Southern California is having a great wildflower year but is it really a superbloom? "The term ‘superbloom’ is a media construct with no botanical or ecological origin,” said Cameron Barrows, an associate research ecologist at UC Riverside’s Center for Conservation Biology. Richard Minnich, a professor of earth sciences at UC Riverside, and author of the...

"The Summit fire burned more than 3,000 acres of vegetation near Banning, Calif., in early May this year, giving Southern California’s fire season an early start. What lies in store for the rest of the fire season this year? Richard Minnich, a professor of Earth sciences and a noted fire ecologist at the University of...