Berkeley engineering grad student Ziran Zhang and engineering professor Steven Glaser put on their snowshoes and headed into the hills recently to take a close look at the snowpack high in the Sierra.

The more time it takes for an earthquake fault to heal, the faster the shake it will produce when it finally ruptures, according to a new study by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley.

CITRIS researchers at UC Berkeley and UC Merced have received a $2 million NSF grant to expand their network of wireless sensors in the Sierra Nevada. The sensors enable remote monitoring of snow depth, stream flow, water content in soil and use of water in vegetation – data that will be used to help manage one of the most precious resources in the state.

In a remarkable outdoor laboratory in the Sierra, UC Merced and UC Berkeley researchers are using sensors to gather a mother lode of data to greatly improve ecological measurement and hydrologic forecasting.

While more than half of California’s water comes from snow in the Sierra Nevada, it is difficult for water managers to measure and track through the year. Now, scientists at UC Berkeley and UC Merced — supported by the multi-campus Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) — are using networks of wireless sensors to measure snow depth and other environmental factors.