Laura Prugh/University of Washington

Every spring, Laura Prugh teaches a wildlife research techniques class at the University of Washington. Her students spend much of their time outside, complementing their lecture notes with actual experience. They learn to identify and properly handle animals — frogs, salamanders and bushy-tailed woodrats, for example — and they practice using equipment for tracking animals and estimating populations.

But when the UW announced it was moving its spring quarter 2020 classes entirely online to combat the novel coronavirus, Prugh and other instructors across campus faced a new, unchartered challenge.

“During our faculty meeting on Zoom to discuss what to do with field courses, I burst into tears, much to my surprise,” said Prugh, an associate professor of environmental and forest sciences. “I love teaching this course. It’s great getting the students out into the field and getting to know them really well.”

Prugh initially considered canceling the class, which is a requirement for some students majoring in environmental sciences and resource management.

“I had to go through a mourning period before I could readjust my expectations and accept that the students are going to need to learn about some of the techniques just in the lecture component,” Prugh said. “But then maybe we can come up with a plan for the rest of the content.”

Prugh decided to mail each enrolled student a kit that includes a camera trap, an acoustic recorder, a compass and binoculars. Students will use their kits to complete independent research projects from home. The class will also participate in timely citizen-science projects that aim to understand how stay-at-home orders across the world have affected urban wildlife.

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Three graduate students from the College of the Environment have been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, which recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This year’s awardees include Irita Aylward and Zoe Krauss from the School of Oceanography, and Helena McMonagle from the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.

NSF Fellows are anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching and innovations in science and engineering. These individuals are crucial to maintaining and advancing the nation’s technological infrastructure and national security as well as contributing to the economic well-being of society at large.

Zoe Krauss studies earthquakes that happen beneath the ocean floor. The majority of Earth’s tectonic boundaries exist beneath the sea, and with the NSF Graduate Fellowship, she hopes to study a particularly interesting and close-to-home marine tectonic boundary: the Cascadia subduction zone.

As the Juan de Fuca plate slides beneath North America right off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, our communities are blessed with beautiful mountain ranges and dynamic topography, but also face the real risk of potentially devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. By using diverse marine seismic methods to illuminate the current mechanical state and geologic structure of Cascadia and other marine tectonic boundaries, Krauss hopes to contribute to our understanding of both fundamental earth science and seismic hazard in a tangible way.

Krauss says, “My studies as a first year PhD student in the UW School of Oceanography have already taken me to geophysical surveys as far south as Antarctica, and I can’t wait to see what the next few years have in store. I’m deeply honored to have been offered the NSF Graduate Fellowship, and am deeply grateful to the faculty and peers who reviewed and supported my application. I’m excited to get working on some great science!”

Helena McMonagle studies how humans interact with the ocean and how to sustainably use marine resources, including resources in the “twilight zone” — the layer of the ocean from 200 to 1000 meters deep where little sunlight penetrates. This vast, global habitat is home to the most abundant fish species in the world, such as lanternfish and bristlemouths, yet these extremely abundant fish are largely unexploited, despite commercial interest in harvesting them for fishmeal and nutritional supplements (e.g., fish oil).

Before large-scale harvesting begins, McMonagle and her colleagues are interested in better understanding this ecosystem and the ecosystem services that these fish provide, including their contribution to the “biological carbon pump”— an important part of the carbon cycle in which marine life increases the amount of carbon the oceans absorb (about a quarter of all carbon dioxide emitted by humans). The contribution by twilight zone fish could be substantial.

Twilight zone fish contribute to the biological carbon pump because they undertake a daily vertical migration (the largest migration in the world) to the surface to feed at night, then dive back down to the twilight zone during the day to hide from predators, where they release much of the carbon they consumed at the surface.

McMonagle plans to use funding from the Graduate Research Fellowship and pre-existing data to estimate how much carbon twilight zone fish transport, how this varies across different regions in the ocean and what drives the magnitude of that part of the biological carbon pump.

“It’s an exciting opportunity to study a living marine resource, and its value to humans, before large-scale commercial harvesting may begin. I hope my research will contribute to making informed decisions about how to use this resource in the future,” says McMonagle.

