benefits of these management actions.”

The study, published in Ecological Modeling, looked at carbon storage and wildfire risk in the 2,000-square-mile American River basin. The basin has endured eight wildfires of more than 2,500 acres in the past quarter-century. Many areas are choked with small trees, the result of a century of fire suppression and unsustainable logging.

Using a dynamic ecosystem model, researchers tested how different management strategies — mechanical thinning and prescribed burning — affect the balance of carbon absorbed and released. They found that repeating these treatments every five to 20 years helps reduce fire danger, but prescribed burning alone often leads forests to emit more carbon than they capture.

That’s because while reducing wildfire severity cuts emissions, large-scale burning releases even more carbon. Forests only become reliable carbon sinks when thinning is paired with storing the harvested wood in long-lived products such as lumber.

Photo by Roger Bales

Life and environmental sciences Professor Emeritus Stephen C. Hart, another co-author, said he was surprised at the models’ suggestion that widespread application of prescribed fire would increase carbon emissions despite reducing wildfire severity.

“Only through the use of ecosystem simulation models, such as the one used in this study, can the complex interactions among climate, wildfire, forest management and the carbon cycle be fully elucidated,” he said.

The findings highlight a key lesson: Forests can be both safer from fire and effective carbon banks, but only with active, balanced management.

“There is strong interest across California in increasing fuels treatments to reduce projected wildfire severity and protect built infrastructure, with huge co-benefits to water security, erosion reduction, hydropower, air quality, recreation, drought protection, habitat and other ecosystem services,” said co-author Roger Bales, professor emeritus of engineering at ��ý.

The researchers concluded that the Sierra Nevada can remain a long-term carbon sink if land managers thin small trees, store carbon from harvested biomass in durable wood products, and use prescribed fire strategically.

AI-Powered Irrigation System Offers Opportunities for Communications as well as Farming

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 17:55:24 +0000

By Patty Guerra, ��ý

September 24, 2025

The project includes one test bed served by an AI system and one watered traditionally. Photo by Farms to Incubators

An almond orchard in Parlier provides a look into the future of farming.

Researchers at ��ý 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.

Led by computer science and engineering Professor Wan Du, the project was funded through the Fall 2023 Climate Action Seed Funds. It included a goal that’s almost as important as the work itself: spreading the word about the system and its potential.

The project includes two test beds: one irrigated via traditional methods and one served by the AI-powered system. Du is working alongside civil and environmental engineering Professor Safeeq Khan, a water resource management and soil science expert who built the soil model for the project, and computer science and engineering Professor Stefano Carpin, who developed the AI model.

“We will compare how much water each test bed will use,” Du said, “and then compare the production and result of these two fields.”

The system measures how much moisture is in the soil, then the potential for movement of water through a tree and eventually out the leaves. The data is uploaded to the internet.

“We have sprinklers under almost every tree so we can control them,” Du said. An algorithm processes the data and determines whether to open a sprinkler and how long it should run.

“We want to save as much water as we can,” Du said. “Saving water will reduce the cost to growers, and we can save the natural resource for the next generation.”

The system will be operational next spring, when the trees start to flower.

An artificial intelligence system powers an irrigation project at an almond orchard in Parlier.

A group of students working with the nonprofit From Farms to Incubators.is sharing the news about the AI system. Amy Wu, founder and chief content director, developed a program to teach students how to effectively communicate agriculture technology.

Starting last September, the students learned digital storytelling, communicating science and documenting the work of AI.

“We also have a guest speaker series where they have been able to connect with rock stars in ag tech,” Wu said.

Wu came to ��ý and met with the professors, then went to the farm at the Kearney Ag Research and Extension Center in Parlier to see the system and document the work.

“We created a menteeship program where students are learning about journalism and communications and also ag tech,” Wu said. “We trained them on interviewing and writing, to document the journey of the AI-generated crop irrigation system.”

They created a package of stories, photos and videos aimed at a broad audience from consumers interested in innovation to farmers seeking help tackling climate change.

Two of the students were undergraduates from ��ý and a third was a recent graduate from California State University, Monterey Bay. All brought their own experiences and technical knowledge to the project. They developed new skills in writing and editing and connected with speakers representing women in agricultural technology.

Anvi Kudaraya, a ��ý computer science and engineering undergraduate student from Pleasanton, said she learned the system architecture to get a deeper understanding of the sensors in the field, the AI irrigation model and data visualization. She wrote Python scripts to process real sensor data, which she said taught her “how to handle messy, real-world datasets and prepare them for machine learning models.”

Beyond the technical side, Kudayara said, she learned the value of collaboration and communication in research.

“I learned how important it is to connect technology to a broader purpose, especially when the work can impact something as essential as water use in agriculture.”

She said the project pushed her to step into areas outside her comfort zone, writing and revising the project article for publication and visiting the farm to document the work through photos.

