Highlights (Page 2)

Our team (Professors Gerardo Diaz, Teamrat Ghezzehei, Rebecca Ryals, YangQuan Chen, Catherine Keske and our very own Asmeret Asefaw Berhe  received a $3 million grant from the California Strategic Growth Council to examine how biochar can be produced and used to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, namely methane. Our team will explore the feasibility of a mobile biochar unit through technology development and field testing. see link for more detailsRead More →

We studied a 100s to 3 million yrs soil chronosequence preserved in alluvial terrace deposits of the Merced River, CA to unravel how soil mineralogy affects soil carbon storage and succeptibility to warming. This study was recently published in Nature Geoscience. Link to the article on Nature Geoscience website https://rdcu.be/2kvs   See also the UC Merced Press Release about the article at this linkRead More →

Asmeret is selected to serve as an inaugural member of the Academies’ newest initiative — New Voices in Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (SEM). The New Voices in SEM “will engage in communicating the evidence base for addressing national and global challenges to provide new perspectives on issues of importance to the community represented by the National Academies, and to help identify ways to expand the diversity of expertise that is brought to all of the Academies’ convening and advisory activities.” See, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine Press release http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=682018&_ga=2.82448852.333735961.1528489829-1774962584.1528489829 UC Merced Press Release is also available at https://news.ucmerced.edu/news/2018/berhe-selected-national-academies-serve-“new-voice”-scienceRead More →

Ph.D. Candidate Kimber Moreland received a UC-Lab FEES fellowship for a two-year in residence fellowship at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). This highly competitive award will support Kimber on her dissertation research on “Climatic Controls of Subsoil Organic Carbon Dynamics” that is taking place at the Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory. During her fellowship, Kimber will be co-mentored by Dr. Karis McFarlane at the Atmospheric, Earth and Energy Division and Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS) at LLNL.Read More →

Read about our Women in Science and Technology group that we launched to support faculty members and students in STEM fields. Our new organization at UC Merced is working to close the gender gap by engaging, supporting and mentoring women in fields traditionally dominated by men. The full article is available at this link .Read More →

Our team received one of the four 2016 recipients of the President’s Research Catalyst Awards for our proposed work on: “California Drought and Carbon Management for Agriculture,” $1.69 million, PI: Sam Ying (UC Riverside) and co-PIs  Asmeret Asefaw Berhe and Teamrat Ghezzehei (UC Merced), Kate Scow and Sanjai Parikh (UC Davis), Eoin Brodie, Peter Nico, Margaret Torn, Bill Riley (LBNL) California agriculture, a backbone of the state’s economy, faces enormous challenges as access to a predictable water supply declines and becomes unpredictable. Soil quality or “soil health” is critical to how crops respond to climate variability. Vanguard research in the soil microbiome holds promise for understandingRead More →

The Berhe Biogeochemistry lab at the University of California, Merced ( http://www.aaberhe.com ) has an opening for a part-time lab manager. The lab manager will be responsible for day-to-day management of the lab; composing, review and verification of lab and field protocols and reports; maintain and troubleshoot instruments and equipment including GC, IR bench, etc; and providing instruction and assistance to lab users on technically complex procedures, equipment & instruments. For the motivated individual with the right experience, there is also opportunity to conduct original research. The minimum qualification for the job is a BSc degree in soil science, ecology, geology or related fields with at leastRead More →

Erin’s firth paper was published in Biogeosciences. Among other things, this study shows that, in the Southern Sierra Nevada, annual rates of sediment export (for the time period between 2005 and 2011) varied from 0.4 to 177 kg/ha, while export of C in sediment was between 0.025 and 4.2 kg C/ha and export of N in sediment was between 0.001 and 0.04 kg N/ha. Sediment yield and composition showed high interannual variation. In our study catchments, erosion laterally mobilized OM-rich litter material and topsoil, some of which enters streams owing to the catchment topography where steep slopes border stream channels.The OM-rich nature of eroded sediment raises importantRead More →

Asmeret had the pleasure to be a guest on Tom Willey’s radio program – Down on the Farm with Tom Willey on KFCF 88.1 FM in Fresno, CA. Listen to the whole interview below: As Tom, the host, put it: “Soil is the living epidermis of the planet.” So begins Soil and Human Security in the 21st Century, an extraordinarily important article, written by a half-dozen soil scientists, which appeared in May 8th’s journal Science, the New York Times of scientific publications. By declaring 2015 International Year of Soils, the United Nations General Assembly hopes to make all peoples aware that management of six-inches of top soil underlies any civilization’s prosperityRead More →