Professor Haizhou Liu Receives Grant to Clean and Reuse Contaminated Agricultural Water

Haizhou Liu, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and an ETOX faculty member, and a consortium of researchers from several other University of California campuses have been awarded a $1.4 million grant to develop new approaches to clean and reuse agricultural water.  More information about their award can be found in a recent UC Riverside News article. The proposed work builds upon recent research by Prof. Liu and other UCR researchers including professors Jay Gann and Yujie Men, two other ETOX faculty members, in which they identified a chemical process where salt commonly found in the wastewater of water treatment plants is able to catalyze the break down of hard-to-degrade poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). This research was highlighted in a May 30th 2024 UCR News article. Our congratulations to Haizhou, Jay and Yujie for their important research and the recognition that it is receiving.  [The photo above is from the May UCR News article and shows water samples being treated with UV light.]

Gopher Visit to Mt. Saint Helens has Lasting Effect on the Soil and Vegetation

In 1983, three years after the eruption of the Mt. Saint Helens volcano, professors Mike Allen of UC Riverside and James McMahon of Utah State University traveled to a devastated area on Mt. Saint Helens and released gophers into fenced enclosures for one day.  They returned six years later and documented that the areas where the gophers had been released contained thousands of plants whereas the untouched plots remained barren.  Now, forty years later Mike Allen, an emeritus professor (and former ETOX faculty member) and Emma Aronson, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology and a current ETOX faculty member, returned and demonstrated that the gopher plots had dramatically different and improved soil microorganisms.  Their work was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes and was highlighted in UC Riverside News.  It was also featured in many other news reports such as this report in IFLScience.  Our congratulations to Mike, James, Emma and colleagues for their interesting work and the attention that it has received.  [The photo above is of a gopher and plant near the gopher enclosure fence from 1982. It is from Mike Allen and was published in the UCR News Article.]