Environmental Studies
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Inside Trump’s Yearslong War With A Fish
“He’s seen an opportunity to weigh in on an issue where cities, by and large, have one strong opinion, and rural regions have a different one,” said Brent Haddad, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “In California, the cities are mostly Democratic voters. In the rural regions are mostly…
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Debunking 5 claims about the California wildfires
Brent Haddad, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, corrected President-elect Trump's false claims about water for firefighting efforts in the Los Angeles area. "No water restoration declaration was put before Gov. Newsom," Hadded told ABC News in an email.
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Fact check: As wildfires rage, Trump lashes out with false claims about FEMA and California water policy
Brent Haddad, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, clarified that “there was never a ‘water restoration declaration’ in California that the Governor refused to sign,” and “there is no connection between environmental protection in northern California and low-flow fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades.” Haddad was also quoted on this topic in a wide…
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Study focuses on effect of climate change on California's grasslands
Several UC Santa Cruz researchers contributed to a recent study that combined long-term observational data with results from global change experiments in the region to show that, climate change is causing species that prefer hotter and drier conditions to become more dominant in regional grassland communities. "(We need to) understand what's happening so that we…
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China Is Ready to Take Advantage of Trump Trashing Clean Energy
Environmental Studies Professor Sikina Jinnah discussed how backtracking on climate change affects America's standing with Europe and the rest of the world. “They’re probably thinking, ‘Oh god. Not again,’” she said. “[Trump’s win] signals to not only Europe but the rest of the world that we’re an unreliable partner in multilateral negotiations — not only in…
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Three-quarters of the world’s land is drying out, ‘redefining life on Earth’
Climate change has made great swaths of the planet drier and soils saltier, jeopardizing food production and water access for billions. We can look to current geopolitical and ecological events that are playing out currently to understand what we can expect in the future,” said Hannah Waterhouse, a soil and water scientist at the University…
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Scotts Valley didn’t get a tornado warning, but San Francisco did. Why?
Environmental Studies Professor Michael Loik explained how climate change could potentially lead to increased opportunities for tornado development. “From a mechanistic standpoint, if you warm up the atmosphere, you warm up the ocean, you create more evaporation, you create more storminess,” he said. “From a statistical standpoint, then that might lead some to predict more…
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Why thousands of people are traveling to one country to see these birds
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela is a conservation ecologist who has been studying the explosion of bird-watching tourism in Colombia. Activity on eBird, a platform where birders can record their observations, increased more than 27-fold in Colombia since 2010, according to unpublished research by Ocampo-Peñuela and other authors that’s currently under review.
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Huge deforested areas in the tropics could regenerate naturally, study finds
Karen Holl, professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the research, noted that it’s critical to include local communities in regeneration efforts. Holl’s own research in Costa Rica has shown that people often see natural forest regeneration as “messy,” and they tend to place more value…
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California's rainy season begins with a bomb cyclone bang. Are we in for a third record wet winter?
“This is welcome to a certain extent, it moves us away from fire risk by wetting down ecosystems,” said Michael Loik, a professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz. “On the other hand,” he added, “it can be too much of a good thing too quickly.”
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Environmental Justice? Not if Project 2025 Has a Say.
Mijin Cha, a professor of environmental studies at University of California, Santa Cruz, says Inflation Reduction Act grant programs could be improved by providing benefits more directly to underserved people. “The federal government gives money to a third party, and then that third party distributes the money,” says Cha. “Is it not more efficient to…
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Largest dam removal ever, driven by Tribes, kicks off Klamath River recovery
Environmental studies Ph.D. student, artist, and Yurok Tribe restoration engineer Brooke Thompson celebrated dam removal on the Klamath River. “This has been 20-plus years in the making, my entire life, and why I went to university, why I’m doing the degrees I’m doing now,” she said. “I feel amazing. I feel like the weight of…