Irita Aylward’s research investigates the role of fluid flow and pore fluid pressure in geologic fault slip behavior along the Hikurangi margin offshore in New Zealand by determining fluid sources, fluid flow rates and flow pathways along the margin, specifically the relationship between fluid flow and a type of fault movement called slow slip events (SSEs). SSEs are episodes of aseismic slip that occur over a period of weeks or months. Fluid production and pore pressure accumulation are thought to be intimately linked with fault slip, but the specific mechanisms and interrelationships remain poorly understood.

Much of the populated world lies on or near a subduction zone where one tectonic plate dives beneath another creating a thrust fault often referred to as the megathrust. The rate of displacement (slip) along these plate boundary faults varies from mere centimeters per year of steady creep to meters per second during major earthquakes. Subduction zone (SZ) faults generate earthquakes and tsunamis, and understanding the mechanisms of SZ fault behavior is of critical societal importance. 

Aylward says, “I am honored to receive this NSF fellowship and look forward to continuing my research on the hydrogeology of subduction zones.”

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Rick Rupan

In the basement of one of UW’s oceanography buildings, visitors see all sorts of strange, ocean-going equipment.  What are those long, yellow tube-things in there — and what on earth do they do? Turns out they’re an instrument known as an Argo float, and they are used globally to monitor ocean properties such as temperature, salinity, pressure and more recently, biogeochemical elements such as oxygen and nitrate. Data collected from the floats is sent back and analyzed in the very aptly named Argo Lab, led by School of Oceanography’s Steve Riser and Alison Gray.

Some say the best way to learn is by doing — and that is exactly what happens in the Argo Lab. Student apprentices work alongside researcher and lab manager Rick Rupan, who teaches students the ins and outs of what makes a major research lab operational.

Apprenticeships have traditionally been a way for subject matter experts to guide and mentor someone new to a field. But recently, the idea of apprentices has been introduced to colleges and universities. This is different from a typical student worker or intern — apprentices work alongside the research team and full-time staff, learning the ropes and doing the work that is critical to the lab. Apprentices shoulder more responsibility than the typical student worker and end up extremely employable. In the case of the Argo Lab, apprentices have a one-hundred percent job placement rate in their field!

Students don’t need to know a lot about oceanography or engineering to become an apprentice in Argo Lab. In fact, Rupan prefers to hire students who are just starting out in their collegiate career so that he can teach them everything they need to know. Apprentices learn how to build floats, including how to solder and program them. They start with non-glamorous work — untying yards of rope, moving and organizing boxes and equipment, among other tasks, and work their way towards more complex duties. Apprentices leave knowing how to run pressure and calibration tests, install float parts, how to bench test and remove parts of Argo floats, and run analysis on the engineering data. Not only do students learn skills in oceanography, but they also leave with experience in engineering, gaining knowledge in the often-overlooked T in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

“There’s a lot you can learn on your own reading papers, but there’s a limit to that and having people with decades of experience who are willing to sit down with you and mentor you is invaluable,” said Chanelle Cadot, former lab apprentice. “The more you expand your network of people, the more you expand your knowledge. Being able to do that as a student and have people willing to vouch for you as a worker is the biggest thing I got out of this apprenticeship.”

The apprenticeship is especially valuable since oceanography is a very hands-on field, expanding well beyond the pages of a textbook. Being an apprentice allows students to supplement their classroom skills and gain training upfront so they’re ready to work in the field.

“Having an oceanography background in classes really helped me develop an understanding of why we need such good sensors to ensure the highest quality data available,” said inaugural lab technician Charlie Parker. “I was initially drawn to the lab because it utilized cutting edge technology to get the fastest data available, and I love physical oceanography — large circulation, ocean currents and technology.”

Apprentices are also exposed to the collaborative nature of oceanography by experiencing firsthand how to work in teams with other students and senior researchers, learning how projects are better when people with diverse backgrounds work together towards a common goal. This also gives apprentices the opportunity to connect with people who may not be directly related to the project, but are willing and able to offer assistance, to bounce ideas around or offer a different point of view.

