A special issue of the journal Conservation Biology includes a paper written by a team of authors from the Climate Impacts Group, USGS, NOAA, and Stony Brook University on choosing and using climate change scenarios for ecological impacts assessments and conservation decisions. Published in December, the paper’s guidelines are relevant to a diverse range of resource managers. Amy Snover, assistant dean of applied research at the College of the Environment and director of the Climate Impacts Group, is the lead author on the paper entitled Choosing and Using Climate-Change Scenarios for Ecological-Impact Assessments and Conservation Decisions.  

The U.S. Department of Energy has granted $5 million to seven universities across the country to use towards new research into methane hydrates, which holds promise as a prominent energy source.  Methane hydrate are ice-like structures that when melted release natural gas.  College of the Environment oceanography professor Evan Solomon will lead a team of researchers that will look into how changes in ocean temperatures might lead to a natural release these trapped gasses.  

Researchers across the University of Washington campus—including College of the Environment professors Ginger Armbrust (Oceanography) and John Vidale (Earth and space sciences)—soon will be able to collaborate in an unprecedented way with a new team of data scientists to advance research through big-data analysis and discovery. The UW, along with the University of California, Berkeley, and New York University, are partners in a new five-year, $37.8 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred P.