Environment + Climate

Bruins and off-campus visitors tooled around north campus on Tuesday in Teslas and other electric vehicles during UCLA's Drive an Electric Vehicle event, part of National Drive Electric Week. Guests test-drove the Nissan LEAF, Chevy Volt and other vehicles.

UCLA atmospheric scientists were instrumental in the creation of the Santa Ana Wildfire Threat Index, which will help classify the fire threat potential of the Santa Ana winds.

Report by the Climate Change and Business Research Initiative at the UCLA and UC Berkeley law schools suggests that used electric vehicle batteries may be a promising solution to California's search for cheap energy storage.

UCLA professor Tom Smith says human-driven evolution is creating drug-resistant diseases, pesticide-proof bugs and mass extinctions due to climate change. "We can either choose to manage evolutionary processes or not, but evolutionary change will proceed regardless."

Drug-resistant diseases, pesticide-resistant bugs and animals threatened by climate change are signs of human-driven evolution getting out of control. A multi-university team calls for solutions.

Next month, Professor Stephen Hubbell will become the first American in 40 years to receive a Scientific Achievement Award from the International Union of Forest Research Organizations.

California has reaped huge benefits from the law that directs oil and gas drilling royalties to water and land protection, and Congress must commit to reauthorizing it.

Six proposals led primarily by UCLA units are vying with 261 others for grant funding by the Goldhirsh Foundation, which is hoping to jump-start projects that will make L.A. the best place to play, to connect, to live, create and learn by 2050.

Environmental, atmospheric and oceanic researchers at UCLA will create a first-of-its-kind model of how coastal waters will react to climate change this century.

Efforts to hit Gov. Brown’s water reduction target could have unintended, and potentially harmful, consequences for the health of Californians and their communities.

UCLA Transportation has added 41 electric vehicles to its fleet of eco-friendly vehicles, thanks to a generous gift from the Ray Fladeboe Trust. The donation brings the number of fully equipped EVs in use around the campus to 250-plus.

UCLA geographer Judith Carney is part of an international team of interdisciplinary researchers who have sequenced the complete genome of African rice (Oryza glaberrima). The findings were reported online Sunday in the scholarly journal Nature Genetics.

Nearly 4 in 10 Los Angeles County residents live in environmentally vulnerable communities burdened by air pollution and other risk factors, according to a study by the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and The Environmental Defense Fund.

Glen MacDonald, formerly the director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, is the first holder of a new chair named after legendary conservationist John Muir. Mark Gold is now acting director of IoES.

Water researchers from UCLA, the Natural History Museum and elsewhere are helping the region understand issues, history and possible solutions related to the drought. A discussion series featuring panels of experts begins July 10.

Among the group's other recommendations: household water meters that measure indoor and outdoor water use separately, and stronger incentives for drought-resistant landscaping.

Professor Yoram Cohen suggests that water reclamation, water recycling and reuse could become very important for health and conservation in the future.

The Cal EcoMaps site, launched this month, features a detailed interactive map and environmental impact ratings for 172 industrial facilities in Los Angeles County.

Daniela Cusack and her fellow scientists who have been working for two years on finding a strategy to reduce global warming have concluded that we cannot engineer our way out of climate change.

A $500,000 gift from Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky will add a laboratory to the La Kretz Field Station, located in Malibu.

For the fourth straight year, the hospitals in Westwood and Santa Monica have been recognized by Practice Greenhealth for their efforts to recycle, eliminate mercury and reduce medical waste.

A new report by professors from UCLA and five other universities concludes that climate engineering won't suffice, and we have to cut down the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere.

Alex Hall, a professor in UCLA’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and Institute of Environment and Sustainability, appears in “Years of Living Dangerously,” airing June 2 on Showtime, and explains how climate change will impact our lives.

Alex Wang and Benjamin van Rooj explore the consequences and goals of China's new environmental protection law in an op-ed in the New York Times.

UC researchers use their expertise to help California cope with one of the most severe droughts on record