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Terryl Ross

The University of Washington College of the Environment’s Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Terryl Ross is the recipient of the American Society of Public Administration (ASPA)’s 2020 Gloria Hobson Nordin Social Equity Award. ASPA is the largest and most prominent broad-based professional association in American public administration. It has a diverse membership of approximately 8,000 practitioners, academicians and students.

The Gloria Hobson Nordin Award was established in 2003. It recognizes lifetime achievement and effort in the cause of social equity. Candidates are evaluated on three criteria: the impact of their efforts on social equity, the consistency, and level of effort on behalf of social equity and the duration of the effort on behalf of social equity. Ross was nominated by J. Paul Blake, former president of ASPA’s Evergreen Chapter and current District IV Representative on ASPA’s National Council.

“ASPA has an impressive history of being committed to social equity. It’s certainly an honor to be nominated for such an award and even greater to win it. This is one of the most meaningful awards I have received in my life,” says Ross. “My only regret is that I will not get to meet the wonderful leaders from ASPA, in person, and I will not get to see H. George Fredrickson, a former winner of this award. They all know him as the person who came up with the theory of social equity being a “third pillar” of public administration. I know him as the president of Eastern Washington University when I was student body president and he also wrote my letter of recommendation when I applied for my MA at Syracuse University. He’s in his 80s now and I have not seen him in almost 40 years, I can’t wait to give him a hug!”

Ross came to the UW in 1992 as a doctoral student in the Educational and Communication Technology program housed in the College of Education. Immediately noticing room for improvement in the University’s diversity efforts, he created the Multicultural Organization of Students Actively Involved in Change (MOSAIC) and became a member of the newly formed Multicultural Alumni Partnership.

Ross continues his work in diversity and inclusion today as he collaborates with College stakeholders to envision diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the college. He works to accomplish these goals through empowering the College’s diversity champions, his commitment to environmental justice, and focusing on efforts that will make the biggest impact.

Congratulations, Terryl!

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As residents in Washington and much of the nation are confined to their homes and apartments under COVID-19 restrictions, many people are missing their usual “nature escapes”: that hike to a serene lake, a mountain bike trail through the woods, or even a favorite campground by a river where you can relax and recharge.

As studies have shown — and personal experiences can attest — spending time in nature helps reduce anxiety, improve mental health and well-being, and bolster physical health.

In light of stay-at-home orders, University of Washington researchers share that studies also show there is much to be gained from nature close to home, whether in a yard, on neighborhood walks or even indoors.

“Studies have proven that even the smallest bit of nature — a single tree, a small patch of flowers, a house plant — can generate health benefits,” said Kathleen Wolf, a UW research social scientist in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. “Look closely in your neighborhood, and the bit of nature you may have taken for granted up until now may become the focus of your attention and help you feel better.”

Thousands of studies have shown nature’s positive impact on health and well-being, even in urban areas and for people living in more confined areas. One study found that a 20-minute “dose” of nature in cities reduced stress levels. Another showed that more tree cover helped lessen symptoms of depression among residents of nursing homes. A study in Sweden found that access to a garden significantly reduced participants’ stress. Access to gardens or views of nature can even reduce the strength and frequency of food cravings.

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The Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG) has awarded School of Earth and Spaces Sciences’ Professor David Montgomery the 2020 Vega Medal in honor of his achievements in physical geography, especially within the field of geomorphology.

The objective of the SSAG is to promote the development of anthropology, geography, and closely related sciences in Sweden, to serve as a connecting link between scientists within these disciplines and the public, to initiate and maintain relations with foreign societies, and to support research in these areas.

David Montgomery is a geomorphologist who looks at the processes shaping Earth’s surface and how they affect ecological systems—and human societies. He has studied everything from the ways that landslides and glaciers influence the height of mountain ranges, to the way that soils have shaped human civilizations now and in the past. He has worked in mountain ranges throughout the world, from the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest, to the Andes in South America and Tibet and the Himalaya in Central Asia. 

In addition to his academic work, he has written a number of popular science books, three of which won the Washington State Book Award. His most recent book, Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life focuses on the potential for regenerative farming practice to reshape agriculture. He is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and has received many awards throughout his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship.

Congratulations, David!

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