Forest searches using specially trained dogs improved the probability of finding spotted owls by nearly 30 percent over traditional vocalization surveys.
Environment
David Montgomery, a University of Washington geologist, is the author of a new book that explores the long history of religious thinking on matters of geological discovery, particularly flood stories such as the biblical account of Noah’s ark.
The University of Washington again has been ranked among the coolest schools in America, placing fourth this year, according to Sierra Magazine.
Salmon conservation shouldn’t narrowly focus on managing flows in streams and rivers or on preserving only places that currently have strong salmon runs. Instead, watersheds need a good mix of steep, cold-running streams and slower, meandering streams of warmer water to keep options open for salmon adapted to reproduce better in one setting than the other, new research shows. Preserving that sort of varied landscape serves not just salmon, it provides an all-summer buffet that brown bears, gulls and other…
When a University of Washington researcher listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters off the east coast of Greenland, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months. Listen to the bowheads repeat their other-worldly song as they cross the Fram Strait. Bowhead whale song 1 Bowhead whale song 2 Kate Stafford, an oceanographer with UW’s Applied Physics…
Robert J. Naiman has received the highest award given by the Ecological Society of America, the world’s largest society of professional ecologists.
University of Washington engineers and scientists are one step closer to deploying sophisticated equipment that will collect important information about ocean properties like currents and temperature and send the information via the Internet in real time to scientists around the world.
Not having enough Chinook salmon to eat stresses out southern resident killer whales more than having boatloads of whale watchers nearby, according to hormone levels of whales summering in the Salish Sea. In lean times, however, the stress normally associated with boats becomes more pronounced, further underscoring the importance of having enough prey.
In a study published this week in Nature Climate Change, University of Washington and European scientists project that in the next 50 years global climate change will disrupt power generation in the U.S. and Europe. Warmer water and lower flows are predicted to interrupt the supply of cooling water.
Scientists believe they’ve pinpointed the last crucial piece of the 80-year-old puzzle of how plants “know” when to flower. Understanding how flowering works in a simple plant should lead to a better understanding of how the same genes work in more complex plants such as rice and wheat.
Conservation Remix, a daylong event June 2 organized by UW staff with Conservation Magazine and biology, offers an eclectic mix of topics for discussion – from designing superefficient buildings that generate their own energy to controlling invasive species by eating them.
A safe haven could be out of reach for 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere’s mammals, and as much as 40 percent in certain regions, because the animals just won’t move swiftly enough to outpace climate change, according to new research from the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.
UW researchers have discovered a problem with a climate record that is often cited by climate change skeptics.
Changes in the speed that ice travels in more than 200 outlet glaciers indicates that Greenland’s contribution to rising sea level in the 21st century might be significantly less than the upper limits some scientists thought possible, a new study shows.
Big trees three or more feet in diameter accounted for nearly half the biomass measured at a Yosemite National Park site, yet represented only 1 percent of the trees growing there.
Decades of research into how much plastic litters the ocean, conducted by skimming only the surface, may in some cases vastly underestimate the true amount of plastic debris in the oceans, according to a University of Washington oceanographer publishing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Winners of the third annual Husky Green Awards were announced Friday during Earth Day activities.
The annual campus observation of Earth Day Friday, April 20, coincides this year with HuskyFest.
Electrical engineering professor John Sahr gives his read on the increase in solar activity, and how it relates to his research.
The fourth Environmental Innovation Challenge was the biggest yet. The winning team proposes to replace concrete lane dividers with ones made from recycled rubber tires. Other student teams presented their prototypes for emergency shelters, rooftop gardens, nonstick cookware and other green businesses.
A new online portal and smartphone app lets Washington and Oregon residents enter the addresses of their homes, schools, workplaces or kids’ day care centers to check if they’re in harm’s way should a tsunami hit. The tool, being publicized on the heels of the one-year anniversary of the Tohoku tsunami, was developed by researchers at the Applied Physics Laboratory.
Cherry trees in full bloom in our nation’s capital could be as much as four weeks earlier by 2080 depending on how much warming occurs. So says an analysis conducted at the University of Washington that relied on the UW’s own cherry trees as one test of a computer model used in the project.
Greenroads, a rating system developed at the University of Washington to promote sustainable roadway construction, awarded its first official certification to a Bellingham project that incorporates porcelain from recycled toilets.
Facilities Services is continuing a long-standing energy conservation partnership with Seattle City Light in an agreement for the utility to fund energy conservation initiatives on campus.
From Seattle to Japan, University of Washington faculty had an important role in providing information about the aftermath of the March 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami.
Over the next three years, a team of UW students will convert a 2013 Chevy Malibu into a fuel-efficient, low-emissions vehicle that still meets consumer demands for a driver-friendly car. The UW is one of 15 schools participating in the EcoCAR 2 contest, sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Learn about polar bears and penguins. Center a two-foot tusk on your forehead and imagine youre a narwhal exploring your icy-ocean home. For these activities and more, grab the kids and head for Polar Science Weekend, March 1 to 4, sponsored by the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Pacific Science Center.
The plight of the tiger – none of the worlds 350 protected areas in the tigers range is large enough to support a viable population – is the subject of the UWs “Sustaining our World” lecture March 1. Eric Dinerstein, the World Wildlife Funds chief scientist and a UW alum, will speak on “All Together Now: Linking Ecosystem Services, Endangered Species Conservation and Local Livelihoods” at 6 p.m., in Kane 220.
Last weeks American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Vancouver, BC, included 11 speakers from the University of Washington on topics including marine protected areas, the myth of black progress, womens reproductive health and how undergraduates learn best.
Climate warming caused by greenhouse gases is very likely to increase summer temperature variability around the world by the end of this century, new UW research shows. The findings have major implications for food production.
University of Washington scientists have advanced a method that allowed them to single out a marine microorganism and map its genome even though the organism made up less than 10 percent of a water sample teeming with many millions of individuals from dozens of identifiable groups of microbes.
The economic pain of a flattening oil supply will trump the environment as a reason to curb the use of fossil fuels, say two scientists, one from the University of Washington and one from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Nature.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded a grant of $3.5 million to a multi-university, regional transportation center led by the University of Washington. The newly established Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium, or PacTrans, will focus on safe and sustainable transportation systems.
An oral history of the career of William D. Ruckelshaus, the first and fifth administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, whose career parallels the growth of the environmental movement in the United States, is now available in three locations in the state of Washington.
Decades of wild swings in crab populations dramatize the myriad issues surrounding questions of sustainable fisheries, said David Armstrong, director of aquatic and fishery sciences, in his talk “Claws, causes, climate and corps: A cavalcade of true crab sagas.”
Staff member Bob Edmistons quest was to cut both the time and cost of his daily commute.
A powerful combination of data from NASA satellites and traditional sampling has led to the discovery of a new pathway of freshwater in the Arctic Ocean. Jamie Morison, Applied Physics Laboratory, is lead author of paper in this weeks Nature.
Hot chilies growing wild in dry environments produce substantially fewer seeds than non-pungent plants, but they are better protected against a seed-attacking fungus that is more prevalent in moist regions.
New research shows that the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere work to transform elemental mercury into oxidized mercury, which can easily be deposited into aquatic ecosystems and ultimately enter the food chain.
Nitrogen derived from human activities has polluted lakes throughout the Northern Hemisphere for more than a century and the fingerprint of these changes is evident even in remote lakes thousands of miles from the nearest city, industrial area or farm.