Sierra Nevada Content

A New Record for California’s Highest Tree

Katherine E Kerlin — April 17, 2025 - 9:00am

A UC Davis professor's pleasure hike in the High Sierra turned into a new elevation record for California's highest tree, the Jeffrey pine, which wasn't formerly known to grow at extreme elevations.

Sierra Squirrels Find Their Niche Amid a Changing Climate

Katherine E Kerlin — April 06, 2023 - 8:30am

A UC Davis study of squirrels in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains finds that climate is just one factor impacting where species make their homes in a changing world.

Losing Winter

Katherine E Kerlin — February 02, 2022 - 9:30am

How small mountain lakes spend their winters is largely unknown to scientists, despite winter representing nearly half the year in such environments. A study by the University of California, Davis, helps demystify what happens above and below the ice.

How Climate Change Is Affecting Small Sierra Nevada Lakes

Katherine E Kerlin — December 19, 2018 - 11:45am

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, are taking the temperature — and other measurements — of lakes of all sizes and shapes throughout the mountains of California to see how climate change is affecting them and what, perhaps, can be done about it.

A study published this month in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters shows that, despite rapidly warming air temperatures, spring snowpack is the biggest predictor of summer warming in small Sierra Nevada lakes.