“I came away with a stronger appreciation for how AI in agriculture is not only a technical challenge, but also a human one, requiring communication, community engagement and clear storytelling to make the technology meaningful and scalable.”

For a pilot program, Wu said, “I thought it went very, very well. We went into this not knowing what to expect, but we wanted to expose young people to the possibilities of communicating food and farming.”

Savio Jabbo, a computer science and engineering major from San Diego, said being able to see the cutting-edge research and experience the real world applications is amazing to say the least.

“Usually the work that goes into these projects goes unnoticed,” Jabbo said. “But when you see the impact that it has even on such a small scale, it feels like the whole world should know about it.”

��ý Celebrates 20 Years of Firsts

Anonymous — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 04:23:55 +0000

By Patty Guerra, ��ý

September 5, 2025

20th birthday celebrations will continue all year.

Twenty years to the day after students first crossed Scholars Bridge into the campus, ��ý celebrated its milestone birthday with a party, a drone show, and the university’s first NCAA Division II sporting event.

A large crowd of community members, many wearing T-shirts and waving rally towels that heralded the new era, joined students, faculty and staff as the ��ý women’s soccer team took the field against Simon Fraser University of British Columbia. A nearly full moon rose in the late-summer sky for the first competition since the university entered Division II.

A pregame birthday celebration included food trucks, face painting, a deejay and performances by ��ý’s drum line and dance team. The evening culminated with a drone show themed “Fiat Lux” after the University of California’s motto (Latin for “Let there be light”).

Since its first year, the campus has graduated more than 21,000 alumni, who work in sectors as varied as medicine and media, engineering and government.

“��ý began with vision, courage, and a deep belief in the power of education to transform lives,” Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz said. “We are still building. And today, we honor our past, celebrate our success, and look ahead to a future filled with promise.”

At halftime, the university announced a major gift from one of its most dedicated supporters and partners. The Campos Foundation donated $5 million for the development of a new state-of-the-art campus facility dedicated to track and field. The university shared plans to name the new track Campos Field in recognition of the foundation’s contribution.

“This is an honor,” said Marco Campos, founder and executive chairman of the Colorado-based Campos Companies. “This campus is unusual.” He said he made the connection to ��ý though one of his employees, an alumnus of the school.

��ý originated with a 1988 decision by the UC Board of Regents to begin planning for a new university in the San Joaquin Valley to meet long-term enrollment demand. After a process that reviewed locations throughout the valley, the Merced site was chosen in 1995.

The university initially opened in offices at the former Castle Air Force Base in Atwater. The campus opened to 875 students in the fall of 2005 and has since grown to offer more than 60 undergraduate programs and 18 graduate programs to a student population of roughly 9,000.

��ý has climbed in national rankings and impact. Earlier this year, ��ý achieved R1 status from Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, a recognition given to the top echelon of research institutions in the nation. It is the only R1 university in the Central Valley of California one of only 187 accredited doctoral-granting universities in the United States — out of nearly 4,000 — that feature “very high research spending and doctorate production.” Last fall, the Wall Street Journal ranked ��ý No. 1 for social mobility, which described how well colleges and universities attract, retain and help students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds complete their degrees and graduate into promising career.

��ý has been on the cutting edge of sustainability in higher education since its inception and was the first public research university certified as carbon-neutral. Every campus building is certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The 20^th birthday celebration will continue with events throughout the school year.

Two special exhibitions, 20 Years of ��ý Art and Architecture at La Galería, and Foundation to Future: 20 Years of the ��ý Library, showcase the creativity and scholarship that have shaped the university. Alumni events are planned in San Francisco and Los Angeles, demonstrating ��ý’s impact around the state as well as in the Central Valley.

Damaging Lightning-Caused Wildfires Likely to Increase in a Few Years, Researchers Find

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 19:20:35 +0000

By Patty Guerra, ��ý, and Shawn Vestal, Washington State University

September 3, 2025

Lightning ignited than 600 fires in California in 2020.

Lightning from thunderstorms rolling through Central California on Sept. 2 ignited numerous wildfires, including several large fires in the Sierra Nevada foothills that had burned more than 19 square miles by Wednesday morning. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services recorded more than 9,000 lightning strikes in a single day.

Lightning is a major source of wildfire ignition in the western United States every summer.

In August 2020, more than 15,000 lightning strikes were recorded in Central and Northern California over a few days, igniting more than 600 fires and burning more than 2 million acres. More than 20 people died in the fires. Wildfires ignited by cloud-to-ground lightning during the summer are responsible for more than two-thirds of the total acreage burned yearly across the West.

��ý researchers warn that climate change is likely to bring an increase in both cloud-to-ground lightning and the risk of lightning-caused wildfires.

