A tree sits in the middle of a big empty lot in South Sacramento. It is huge and leafy, its arms open wide, an arc of green swooping across a hot summer sky. Fenced off in this abandoned car lot, the tree is a bold sign of life in an otherwise barren expanse of dirt and busted concrete. It’s a wonder that it’s still here.

This old lot looms large for Victoria Vasquez. Her dad used to live a half mile from this spot.

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.

Thinning forests and conducting prescribed burns may help preserve trees in future droughts and bark beetle epidemics expected under climate change, suggests a study from the University of California, Davis.

With a terrain covering volcanoes, steaming fumaroles and forestlands, the Lassen Field Station became the newest addition to the University of California, Davis’ Natural Reserve System today (May 16), following approval by the UC Board of Regents.

Scientists have successfully sequenced the coast redwood and giant sequoia genomes, completing the first major milestone of a five-year project to develop the tools necessary to study these forests’ genomic diversity. The research partners, composed of the University of California, Davis, Johns Hopkins University and the Save the Redwoods League, are making the data publicly available today.