Mycelium, the white filament-like root structure of mushrooms, might be an important building block of a more sustainable world. By growing mycelium with a biomass—anything from coffee grounds to leftover agricultural waste—researchers at UC Davis are creating sustainable structures that can be turned into everything from biodegradable plastics and circuit boards to filters that remove harmful antibiotic and pesticide residues from water.
Irrigating an entire orchard or vineyard with the same level of water and nutrients may make some plants excel at producing nuts or fruit, while others might be getting more than they need. Not knowing this can lead to disappointing crop yields, wasted water, high costs and long-term damage to both the plants and the environment—all of which can devastate a grower.
In a new perspective article for the journal One Earth, Sabbie Miller, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis, Professor John Harvey, director of the Pavement Research Center at UC Davis and colleagues at ETH Zurich and Imperial College London break down the greenhouse emissions challenges facing the cement industry and present a strategy to get to zero emissions.
Researchers from the University of California, Davis, have been awarded a $10 million grant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to find ways to sustain irrigated agriculture while improving groundwater quantity and quality in the Southwest under a changing climate.
Wildfire, in one way or another, touches nearly everyone who lives in California and, increasingly, the West.
Those of us living in California last fall can recall awakening to orange skies and smoke that blanketed nearly the entire state. Even if our home was untouched, we experienced the effects of wildfire. We inhaled them. We swiped them off our car in white, singed flakes. We dread them now.
On September 9, Northern California residents woke up to a dark orange smoky sky that rained down ash and made it hard to breathe. Sadly, days like this are becoming our “new normal.” As climate change makes wildfires burn faster, hotter and more often, humans need to understand the effects of these disasters and how to live with them.
As the world’s population is expected to reach 9–10 billion by 2050 according to the U.N., the world must double food production to meet demand while using and reusing the resources we have left in a sustainable manner. Ruihong Zhang and Isaya Kisekka at UC Davis are rising to meet the challenge by finding new ways to sustainably produce food, while conserving resources by using microbes to produce new sources of protein and managing and irrigating crops with pinpoint precision.
Modern environmental problems are inherently interdisciplinary, involving such issues as: alleviating the impacts of waste disposal on human and ecological receptors, treating non-point source emissions, developing new technologies to address water and air pollution, understanding the causes and impacts of climate change, characterizing the life-cycle impacts of human activities and addressing the role of energy utilization in environmental degradation.
Sometimes, fixing one problem can create another.
Concrete production contributes 8 percent of global greenhouse gases, and demand continues to rise as populations and incomes grow. Yet some commonly discussed strategies to reduce the sector’s global GHG emissions could, under some scenarios, increase local air pollution and related health damages, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.
Lake Tahoe is the largest freshwater lake in Sierra Nevada Mountains and the second deepest body of water in the United States, second only to Crater Lake in Oregon. It’s known for its pristine beauty and unparalleled clarity, having some of the clearest water of any lake worldwide.
The UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) has been on the frontlines of monitoring Lake Tahoe’s waters and famous clarity for decades, with continuous monitoring records dating back to 1968.
