- Author: Aubrey White
Approximately every ten years, the research team at the Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Facility at UC Davis gets the chance to dig deep into their research material to help answer questions about the long-term sustainability of agricultural systems.
With a steel probe attached to the back of a tractor, the team digs three meters deep to take soil samples at 432 different points around the 72-acre field. The initiative takes the team nearly a month to complete, and the information in each soil core can answer major research questions...
- Author: Katherine E. Kerlin
Decades of extreme weather crippled, and ultimately decimated, first the political culture and later the human population of the ancient Maya, according to a study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers that includes two University of California, Davis, scientists.
Now, for the first time, researchers have combined a precise climatic record of the Maya environment with a precise record of Maya political history to provide a better understanding of the role weather had in the civilization’s downfall.
Their findings are published in the Nov. 9, 2012, issue of the...
- Author: Nate Seltenrich
- Editor: Ann Guy
Take a look at the nearest light switch: is it up or down? The answer means more than you think. When you flip a switch — or run a washing machine, or plug in a space heater — you’re creating demand. And on a vast, interconnected electrical grid like California’s, supply must always meet demand. Otherwise, it’s lights out.
For more than a century we’ve taken the balancing act between supply and demand for granted, and for the most part, it’s worked. To accommodate sudden spikes in demand, engineers overbuilt the grid with excess slack, including wires that were thicker than they needed to be and standby fossil-fuel power plants that could fire up at any instant.
But today our...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Colony collapse disorder (CCD) has certainly increased public awareness about bees — but also public misinformation about bees in general.
CCD, the mysterious phenomenon characterized by adult bees abandoning the hive, leaving behind the queen bee, immature brood and stored food, surfaced in the winter of 2006. Scientists believe CCD is caused by multiple factors: diseases, viruses, pesticides, pests, malnutrition and stress.
Meanwhile, misinformation about bees continues to surface. Posts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media often caption a syrphid fly as a bee or a syrphid fly as a bumble bee. Magazine and newspaper editors frequently misidentify a syrhpid fly (aka flower fly and...
- Author: John Stumbos
- Author: Katherine E. Kerlin
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, climate change and global greenhouse emissions are a hot topic these days. Dozens of UC Davis scientists study many facets of the causes and consequences of global warming.
One of them is Frank Mitloehner, UC Cooperative Extension specialist and professor in the Department of Animal Science at UC Davis. Mitloehner has studied the role of the livestock industry in contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Mitloehner was recently selected to chair a United Nations committee to measure and assess the environmental impacts of the livestock industry.
As chair of the new Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) committee,...