In a paper published last week in Earth’s Future, lead author Dmitri Kalashnikov, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow affiliated with the university’s Sierra Nevada Research Institute, said his projections show an increase in cloud-to-ground lightning over the next three decades or so, particularly in the interior northwestern United States and northern Rocky Mountains.

Kalashnikov led the project, which he began while completing his Ph.D. at Washington State University and finished while a postdoctoral fellow at ��ý. Co-authors include researchers from ��ý, Colorado State University, Portland State University and other institutions.

“Lightning is a big wild card when it comes to the outcome of fire seasons here in California and other parts of the Western U.S.,” said co-author John Abatzoglou, a climatologist and management of complex systems professor at ��ý. “Some of the biggest fire seasons — like 2020 — really got going due to widespread lightning outbreaks in summer.”

Dry lightning, or lightning that strikes outside of rainstorms, is particularly dangerous.

“The Northwest is emerging, in this study as well as in others, as the region where fire- and fire-related hazards are likely to increase substantially more than in other parts of the western U.S.,” said Deepti Singh, an associate professor in the School of the Environment at WSU Vancouver and co-author of the paper.

The study underscores the importance of managing forests to mitigate wildfire risk and to prepare at-risk communities for fires as the planet continues to warm and wildfires grow in size and severity, the researchers said. Current global climate models are unable to directly simulate future lightning because they rely on geographic resolutions too coarse to capture the conditions that create it.

The study used a machine-learning technique called “convolutional neural networks" to project future lightning over the western U.S. The technique is used to predict lightning based on the meteorological conditions that are simulated by climate models, allowing researchers to project the number of cloud-to-ground lightning days in the future.

The machine-learning models developed in this study zoom in to create the most detailed picture yet of future lightning patterns and lightning-caused fire risk across the West.

“There are already a lot of studies that say future wildfire activity will increase in the Western U.S. and that’s without even considering the potential of increased lightning, which we’re showing is going to happen in many areas,” Kalashnikov said. “Our study makes projections of increased lightning and fire risk for the relatively near future — 2031 to 2060 — whereas other studies tend to make projections for later in the 21st century. This should carry additional relevance for near-term planning and policy decisions.”

Researchers also project an increased likelihood of cloud-to-ground lightning occurring on days with meteorological conditions favorable for wildfires, increasing the risk of lightning-ignited wildfires. These findings are important for understanding changes in lightning-ignited wildfire risk, and for planning wildland fire management and suppression needs in a warming climate.

“There has been very little research devoted to how lightning may change in future climates,” Abatzoglou said. “A few lightning studies have generally pointed to increases in lightning, but these approaches have not been well codified for the western United States, where we get a lot of dry lightning. This study fills a void in this literature.”

An increase in lightning days does not result in a 1-to-1 increase in fire risk, however, because fire risk depends on other variables, such as temperature, rainfall, wind and vegetation dryness. Across the Rockies, for example, the number of days with a high likelihood of lightning-caused fires is expected to grow by three or more by the mid-21st century, though the overall increase in lightning days is larger.

On the other hand, parts of Utah and Arizona showed a reduction in lightning days — but an increase in days of potential lightning-caused fires, due to higher wildfire risk in general.

The Southwest overall showed fewer projected increases in lightning days — and even declines in some areas — but the region is still expected to see a rise in days with a likelihood of wildfires ignited by lightning.

��ý Agricultural Experiment Station Adds Fire, Insect and Soil Researchers

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 16:17:17 +0000

By Patty Guerra, ��ý

September 2, 2025

Work at the AES advances innovation, fosters sustainability and builds climate resilience.

Three professors are joining ��ý’s Agricultural Experiment Station this fall, bringing more expertise and resources to the 3-year-old research center.

Management of complex systems Professor Crystal Kolden will focus on the intersection of agriculture and wildfire, public health Professor Andrea Joyce will work on sustainable, environmentally friendly agricultural insect management and life and environmental science Professor Josh Garcia will examine plant-soil-microbe interactions.

��ý and UC Santa Cruz received AES designations in 2022, the first UC campuses so named in 50 years. An AES is a scientific research center at a land-grant university that explores challenges and develops improvements to agriculture by working with farmers, ranchers, suppliers, processors and others. Work at the AES advances innovation, fosters sustainability and builds climate resilience to meet the needs of the San Joaquin Valley and beyond.

Kolden is a nationally recognized authority on the story of wildfire and the director of the ��ý Fire Resilience Center. Her research focuses on characterizing and understanding wildfire intersections with the human-environment system through geospatial, temporal and mixed-methods approaches.

"Joining the AES will complement my existing USDA NIFA (National Institute of Food and Agriculture) funding for conducting research on fire in working landscapes with tribal partners and farmers,” Kolden said. “I'm excited to expand on our nascent efforts to reduce wildfire disasters with strategic use of crops and cultural fire."

