Volunteers spent thousands of hours recording trash on beaches in Washington and Oregon to show that certain beaches, and certain areas of a single beach, are 鈥渟ticky zones鈥� that accumulate litter. Finding patterns for where litter lands could help to better prevent and remove trash in the marine environment.
A 黑料老司机 pilot project is exploring the use of fiber-optic sensing for seismology, glaciology, and even urban monitoring. Funded in part with a $473,000 grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, a nonprofit based in Vancouver, Washington, the new UW Photonic Sensing Facility will use photons traveling through a fiber-optic cable to detect ground motions as small as 1 nanometer.
For birds that inhabit developed areas of the Pacific Northwest, the reduction in noise and commotion from COVID-19 lockdowns may have allowed them to use a wider range of habitats in cities, a new 黑料老司机 study has found.
As glaciers worldwide retreat due to climate change, managers of national parks need to know what鈥檚 on the horizon to prepare for the future. A new study from the 黑料老司机 and the National Park Service measures 38 years of change for glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park south of Anchorage. The study, published Aug. 5 in The Journal of Glaciology, finds that 13 of the 19 glaciers show substantial retreat, four are relatively stable, and two have advanced. It also finds trends in which glacier types are disappearing fastest.
Eight 黑料老司机 subjects ranked in the top 10 and Atmospheric Sciences moved to its position as No. 1 in the world on the聽Global Ranking of Academic Subjects list for 2022. The ranking, released Tuesday, was conducted by researchers at the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, a fully independent organization dedicating to research on higher education intelligence and consultation.
A new 黑料老司机 study that leverages historical data has found unique support for a 鈥渟afety in numbers鈥� hypothesis by showing that Pacific salmon in larger groups have lower risk of being eaten by predators. But for some salmon species, schooling comes at the cost of competition for food, and those fish may trade safety for a meal.
A team led by the UW has produced the first comprehensive report of the impacts of the 2021 heat wave on shellfish.
David Montgomery, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences, discusses soil health, food nutrients and human health. He is co-author of “What Your Food Ate,” being published this month.
A new population of polar bears documented on the southeast coast of Greenland use glacier ice to survive despite limited access to sea ice. This small, genetically distinct group of polar bears could be important to the future of the species in a warming world.
The Our Future Duwamish project, available to community groups through The Seattle Public Library, uses an Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset to help viewers imagine rising seas from a vantage point along the South Seattle waterway.
Amy Snover, the retiring director of the UW Climate Impacts Group, reflects on her past decade of leadership and on how the groundbreaking climate preparedness group has evolved over more than a quarter century of existence.
A new effort at the 黑料老司机 aims to accelerate eDNA research by supporting existing projects and building a network of practitioners to advance the nascent field.
Looking beyond CO2 to include other human-generated pollutants increases the amount of warming that humans have already committed to by past emissions. Earth will continue to warm even if all emissions cease, and the planet is committed to reaching peak temperatures about five to 10 years before experiencing them.
A planetary scientist worked with engineers to measure the physical limits of a liquid for salty water under high pressure. Results suggest where robotic missions should look for extraterrestrial life on the ice-covered oceans of Jupiter鈥檚 moon Europa and Saturn鈥檚 moon Titan.
Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! Carving out a brave space: Courage in art May 3, 7:00 PM | HUB Lyceum & Online 鈥淗ave something to say. Be brave enough to say it. Use your art to change the world.鈥� UW Drama Professor and Head of Directing & Playwriting Valerie Curtis-Newton lives by these words in her directing and teaching career. She urges artists to take risks and inspires audiences to see the world…
If emissions from greenhouse gases continue, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion of ocean waters could eclipse all other human stressors on marine species by around 2100. Tropical waters would experience the greatest loss of biodiversity, while polar species are at the highest聽risk of extinction
Two 黑料老司机 professors have been honored by the Ecological Society of America for their knowledge and contributions to the field of ecology.
Including the splintering of ice inside clouds around Antarctica improves high-resolution global models’ ability to simulate clouds over the Southern Ocean 鈥� and thus the models鈥� ability to simulate Earth鈥檚 climate.
Sea ice around Antarctica retreats more quickly than it advances, an asymmetry that has been a puzzle. New analysis shows that the Southern Hemisphere is following simple rules of physics, as peak midsummer sun causes rapid changes. In this respect, it seems, it’s Arctic sea ice that is more mysterious.
The following is a statement from 黑料老司机 President Ana Mari Cauce following the news that a UW professor and a UW staff member were killed聽while diving聽off the coast of Mexico over the weekend.
黑料老司机-led research suggests moon jellies are feasting on zooplankton, the various tiny animals that drift with the currents, in the bays they inhabit. This could affect other hungry marine life, like juvenile salmon or herring 鈥� especially if predictions are correct and climate change will favor fast-growing jellyfish.
