A team of scientists studying last year’s eruption of Axial Seamount now says that the undersea volcano some 250 miles off the Oregon coast gave off clear signals hours before the eruption.  The findings, plus those from scientists who mapped the lava flow, are published this week in three separate articles in the journal Nature Geoscience.  To read more about this research, click here. 

Warmer water and reduced river flows in the United States and Europe in recent years have led to reduced production, or temporary shutdown, of several thermoelectric power plants.  A study by European and University of Washington scientists published today in Nature Climate Change projects that in the next 50 years warmer water and lower flows will lead to more such power disruptions.  

Not having enough Chinook salmon to eat stresses out southern resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest more than having boatloads of whale watchers nearby, according to hormone levels of whales summering in the Salish Sea.  Read more about this study here, which was published today in PLoS ONE. 

The Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama had to shut down more than once last summer because the Tennessee River’s water was too warm to use it for cooling. A new study projects that, with warmer water and lower flows, more such power disruptions are likely across US and Europe in the next 50 years. Civil and Environmental Engineering‘s Dennis Lettenmaier is a co-author on this study. 

Big trees three or more feet in diameter accounted for nearly half the biomass measured at a Yosemite National Park site, yet represented only 1 percent of the trees growing there. Jim Lutz, research scientist in Environmental and Forest Sciences, is lead author of a paper on the largest quantitative study yet of the importance of big trees in temperate forests.