Seaweed is once again showing promise for making cattle farming more sustainable. A new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, found that feeding grazing beef cattle a seaweed supplement in pellet form reduced their methane emissions by almost 40% without affecting their health or weight. The study was published today (Dec. 2) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Distinguished Professor of Entomology Jay Rosenheim noticed a trend during his office hours a few years ago: Many of his undergraduate students wanted research lab experience but were unsure how to get started. Alongside colleagues Louis Yang and Joanna Chiu, they collectively decided to try something different in 2011.

“Our basic idea was to get students into the labs really early in their undergraduate programs,” Rosenheim recalled. “There’s a whole new set of skills that are very different from what students are typically working on in their formal coursework.”

The cooling shade of UC Davis’ mature, leafy trees impressed Nurjannah Wiryadimejo enough to help the now-graduating senior choose to become an Aggie.

“When I first came to Davis, what struck me was how beautiful the cork oaks are. I’d never seen such beautiful tree-lined streets like the ones by the Memorial Union,” she said. 

“But now I’ve realized that a lot of the trees on campus aren’t well suited for the future climate, when there will be more heat and extreme weather events,” said the environmental science and management major. 

Amanda Frazier studies young polar fish — species with no colder place to go as the planet warms. A Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate Group in Ecology at UC Davis, she travels to Antarctica to learn how these vulnerable fish use sea ice and how they adjust their bodies and behaviors to cope with climate change.

Article originally written by Pamela Kan-Rice from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.