Aug 3, 2020

Big ships and underwater robots: heading out to sea with the Ocean Observatories Initiative

It’s summertime, and that means scientists across the University of Washington College of the Environment are in the field collecting data. Researchers in the School of Oceanography are no different and are working off the Oregon coast on their annual expedition to maintain the long-running cabled ocean observatory. Part of the broader National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), UW oversees the Regional Cabled Observatory that spans several sites in Pacific Northwest waters, ranging from shallow coastal locales to deeper waters in the open ocean more than 300 miles offshore.

Jul 28, 2020

Conservation planning for a wild and thriving Cascadia

With ever-shrinking pristine habitats across the region and globe, wildlife is often hard-pressed to find a place to call home. Even if they find a suitable home today, the question remains if it will still be suitable tomorrow. With climate change already underway and increasing human presence in wild landscapes, land managers and conservation organizations continually wrestle with this issue here in the Pacific Northwest and across the world.

Jun 10, 2020

Science Communication

Video: COVID-19 and Science Communication with Liz Neeley and Ed Yong

The COVID-19 pandemic has touched every part of our global society, putting science and scientists in the front seat as we navigate this crisis. On June 4, College of the Environment Dean Lisa Graumlich spoke with special guests Liz Neeley, Executive Director of the Story Collider, and Ed Yong, staff writer covering science and the coronavirus for The Atlantic for a special edition of Amplify.

Jun 1, 2020

Science Communication

Beyond video games: virtual reality brings science to life

Virtual reality — commonly referred to as VR — is the stuff of video games, right? Don your VR headset, gloves and bodysuit and *whoosh*, you’re transported into an alternate landscape. VR makes the imagined world feel real. Truth be told, VR isn’t limited to just gamers. Numerous applications for the technology are in use, like in military, sports and educational settings, and many new applications are still emerging.

May 14, 2020

Antarctic sea-ice models improve for the next IPCC, UW study shows

The world of climate modeling is complex, requiring an enormous amount of coordination and collaboration to produce. Models feed on mountains of different inputs to run simulations of what a future world might look like, and can be so big — in some cases, lines of code in the millions — they take days or weeks to run. Building these models can be challenging, but getting them right is critical for us to see where climate change is taking us, and importantly, what we might do about it.