Climate & Sustainability
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Fishing vessels as sentinels of ocean health
“We found that the location of fishing vessels accurately revealed how heat waves impact target species. The tuna mirrored the fishing vessels: shifting north and inshore during The Blob but remaining in place during the following marine heat waves.” – By Heather Welch is a marine ecologist at UC Santa Cruz who uses big data…
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Rare Mountain Lion Standoff in San Francisco Ends Peacefully After a 30-Hour Search
“Males will often travel far out,” says Chris Wilmers, an ecologist at UC Santa Cruz and the lead researcher of the Santa Cruz Puma Project. “They’re essentially trying to find a vacant territory, and the Santa Cruz Mountains are pretty trapped in by development on all sides. They wander, and they keep going, and they…
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California’s iconic Highway 1 is fighting a losing battle against climate change. Can it survive?
“If our storm and other conditions were normal, we would expect closures and losses at some points,” said Michael Beck, director of UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Coastal Climate Resilience.
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Community unites to sustainably restore Santa Cruz’s iconic blue whale skeleton
The Seymour Marine Discovery Center, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Marco Rolandi’s lab, Halon Entertainment, and swellcycle are teaming up to restore and preserve Ms. Blue, an iconic blue whale skeleton.
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Study tracks fishing boats to see how heat waves affect fish distribution
“We have so much data on fishing vessel activity,” study lead author Heather Welch, a marine spatial ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement. “These data are traditionally used for surveillance, and it is exciting that they may also be useful for understanding ecosystem health.”
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Experts examine how climate change will create more king tides in Bay Area
Video from the UC Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience shows a visualization of San Mateo County, an area that faces significant sea-level rise impacts. It is their projection during a 100-year storm. Professor Mike Beck, the Director of the Center, is watching this closely. Additional coverage by CBS News Bay Area, NBC Bay…
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How can nature protect us from the effects of climate change
UC Santa Cruz economics professor Galina Hale hosts Center for Coastal Climate Resilience Director Mike Beck on the radio show “Cutting Edge,” to discuss their new study on nature-based solutions for climate adaptation.
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Wind-battered Lick Observatory rushes to shield historic telescope after dome damage
The damage threatens one of the Bay Area’s most significant scientific landmarks — a telescope that helped shape modern astronomy and still draws thousands of visitors each year to the mountaintop east of San Jose. Additional coverage in KTVU News, The Mercury News, NBC Bay Area, KSBW, SF Gate, and Lookout Santa Cruz.
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How a new system of drones and low-cost sensors can protect communities from air pollution
A project led by Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics Javier Gonzalez-Rocha is using drone flights and new monitoring technologies to better understand when and where farmworkers are most severely exposed to air pollution.
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Researchers awarded over $500,000 to use diamonds in new project: ‘We have sought to get off the ground for several years’
As reported by UC Santa Cruz, researchers with the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics will receive $550,000 in funding to develop advanced diamond-based sensors to monitor intense radiation in future fusion energy reactors. Picked up by Yahoo.
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AI Wildfire Modeling Expands Beyond The West As Climate Risks Shift
Fire Oracle, one of the projects developed at the Reboot the Earth hackathon hosted by the United Nations and the UC Santa Cruz Baskin School of Engineering, uses machine learning to accelerate prescribed burn planning.
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Florida’s first offshore fish farms are coming. Are they floating hazards?
If Ocean Era is committed to preserving the environment, one net pen isn’t likely to harm the Gulf, said Rod Fujita, a marine ecologist at the University of California Santa Cruz. “The big question is, what happens after that?” Fujita said.