Joyce is an entomologist who works with insects that impact agriculture and public health, and works with beneficial insects to control pests. She is affiliated with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute.

“I am excited to continue working with local farmers and to promote the use of beneficial insects and alternatives to insecticides,” Joyce said.

Garcia is new to the university. A National Science Foundation and UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Davis, he researched how regenerative management practices such as compost applications and crop rotations influence the soil food web and biogeochemical processes in traditional field-based agriculture and urban agriculture.

“I chose to come to ��ý as faculty for the exciting opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and to get involved with expanding ��ý's work in sustainable agriculture with the new AES,” Garcia said.

He will pursue applied research and outreach in the areas of soil health, regenerative agriculture and waste reduction and looks forward to working with his colleagues to understand how types of compost made from municipal waste change the soil and what the implications of that might be.

“I'm also looking forward to finding new and innovative ways to outreach our findings and science-based information to diverse stakeholders here in California,” Garcia said.

The trio joins the four founding inaugural AES faculty: mechanical engineering Professor Reza Ehsani, civil and environmental engineering professors Safeeq Khan and Josué Medellìn-Azuara and life and environmental sciences Professor Rebecca Ryals.

Professor Joshua Viers, executive associate dean for the AES, said, “This is an exceptional group of faculty and we are very pleased to have such broad representation from across our schools. It speaks to the continued investment ��ý is making to address issues of importance to the San Joaquin Valley and beyond.”

The station is aimed at building on agricultural research that has been going on at ��ý since the university's inception, including at its Experimental Smart Farm. The 45-acre property, roughly a half mile south of campus, grows various crops and serves as an outdoor lab for student and faculty researchers.

Boosting AI and Science: NSF Invests $600K in OpenDOTA Project at ��ý

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 00:29:58 +0000

By Patty Guerra, ��ý

August 12, 2025

The project is aimed at accelerating the future of artificial intelligence and scientific research

The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded nearly $600,000 to support a groundbreaking project at ��ý aimed at accelerating the future of artificial intelligence and scientific research.

Professor Xiaoyi Lu from the electrical engineering and computer science group in the School of Engineering and his team have created the Open Source Data Offloading and Transfer Architecture (OpenDOTA) project. The work focuses on improving how computers equipped with specialized hardware called Data Processing Units (DPUs) move data efficiently. By making data transfer faster, OpenDOTA allows the main computer system to concentrate on important tasks, which can speed up scientific research and the development of artificial intelligence.

The OpenDOTA project will develop technology to help computers move and process massive amounts of data more efficiently, a crucial step for faster discoveries in science and smarter AI systems.

Artificial intelligence is, as one NPR story put it, “an electricity hog.” According to the Allen Institute for AI, a single query to ChatGPT uses roughly the same amount of electricity as lighting one lightbulb for 20 minutes.

AI consumes far more electricity than traditional internet use. As ChatGPT and programs like it grow in popularity, that’s a big increase in the energy needed to power them.

With this investment, ��ý researchers will develop innovative tools that enhance the efficiency of computers in handling data-intensive AI and scientific tasks, enabling scientists and engineers to concentrate on solving complex problems rather than waiting for data to transfer between systems. The OpenDOTA project is designed to benefit not only academic researchers but also industries that rely on high-performance computing, opening the door to new advancements in fields ranging from agriculture to climate science.

Currently, many computer systems struggle to keep up when transferring large amounts of data, especially in environments where multiple computers work together. OpenDOTA aims to solve these slowdowns by making data movement faster and more efficient. As Professor Lu explains, improving the efficiency of DPU-powered systems will help advance scientific simulations, drive progress in AI, and strengthen the overall computing infrastructure for improved performance and energy consumption. The project encourages collaboration and will be available for anyone to use, supporting both academic and industry needs.

The research is organized around three main goals: intelligent data transfer between computers, efficient group communication among multiple machines and scalable learning-based automated optimization.

“By combining these approaches, OpenDOTA offers a complete solution to today’s data movement challenges, helping to power the next generation of high-performance and sustainable AI and scientific applications,” Lu said.

The project’s website will provide updates and resources for anyone interested. The $596,738 grant, awarded through the National Science Foundation’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Core Research, will support this project for three years.

University of California, Merced - Patty Guerra

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������ý Agricultural Experiment Station Adds Fire, Insect and Soil Researchers

Boosting AI and Science: NSF Invests $600K in OpenDOTA Project at ������ý

Need for More Latino Doctors Highlighted at ��ý Event

��ý Celebrates 15 Years as a Hispanic-serving Institution

��ý Celebrates 20 Years of Firsts

��ý Agricultural Experiment Station Adds Fire, Insect and Soil Researchers

Boosting AI and Science: NSF Invests $600K in OpenDOTA Project at ��ý