College of the Environment
December 19, 2013
Sinuous skeletons, glowing blue and crimson, leap from lab to art world
Fish “stripped” to their skeletons and stained for UW research are now part of an art exhibit at the Seattle Aquarium.
December 17, 2013
Hack the planet? Geoengineering research, ethics, governance explored
A special interdisciplinary issue of the journal Climatic Change includes the most detailed description yet of the proposed Oxford Principles to govern geoengineering research, and surveys the technical hurdles, ethics and regulatory issues related to deliberately manipulating the planet’s climate.
December 10, 2013
What climate change means for federally protected marine species
As the Endangered Species Act nears its 40th birthday at the end of December, conservation biologists are coming to terms with a danger not foreseen in the 1970s: global climate change.
December 9, 2013
Astronomers solve temperature mystery of planetary atmospheres
An atmospheric peculiarity the Earth shares with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune is likely common to billions of planets, University of Washington astronomers have found, and knowing that may help in the search for potentially habitable worlds.
November 19, 2013
Paddlers spread pump-out ‘gospel’ to recreational boaters
Washington Sea Grant’s “Pumpout Paddlers” are readying their kayaks for winter paddling to deliver more adapters so boaters have a cleaner, easier way to pump their sewage-holding tanks.
November 18, 2013
Post-shutdown, UW Arctic research flights resume
UW researchers this month are on missions to fly above the Arctic Ocean to measure glacier melt, polar storms and Arctic sea ice.
November 8, 2013
Forest fires and fireside chats: UW students learn about management challenges
An intensive two week field course helped 20 University of Washington students learn firsthand about the challenges of managing dry, fire-prone forests of the Pacific Northwest.
November 6, 2013
Floods didn’t provide nitrogen ‘fix’ for earliest crops in frigid north
Floods didn’t make floodplains fertile during the dawn of human agriculture in the Earth’s far north. Turns out early human inhabitants can mainly thank cyanobacteria. It raises the question of whether modern farmers might reduce fertilizer use by taking advantage of cyanobacteria that occur, not just in the floodplains studied, but in soils around the world.
News Digest: TEDx talk on brainy crows, Town Hall ‘rocks’ tonight
Brainy crows subject of TEDx talk Saturday || Town Hall talk “Stories from My Pet Rocks” tonight
November 4, 2013
More wildfires, earlier snowmelt, coastal threats top Northwest climate risks
A new comprehensive report co-authored by the UW’s Climate Impacts Group looks at what climate change will mean for Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
UW Bothell prof, students present crowd-funded study of coal train emissions
Atmospheric scientist Dan Jaffe tonight will present the first results of a crowd-funded study of train emissions, conducted with four undergraduates from the Seattle and Bothell campuses and funded by public donations.
October 29, 2013
Crashing rockets could lead to novel sample-return technology
This year, in an annual trek to the Nevada desert, UW students deliberately launched rockets from altitude directly into a dry lakebed. These were early tests of a concept that eventually could be used to collect and return samples from an erupting volcano, a melting nuclear reactor or even an asteroid in space.
Redwood trees reveal history of West Coast rain, fog, ocean conditions
Scientists found a way to use coastal redwood trees as a window into historic climate, using oxygen and carbon atoms in the wood to detect fog and rainfall in previous seasons.
October 20, 2013
Global ocean currents explain why Northern Hemisphere is the soggier one
A new study in Nature Geoscience explains a major feature of global precipitation, and shows how a current originating from the poles influences tropical rainfall in Africa and southern India.
September 30, 2013
UW researchers helped draft international assessment of climate change
UW faculty members were among international researchers who compiled the fifth climate-change assessment report. The UW will host a seminar Tuesday, Oct. 1 with some of the Seattle-area authors.
September 19, 2013
Mantas, devil rays butchered for apothecary trade now identifiable
Dried filters from the mouths of filter-feeding rays started appearing in apothecary shops in recent years, but there’s been no way to know which of these gentle-natured rays was being slaughtered. Now scientists have discovered enough differences to identify the giant manta and eight devil rays using the dried filters.
September 18, 2013
Cables, instruments installed in the deep sea off Pacific Northwest coast
In a seven-week cruise this past summer, oceanographers and students laid 14 miles of extension cable and installed about a dozen instruments for a historic deep-sea observatory.
August 30, 2013
New ocean forecast could help predict fish habitat six months in advance
UW researchers and federal scientists have developed the first long-term seasonal forecast of conditions for the Northwest ocean ecosystem.
August 8, 2013
Ocean acidification center another example of state leading the nation
Washington’s governor and state legislators in the last session created a hub at the University of Washington to coordinate research and monitoring of ocean acidification and its effects on local sea life such as oysters, clams and fish.
August 1, 2013
Scientists review the ecological effects of sea ice loss
A UW atmospheric scientist is co-author of a review paper, published this week in the journal Science, looking at the ecological consequences of sea ice decline.
