mloik
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Could climate change create a new dust bowl?
International Drought Experiment shows severe impacts of extreme, prolonged drought
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UC Santa Cruz AgTech Alliance launches to support interdisciplinary collaboration
Building on the long history of innovation in agriculture at the campus, the AgTech Alliance will support research, education, events, and workforce development related to advancing agricultural technology in order to create more formalized opportunities for collaboration within the university and beyond.
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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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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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Grasslands live in the climate change fast lane
A new paper that built upon prior research efforts in the Environmental Studies Department shows that grassland communities across the California Floristic Province are transitioning toward plants that prefer hotter and drier conditions at a pace that’s comparable to the observed rate of changes in climate.
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Global study shows extreme short-term drought has even greater impacts on grasslands and shrublands than previously thought
UC Santa Cruz scientists supported a new global study showing that the effects of extreme short-term drought have been greatly underestimated for grasslands and shrublands.
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No Sanctuary: Animal Rescues Struggling with Climate Change
Environmental Studies Professor Mike Loik shared his insights on climate change effects and solutions with Good Times for a story about the impacts of climate change on local animal rescue operations.
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UCSC faculty, staff, and students support Salton Sea restoration planning
An independent review panel supported by UC Santa Cruz recently completed its work evaluating restoration options to address environmental, public health, and economic issues in the Salton Sea region.
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UCSC professor contributes to new study showing how parts of the US will ‘tropicalize’ as climate changes
Environmental Studies Professor Michael Loik is a coauthor on a new paper describing how warming winters are allowing some tropical plants and animals to replace temperate communities in southern portions of the country.
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Undergrad gets her hands dirty learning about redwoods
For Lilianne de la Espriella, doing independent, hands-on research as an undergraduate meant literally getting her hands dirty.
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The politics of Trump's Twitter spat with Calif.
Environmental Studies professors Michael Loik and Brent Haddad were quoted in an E&E News story about California water politics, wildfires, and President Trump's tweets about water access.
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Renewable energy: Smart greenhouses generate solar power and grow crops at the same time
Newsweek covered new research by Michael Loik of environmental studies about the electricity-generating power of solar greenhouses, which appear to have no negative impacts on the plants grown inside them; the greenhouses use technology developed by Physics Department faculty members Sue Carter and Glenn Alers.