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.


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.

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.

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.

Do changes in the amount of fish caught necessarily reflect the number of fish in the sea? “No,” say UW researchers in a “Counterpoint” commentary in Nature.

Salmon runs are notoriously variable: strong one year, and weak the next. New research shows that the same may be true from one century to the next.

Fisheries managers should sharpen their ability to spot environmental conditions that hamper or help fish stocks, and not assume that abundance translates to sustainable harvest.

The UW’s Alaska Salmon Program, now in its 66th field season, focuses not just on fisheries management, but on ecology and evolution as well, and has just won a top fisheries prize.