National Geographic photographer speaks at the Future of Ice Seminar Series

The Future of Ice Speaker Series continued last week with a visit from Paul Nicklen, National Geographic photographer and extreme adventurer. His day on campus was spent visiting with students, faculty, and staff to talk about his storytelling mission though photography and sharing firsthand accounts about the global changes he is seeing. His visit was capped with a 500+ person audience in Kane Hall to hear his tales of frozen and wild landscapes, and to be transported through his pictures of the fantastic animals that live in these environments.

Feb 25, 2014

Dean's Letter: UW's Freshwater Initiative

To understand the importance of freshwater, we need look no further than the current map of drought in the western United States. California is in the grips of an extreme multi-year drought, and farmers and ranchers are facing critical water shortages that affect the nation’s food supply. Here in Washington we are more fortunate in that we are “only” in a moderate drought, but are nevertheless concerned about how low snowpack will impact our water supply and wildfire in the coming months.

Feb 25, 2014

Vitamin water: Measuring essential nutrients in the ocean

The phrase, ‘Eat your vitamins,’ applies to marine animals just like humans. Many vitamins are elusive in the ocean environment. University of Washington researchers used new tools to measure and track B-12 vitamins in the ocean. Once believed to be manufactured only by marine bacteria, the new results show that a whole different class of organism, archaea, can supply this essential vitamin.

Feb 18, 2014

Resource Management

UW helps protect $30 million to $40 million in U.S. wood exports to Japan

By showing the economic benefit to Japanese saw mills, a University of Washington researcher has helped protect U.S. exports of Douglas-fir logs and lumber worth $30 million to $40 million a year. A recently introduced homebuilding subsidy program in Japan put logs and lumber imported from the U.S. and other countries at a competitive disadvantage, according to Ivan Eastin, UW professor of environmental and forest sciences.

Feb 18, 2014

Embarking on geoengineering, then stopping, would speed up global warming

Spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and then stopping it could exacerbate the problem of climate change, according to new research by atmospheric scientists at the University of Washington. Carrying out geoengineering for several decades and then stopping would cause warming at a rate that will greatly exceed that expected due to global warming, according to a study published February 18 in Environmental Research Letters.