July 22, 2013
Geochemical ‘fingerprints’ leave evidence that megafloods eroded steep gorge
For the first time, scientists have direct geochemical evidence that the 150-mile long Tsangpo Gorge, possibly the world’s deepest, was the conduit by which megafloods from glacial lakes, perhaps half the volume of Lake Erie, drained catastrophically through the Himalayas when their ice dams failed during the last 2 million years.
July 19, 2013
Nighttime heat waves quadruple in Pacific Northwest
Nighttime heat waves — events where the nighttime low is unusually hot for at least three days in a row — are becoming more common in western Washington and Oregon.
July 10, 2013
Julia Parrish speaks at White House about citizen science
Julia Parrish was one of 12 “champions of change” invited to share their ideas on public engagement in science and science literacy June 25 at the White House.
July 9, 2013
Hazy days of summer: Southeast U.S. field work measures mercury, smog
Dozens of atmospheric scientists, including three University of Washington faculty members, are taking part in what’s being described as one of the largest atmospheric field campaigns in decades.
July 1, 2013
Work this summer extends reach of cabled deep-ocean observatory
A UW research vessel leaves July 2 for six weeks at sea, during which oceanographers will install miles of cable for a new type of deep-sea observatory.
June 19, 2013
Detour ahead: Cities, farms reroute animals seeking cooler climes
In the first broad-scale study of its kind, UW led research finds half a dozen regions that could provide some of the Western Hemisphere’s more heavily used thoroughfares for mammals, birds and amphibians seeking cooler environments in a warming world.
June 7, 2013
Treks reveal distinctive forests of Cascade Mountains — with photo gallery
In “Spring Comes to the Cascades,” students don’t just read about the forests – they hike and snowshoe through them.
June 6, 2013
Pollution in Northern Hemisphere helped cause 1980s African drought
Air pollution in the Northern Hemisphere in the mid-20th century cooled the upper half of the planet and pushed rain bands south, contributing to the prolonged and worsening drought in Africa’s Sahel region. Clean air legislation in the 1980s reversed the trend and the drought lessened.
May 30, 2013
Transportation fuels from woody biomass promising way to reduce emissions
Two processes that turn woody biomass into transportation fuels have the potential to exceed current Environmental Protection Agency requirements for renewable fuels.
May 22, 2013
New documentary on cabled ocean observatory airs on UWTV
A new half-hour documentary about a UW research expedition to Axial Seamount, an underwater volcano off the Washington coast, airs tonight at 9:30 p.m. on UWTV.
May 20, 2013
Amazon River exhales virtually all carbon taken up by rain forest
A study published this week in Nature Geoscience shows that woody plant matter is almost completely digested by bacteria living in the Amazon River, and that this tough stuff plays a major part in fueling the river’s breath.
May 13, 2013
Using earthquake sensors to track endangered whales
Oceanographers are using a growing number of seafloor seismometers, devices that record seafloor vibrations, to carry out inexpensive and non-invasive studies of endangered whales.
May 6, 2013
UW research vessel Clifford A. Barnes marks its 1,000th cruise
This week marks the 1000th cruise for the UW’s Clifford A. Barnes research vessel, a converted tugboat that has spent decades exploring Puget Sound and Pacific Northwest waters and is now reaching the end of its UW career.
April 25, 2013
Keeping beverages cool in summer: It’s not just the heat, it’s the humidity
Drops forming on the outside of your drink don’t just make the can slippery. Experiments show that in hot, humid weather, condensation heats a drink more than the surrounding air.
April 17, 2013
A key to mass extinctions could boost food, biofuel production
A substance implicated in several mass extinctions could greatly enhance plant growth, with implications for global food supplies biofuels, new UW research shows.
April 15, 2013
Preparing to install the world’s largest underwater observatory
Engineers at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory are under pressure to build and test parts for installation this summer in the world’s largest deep-ocean observatory off the Washington and Oregon coasts.
April 14, 2013
Recent Antarctic climate, glacier changes at the ‘upper bound’ of normal
In recent decades the thinning of glaciers at the edge of Antarctica has accelerated, but new UW-led research indicates the changes, though dramatic, cannot be confidently attributed to human-caused global warming.
April 11, 2013
Space-age domes offer a window on ocean acidification
At Friday Harbor Labs, students are conducting a three-week study on the effects of ocean acidification using a strategy that’s midway between a controlled lab test and an open-ocean experiment.
March 20, 2013
Some Alaskan trout use flexible guts for the ultimate binge diet
The stomach and intestines of certain Dolly Varden trout double to quadruple in size during month-long, salmon-egg-eating binges in Alaska each August. It’s the first time researchers have documented such fish gut flexibility in the wild.
March 12, 2013
News Digest: UW Tower Green Fair Thursday, Restoration Ecology Network recognized
Demos, films, exhibits at UW Tower Green Fair Thursday || Society recognizes UW Restoration Ecology Network
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