Conservation costs money, and the benefits don’t always outweigh the costs. To shed light on how conservation decisions may provide benefits or costs to larger regional goals, researchers from SEFS, and other collaborators, developed an economic model aimed at maximizing the ROI on the cost of the acquisition of lands for conservation. Their work was cited as the Editors’ Choice in Science; read the original open access paper here! 

New research from SEFS‘ John Marzluff and collaborators from UW’s Department of Radiology shows how crows feel about people–literally. The team scanned the brains of captured wild crows as they were exposed to “threatening” and “care-taking” faces. These scans reveal similar responses in the crows, with different areas of the brain lighting up for feared than trusted faces, as in humans. 

A temperature record derived from measurements of an ice core drilled on James Ross Island, Antarctica, prompts a rethink of what has triggered the recent warming trends on the Antarctic Peninsula.  Read more about what Eric Steig – professor of Earth and Space Sciences – has to say about this.