For most of the 20th century, Riverside residents dumped their residential trash on 125 acres near the Santa Ana River. By the mid-1990s, the landfill was closed and deemed a leaking environmental mess. The city fenced it off and spent nearly $14 million to stop it from polluting groundwater and the air. The site still...
Factories mass produce goods for society and many emit greenhouse gases in the process, but not all are run by humans. Some factories lie underground and are operated around the clock by tireless six-legged workers. A new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, shows leafcutter ant...
It started with a 2011 study that indicated by the turn of the century there would be no more Joshua trees in the national park named after the iconic desert plant. And likely none in California. “I was shocked when the study came out. I wanted to look at the details and change the scale,”...
If you’ve ever been to the deserts of Southern California, you know they are remarkable places filled with stunning vistas and wildlife found nowhere else. As a scientist, these places hold additional value for me: More than 2,500 plant and animal species – including over 100 known threatened and endangered species – have been documented...
Scientific American, The Desert Sun and others highlight collaborative research at UCR that finds that many solar farms in California pose a threat to desert life because they are not situated in “potentially compatible” areas that minimize its harm to wildlife.
