Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that involves the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms and parts thereof for products and services.
The University of California,Davis,is a public land-grant research university in Davis,California,United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institution was first founded as an agricultural branch of the system in 1905 and became the seventh campus of the University of California in 1959.
The Green Revolution,or the Third Agricultural Revolution,was a period of technology transfer initiatives that saw greatly increased crop yields. These changes in agriculture began in developed countries in the early 20th century and spread globally till the late 1980s. In the late 1960s,farmers began incorporating new technologies such as high-yielding varieties of cereals,particularly dwarf wheat and rice,and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers,pesticides,and controlled irrigation.
Peter H. Gleick is an American scientist working on issues related to the environment. He works at the Pacific Institute in Oakland,California,which he co-founded in 1987. In 2003 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his work on water resources. Among the issues he has addressed are conflicts over water resources,water and climate change,development,and human health.
The Fair Oaks Bridge is a truss bridge over the lower banks of the American River,connecting Fair Oaks to the greater Sacramento,California region. The current bridge,built 1907-1909 at a cost of $63,000,is the third bridge at this location.
In the United States,a colonia is a type of unincorporated,low-income,slum area located along the Mexico–United States border region that emerged with the advent of shanty towns. These colonias consist of peri-urban subdivisions of substandard housing lacking in basic services such as potable water,electricity,paved roads,proper drainage,and waste management. Often situated in geographically inferior locations,such as former agricultural floodplains,colonias suffer from associated issues like flooding. Furthermore,urbanization practices have amplified the issues,such as when developers strip topsoil from the ground in order to subdivide land,the resulting plains become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and disease. Traditional homeownership financing methods are rare amongst colonias residents,and therefore these areas consist of ramshackle housing units built incrementally with found material on expanses of undeveloped land. Colonias have a predominant Latino population where 85 percent of those Latinos under the age of 18 are United States citizens. The U.S. has viewed border communities as a place of lawlessness,poverty,backwardness,and ethnic difference.
California's interconnected water system serves almost 40 million people and irrigates over 5,680,000 acres (2,300,000 ha) of farmland. As the world's largest,most productive,and potentially most controversial water system,it manages over 40 million acre-feet (49 km3) of water per year. Use of available water averages 50% environmental,40% agricultural and 10% urban,though this varies considerably by region and between wet and dry years. In wet years,"environmental" water averages 61%,while in dry years it averages 41%,and can be even lower in critically dry years.
The indirect land use change impacts of biofuels,also known as ILUC or iLUC,relates to the unintended consequence of releasing more carbon emissions due to land-use changes around the world induced by the expansion of croplands for ethanol or biodiesel production in response to the increased global demand for biofuels.
A genetically modified soybean is a soybean that has had DNA introduced into it using genetic engineering techniques. In 1996,the first genetically modified soybean was introduced to the U.S. by Monsanto. In 2014,90.7 million hectares of GM soybeans were planted worldwide,making up 82% of the total soybeans cultivation area.
The Water Resources Collections and Archives (WRCA),formerly known as the Water Resources Center Archives,is an archive with unpublished manuscript collections and a library with published materials. It was established to collect unique,hard-to-find,technical report materials pertaining to all aspects of water resources and supply in California and the American West. Located on the campus of the University of California Riverside (UCR),it is jointly administered by the UCR College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences (CNAS) and the UCR Libraries. WRCA was part of the University of California Center for Water Resources (WRC) that was established and funded in 1957 by a special act of the California State Legislature and was designated the California Water Research Institute by a federal act in 1964.
The regulation of genetic engineering varies widely by country. Countries such as the United States,Canada,Lebanon and Egypt use substantial equivalence as the starting point when assessing safety,while many countries such as those in the European Union,Brazil and China authorize GMO cultivation on a case-by-case basis. Many countries allow the import of GM food with authorization,but either do not allow its cultivation or have provisions for cultivation,but no GM products are yet produced. Most countries that do not allow for GMO cultivation do permit research. Most (85%) of the world's GMO crops are grown in the Americas. One of the key issues concerning regulators is whether GM products should be labeled. Labeling of GMO products in the marketplace is required in 64 countries. Labeling can be mandatory up to a threshold GM content level or voluntary. A study investigating voluntary labeling in South Africa found that 31% of products labeled as GMO-free had a GM content above 1.0%. In Canada and the USA labeling of GM food is voluntary,while in Europe all food or feed which contains greater than 0.9% of approved GMOs must be labelled.
Hans Rudolf Herren is a Swiss American entomologist,farmer and development specialist. He was the first Swiss to receive the 1995 World Food Prize and the 2013 Right Livelihood Award for leading a major biological pest management campaign in Africa,successfully fighting the cassava mealybug and averting a major food crisis that could have claimed an estimated 20 million lives.
Paul B. Thompson is Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University,where he held the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural Food and Community Ethics before retiring in 2022. Thompson was born in 1951 in Springfield,Missouri. He earned his B.A. at Emory University before going on to earn a Ph.D. in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He formerly taught at Texas A&M University and Purdue University before joining MSU,where he continues to do research on ethical and philosophical questions dealing with agriculture and food and especially the development of agricultural techno-science.
Steven Frederic Sapontzis is an American philosopher and professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University,East Bay who specializes in animal ethics,environmental ethics and meta-ethics.
Tan Sri Zakri bin Abdul Hamid has had a distinguished career in science as a researcher,educator,administrator and diplomat.
Richard B. Norgaard is a professor emeritus of ecological economics in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California,Berkeley,the first chair and a continuing member of the independent science board of CALFED,and a founding member and former president of the International Society for Ecological Economics. He received the Kenneth E. Boulding Memorial Award in 2006 for recognition of advancements in research combining social theory and the natural sciences. He is considered one of the founders of and a continuing leader in the field of ecological economics.
Delta Conveyance Project,formerly known as California Water Fix and Eco Restore or the Bay Delta Conservation Plan,is a $15 billion plan proposed by Governor Jerry Brown and the California Department of Water Resources to build a 36 foot diameter tunnel to carry fresh water from the Sacramento River southward under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Bethany Reservoir for use by the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project.
The environmental history of Latin America has become the focus of a number of scholars,starting in the later years of the twentieth century. But historians earlier than that recognized that the environment played a major role in the region's history. Environmental history more generally has developed as a specialized,yet broad and diverse field. According to one assessment of the field,scholars have mainly been concerned with "three categories of research:colonialism,capitalism,and conservation" and the analysis focuses on narratives of environmental decline. There are several currents within the field. One examines humans within particular ecosystems;another concerns humans’cultural relationship with nature;and environmental politics and policy. General topics that scholars examine are forestry and deforestation;rural landscapes,especially agro-export industries and ranching;conservation of the environment through protected zones,such as parks and preserves;water issues including irrigation,drought,flooding and its control through dams,urban water supply,use,and waste water. The field often classifies research by geographically,temporally,and thematically. Much of the environmental history of Latin America focuses on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,but there is a growing body of research on the first three centuries (1500-1800) of European impact. As the field established itself as a more defined academic pursuit,the journal Environmental History was founded in 1996,as a joint venture of the Forest History Society and the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH). The Latin American and Caribbean Society for Environmental History (SOLCHA) formed in 2004. Standard reference works for Latin American now include a section on environmental history.
Sérgio Campos Trindade was a Brazilian chemical engineer and researcher,specialist in renewable energies and consultant in sustainable business. Trindade was the coordinating lead author for a chapter of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report,Methodological and Technical Issues in Technology Transfer (2000);the IPCC as an organization won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as a result of its contributors' work.
