12 news posts from February 2018

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Nominations for 2018 College of the Environment Awards open through Feb. 23

Dean Lisa J. Graumlich (center) with 2017 College of the Environment Award winners.

Do you know a student, faculty or staff member who deserves recognition for their work at the College of the Environment? Nominations for the 2018 College of the Environment Awards are open through Friday, February 23, 2018. Submit your nominations in any or all of these categories: Distinguished Staff Member Exceptional Mentoring of Undergraduates Graduate Dean’s Medalist Outstanding Community Impact: Staff or Faculty Outstanding Community Impact: Student Outstanding Diversity Commitment Outstanding Researcher Outstanding Teaching Faculty Undergraduate Dean’s Medalist Full details, including criteria and eligibility and past winners, are available on the College of the Environment website.  

Submit a nomination for the 2018 College Awards »

Simple rules can help fishery managers cope with ecological complexity

Schooling herring, one of the fisheries studied in this analysis.

To successfully manage fisheries, factors in the environment that affect fish — like food sources, predators and habitat — should be considered as part of a holistic management plan. That approach is gaining traction in fisheries management, but there has been no broad-scale evaluation of whether considering these ecosystem factors makes any economic sense for the commercial fishing industry. A team of ecologists and economists has addressed that question in the first study to test whether real-life ecological interactions produce economic benefits for the fishing industry. 

Read more at UW Today »

Research uncovers the mysterious lives of narwhals

A pod of narwhals in Melville Bay, Greenland.

Narwhals are some of the most elusive creatures in the ocean, spending most of their lives in deep water far from shore. But research being presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland Feb. 12 may shed a bit of light on these enigmatic marine mammals. New research shows narwhals may prefer to congregate near unique glacier fjords with thick ice fronts and low to moderate calving activity, where icebergs break off infrequently. 

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Ice core shows North American ice sheet’s retreat affected Antarctic weather

Sea ice and icebergs in the Southern Ocean in 2017 off the coast of West Antarctica. The new study looks at the year-to-year variability of storms in this region.

Researchers at the University of Washington were among the co-authors of a new study that uses ice core data to see how Earth’s climate behaved at the end of the last ice age, when the Laurentide Ice Sheet covering much of North America retreated about 16,000 years ago. The study led by the University of Colorado Boulder is published online this week and will be in the Feb. 

Read more at UW Today »

UW atmospheric scientists flying through clouds above Antarctica’s Southern Ocean

Roger Marchand with UW students Litai Kang (left) and Emily Tansey (center) in front of the Hiaper research aircraft.

University of Washington scientists are part of an international team that is spending six weeks in the remote Southern Ocean to tackle one of the region’s many mysteries: its clouds. What they discover will be used to improve climate models, which routinely underestimate how much solar energy bounces off clouds in that region. Simulating how much solar energy is absorbed or reflected on Earth is key to calculating the future of the planet under climate change. 

Read more at UW Today »