An experiment conducted on 10 farms across the U.S. suggests that crops from farms following soil-friendly practices for at least five years have a healthier nutritional profile than the same crops grown on neighboring, conventional farms. Researchers believe soil microbes and fungi boost certain beneficial minerals, vitamins and phytochemicals in the crops.
As the green crab invasion in the state worsens, a new analysis method developed by 黑料老司机 and Washington Sea Grant scientists could help contain future invasions and prevent new outbreaks using water testing and genetic analysis. The results show that the DNA-based technique works as well in detecting the presence of green crabs as setting traps to catch the live animals, which is a more laborious process. Results suggest these two methods could complement each other as approaches to learn where the species鈥� range is expanding.
Farmers struggling to adapt to rising temperatures in tropical regions can unleash the benefits of natural cooling, alongside a host of other wins, simply by dotting more trees across their pasturelands. For the first time, a study led by the 黑料老司机 puts tangible numbers to the cooling effects of this practice.
Though usually though of as a solid, glaciers are also slightly compressible, or squishy. This compression over the huge expanse of an ice sheet 鈥� like Antarctica or Greenland 鈥� makes the overall ice sheet more dense and lowers the surface by tens of feet compared to what would otherwise be expected.
With a low supply of and high competition for key nutrients, scientists have puzzled over the vast diversity of microbial species found in the open ocean. A new study shows that time of day is key, with species of marine microbes specializing in different shifts throughout the day and night.
The release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas responsible for almost a quarter of global warming, is being studied around the world, from Arctic wetlands to livestock feedlots. A 黑料老司机 team has discovered a source much closer to home: 349 plumes of methane gas bubbling up from the seafloor in Puget Sound, which holds more water than any other U.S. estuary.
Many nations are calling for protection of 30% of the world鈥檚 oceans by 2030 from some or all types of exploitation, including fishing. Building off this proposal, a new analysis led by the 黑料老司机 looks at how effective fishing closures are at reducing accidental catch. Researchers found that permanent marine protected areas are a relatively inefficient way to protect marine biodiversity that is accidentally caught in fisheries. Dynamic ocean management 鈥� changing the pattern of closures as accidental catch hotspots shift 鈥� is much more effective.
A team of researchers led by the 黑料老司机 drew upon the field of environmental justice 鈥� which primarily has focused on harms to people and public health 鈥� and applied its concepts to wildlife management, considering forms of injustice that people, communities and animal groups might experience. Lead author and UW assistant professor Alex McInturff talks with UW News about this work and why it’s significant.
New research from an interdisciplinary team at the 黑料老司机, Duke University and The Nature Conservancy shows how local temperature increases in the tropics 鈥� compounded by accelerating deforestation 鈥� may already be jeopardizing the well-being and productivity of outdoor workers.
New research shows that machine learning 鈥� computer algorithms that improve themselves without direct programming by humans 鈥� can be used to improve forecasts for lightning, one of the most destructive forces of nature.
Seismologists used 30 detailed simulations of magnitude-9 slips on the Cascadia Subduction Zone to evaluate how the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system would perform in these events. Results show the alerts generally work well, but suggest that lower alert thresholds provide more timely warnings over the full area that will feel the shaking.
Underwater microphones show that killer whales, or orcas, have spent more time in the Arctic Ocean in recent years. The increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean may give orcas more opportunity to hunt for prey off the west and north coasts of Alaska.
A new effort to reconstruct Earth’s climate since the last ice age, about 24,000 years ago, highlights the main drivers of climate change, and how far out of bounds human activity has pushed the climate system.
An oceanographer at the 黑料老司机 is part of a new project to study how glacial dust, created as glaciers grind the rock beneath them into a powder, reacts with seawater to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Results show that by the end of this century, lower-oxygen water on the Pacific Northwest coast will pose the biggest threat to Dungeness crabs. And while these crabs start as tiny, free-floating larvae, it鈥檚 the sharp-clawed adults that will be most vulnerable.
In a rare stroke of luck, researchers from the 黑料老司机, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, were able to track a group of black-tailed deer during and after California鈥檚 third-largest wildfire, the 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire. The megafire, which torched more than 450,000 acres in northern California, burned across half of an established study site, making it possible to record the movements and feeding patterns of deer before, during and after the fire.
A 黑料老司机 researcher is part of an international team that has used modern tools to explain repeating patterns of stones that form in frost-prone landscapes.
A new study has found that recent bigleaf maple die-off in Washington is linked to hotter, drier summers that predispose this species to decline. These conditions essentially weaken the tree鈥檚 immune system, making it easier to succumb to other stressors and diseases.
黑料老司机 oceanographer Parker MacCready is one of 59 new fellows elected this year by the American Geophysical Union.