(full story here!) Just when we thought we had ended all that icky winter stuff for the gray, damp cool of a Northwest spring, we have this to deal with: rain and wind around Seattle, and snow measured by the foot in the mountains and an increased avalanche danger there. ATMO‘s Cliff Mass is quoted; read more here! 

(full story here!) Riz Reyes, who works part time as a gardener with the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, claimed the top prize at the Pacific Northwest Flower & Garden Show this week. Reyes, who earned his bachelor’s in environmental horticulture and urban forestry from the UW, owns RHR Horticulture in Shoreline. 

“The sea is a big place. Most fish are small. So it stands to reason that it is difficult to work out with any degree of accuracy just how many fish live in the sea. One way is to measure how many fish we pull out of it. But is that the best way? Or even an accurate way?” asks an editorial in this week’s (Feb. 

An Informal Conversation about Interdisciplinary Teaching on Environmental Issues Tuesday, February 26, 2013 5:00-6:30 PM Program on the Environment Commons, Wallace Hall (ACC) 012 Free to attend.  Please register by Thursday, February 24, 2013. How big is your data? And can your students grok it? In an era when datasets are mushrooming, the cloud is ever expanding, and environmental science is in dire need of multidisciplinary, real world information to document and address global change; how do we bring students to the party? 

The fibrous threads helping mussels stay anchored – in spite of waves that sometimes pound the shore with a force equivalent to a jet liner flying at 600 miles per hour – are more prone to snap when ocean temperatures climb higher than normal. Emily Carrington, a professor of biology at FHL, reported Saturday (Feb. 16) that the fibrous threads she calls “nature’s bungee cords” become 60 percent weaker in water that was 15 degrees F (7 C) above typical summer temperatures where the mussels were from.