Nov 7, 2018

‘Ocean memory’ the focus of cross-disciplinary effort by UW’s Jody Deming

The vast oceans of our planet still hold many unsolved questions. Uncovering some of their mysteries has been a decades-long focus for University of Washington oceanography professor Jody Deming. This fall, Deming embarks on a very different type of ocean exploration. A $500,000 grant from the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative, or NAKFI, will allow her and a group representing a wide variety of disciplines in the sciences and the arts to look at the oceans in new ways.

Racial, ethnic minorities face greater vulnerability to wildfires

Firefighters respond to the Taylor Creek and Klondike fires in Oregon’s Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest in summer 2018.

Environmental disasters in the U.S. often hit minority groups the hardest. When Hurricane Katrina slammed New Orleans in 2005, the city’s black residents were disproportionately affected. Their neighborhoods were located in the low-lying, less-protected areas of the city, and many people lacked the resources to evacuate safely. Similar patterns have played out during hurricanes and tropical storms ever since. Massive wildfires, which may be getting more intense due to climate change and a long history of fire-suppression policies, also have strikingly unequal effects on minority communities, a new study shows.