John Muir Institute of the Environment

The John Muir Institute of the Environment supports innovation and discovery aimed at solving real-world environmental problems.

Roughly 3.5 billion years of evolution has produced the biodiversity critical to supporting today’s natural ecosystems. JMIE supports research on the nature and status of Earth’s biodiversity-- with the aim of protecting species, habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction.

JMIE also supports research understanding how institutions develop, enact, and enforce policy--an essential part of facilitating meaningful environmental solutions.

The Otellini Visualization Lab, located at the prestigious Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC), is a state-of-the-art facility and the centerpiece of our efforts to both understand the complexities of Lake Tahoe and to educate and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. Fly through a 3-dimensional model of Lake Tahoe, dive under the water and climb inside the Earth to see the origin earthquakes.

Children's Environmental Science Day

This free community event for children (ages 8+) and their families includes hands-on science activities designed to create an awareness of the unique ecology of Lake Tahoe.

UC Davis Tahoe: State of the Lake Report 2009

The University of California, Davis, has monitored Lake Tahoe for nearly 40 years, amassing a unique record of change for one of the world’s most beautiful and vulnerable lakes. In the UC Davis Tahoe: State of the Lake Report, we summarize how natural variability and human activity have affected the lake’s clarity, physics, chemistry and biology.

The Center for Affordable Technology for Small Water Systems provides technical assistance to help small, public water systems comply with minimum drinking water regulations, thereby increasing the availability of safe water for all Californians.

The Bodega Marine Reserve encompasses a remarkable diversity of habitats including mudflats, saltmarsh, dunes, coastal prairie, sandy beach, and rocky intertidal areas. The Bodega Marine Lab, located on site, provides well-equipped laboratory and housing facilities to support research and learning.

From poetry, to plant identification, to geology, to birds, reptiles and amphibians, there is something for everyone this spring and summer. NATURE OUTINGS offers a diverse schedule to help you experience Stebbins Cold Canyon reserve and continue to develop your relationship with the natural world.

Quail Ridge Reserve is home the word’s most extensive wildland wireless mesh networks. The system provides real-time location, physiological data and broad spectrum bioacoustic monitoring of wildlife, and provides the foundation for enhanced community/mobile wireless networks and a template for mobile, solar-powered communications systems in remote or disaster-stricken area.

Jepson Prairie Reserve

Since 2002 researchers have been studying one of the largest and healthiest populations of the California Tiger Salamander at Jepson Prairie Reserve. The reserve’s protected environment has allowed researchers to shed considerable light on the biology and terrestrial behavior of these endangered species.

How do floodplains benefit juvenile salmon? Who uses how much water in CA? Why is the Delta stressed out? What should we do with subsiding Delta islands? Where can we conserve more precious water resources? Check out the CaliforniaWaterBlog to find what our researchers have to say on these issues and more.

California’s water management system is deteriorating—on both economic and environmental fronts. Only a broad integrative approach will reverse the decline, according to a new book co-authored by experts from the Center for Watershed Sciences.

California has a complex, highly interconnected, and decentralized water system that is often beleaguered with a variety of misperceptions — or myths — about how the system works. This virtual tour explores some of the myths that plague the development of effective policies to manage one of the state’s most important natural resources.

The Center for Science Communication and Outreach teaches graduate students to communicate science beyond the university. Students become capable professionals prepared for careers inside and outside academia while increasing the public engagement with science and assisting UC Davis meet its land grant mission.

Congratulations to Ryder Diaz, one of 12 students nationwide selected for a 2012 Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellowship sponsored by the AAAS. Ryder, a grad student in Population Biology and participant in JMIE's Translating Research beyond Academia seminars, enjoys getting people excited about science.

Water education programs reach over 1,700 K-12 students annually in schools and on field trips. Students discover where their water comes from, where it goes, and how they can help take care of it.

Two graduate students launched Aggie ReStore, a campus re-use store, to divert campus waste and to educate students to repurpose materials. This project is illustrative of the real-world community projects graduate students create with assistance from JMIE's Environmental Leaders Program.

25 STORIES FROM THE CENTRAL VALLEY is one student’s master's thesis come to life with 25 stories of personal change and civic engagement. This campus-community project uses photos, theater, stories and sound to paint a vivid picture of the environmental problems faced by Central Valley communities as told by women leading the movement struggling to solve them.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore will provide the afternoon keynote presentation at this year’s Gender Matters Symposium. In her 2007 book, titled Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, Gilmore expores the economic, racial, political, and social basis for the growth of prisons and how black women drawing upon traditions of social motherhood fought back.

Kent Pinkerton, director of the Center for Health and the Environment, was quoted in the Sacramento Bee article in February about the toxic residues that tobacco smoke leaves behind. "It's not only because of what children breathe in, but because the smoke deposits itself," Pinkerton says. "Children are very oral and they put things in their mouths, so they would expose themselves to toxic particles by ingestion as well."

The Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety brings together multidisciplinary experts from the Schools of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, and Agriculture and Environmental Sciences to focus attention and research on the problems of health and safety in Western agriculture.

David Neale is leading the effort to building the newest collaboration in the John Muir Institute, the Forest Biology Research Center.

UC Davis is uniquely positioned due to its proximity to the Sierra and Coastal Mountain forest ecosystems and its faculty expertise in all aspects of Forest Biology. The FBRC currently has a membership of 24 UC Davis faculty and affiliated members from the US Forest Service.