climate change

Bioenergy crops are central to climate mitigation strategies. This includes their use in BECCS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage) and biomass supplied for heat, power, liquid fuels and in the future, biorefining to chemicals. It has been predicted that bioenergy will be the fastest developing renewable resource over coming decades, but at the same time, land use for bioenergy production can be controversial if it has negative impacts on land for food, or is detrimental to a wide array of ecosystem services.

By moving beyond the surface level and literally digging deep, scientists at the University of California, Davis, found that compost is a key to storing carbon in semi-arid cropland soils, a strategy for offsetting CO2 emissions.

Chancellor Gary S. May recently signed higher education’s “Climate Emergency Letter” and took up his duties on the National Commission on Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers.

●︎ Climate Emergency Letter — As of today (Aug. 9), the letter had been signed by 138 institutions representing approximately 2.3 million students, and 41 higher education networks representing nearly 8,300 institutions. The signatories include all 10 UC campuses as well as UC system as a whole.

Ocean acidification is bad news for shellfish, making it harder for them to form their calcium-based shells. But several other factors related to climate change could also make California bays less hospitable to shelled organisms like oysters, which are a key part of the food web.

Commercial organic and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer helps feed around half of the world’s population. While excessive fertilizer use poses environmental and public health risks, many developing nations lack access to it, leading to food insecurity, social unrest and economic hardship.

Fish die-offs in Wisconsin lakes are expected to double by mid-century and quadruple by 2100 due to warmer summer temperatures, according to a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.

If you were to take a seed and zap it into the future to see how it will respond to climate change, how realistic might that prediction be? After all, seeds that actually grow in the future will have gone through generations of genetic changes and adaptations that these “time traveling” seeds don’t experience.

Study finds intriguing results

More frequent El Niño events in the future may have surprising impacts on seabirds and some fish species, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.