WA DNR

Before humans intervened in forest ecosystems, disturbances such as fire, wind storms and diseases wracked segments of the landscape, killing off swathes of trees and providing spaces for regrowth. Today, forest conditions are largely constrained by logging and conservation strategies, but scientists are recognizing the ecological and community benefits of letting a forest behave in more natural patterns.

Scientists at the University of Washington and the state Department of Natural Resources intend to test a management approach that mimics natural disturbance patterns and processes across a portion of the Olympic Peninsula, an area known for having the most rainfall in the lower 48 states, high tree-growth rates and old-growth forests, part of which remain today.

Their experiment will compare different types, intensities and patterns of disturbance and regrowth within 16 watersheds on the western Olympic Peninsula. It will also look at how forest management can sustain rural communities that depend on the forest. Considering community well-being in resource management is growing widely, and the experiment will try to achieve a balance of providing for both people and the ecosystem they are a part of.

“This is so central to the entire management of the Olympic Peninsula right now,” said Bernard Bormann, director of the UW’s Olympic Natural Resources Center near Forks, Washington, and one of the lead authors of the study proposal.

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Tiina Itkonen

Polar bears depend on sea ice for essential tasks like hunting and breeding. As Arctic sea ice disappears due to climate change, bears across the species’ 19 subpopulations are feeling the strain.

But even as scientists try to quantify just how much melting sea ice is affecting polar bears, another group that depends on the iconic mammal for subsistence also is at risk of losing an important nutritional and economic resource. Indigenous people throughout the Arctic harvest polar bears each year. How that activity ― combined with climate change over the long term ― will impact bear populations in the future requires more science and monitoring.

A new, two-part University of Washington project aims to explore the interacting effects of climate change and subsistence hunting on polar bears, while also illuminating the cultural value of the species to indigenous peoples and the role they play in conservation. Led by Kristin Laidre, a marine biologist at the UW’s Polar Science Center and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, the three-year project will include a public art-science exhibition that combines photography, storytelling and science focused on polar bears, climate change and local Inuit communities in Greenland.

“Broadly, people know polar bears are negatively affected by loss of sea ice, so they are understandably upset to hear polar bears are also being hunted,” Laidre said. “The reality is, the reason for the projected decline of polar bears is a much bigger, global problem related to human-caused climate change and is largely unrelated to harvest. Managing and conserving polar bears in a changing climate has to include working closely with local Arctic communities and respecting subsistence needs.”

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Dan Jaffe/University of Washington Bothell

An unusually warm patch of seawater off the West Coast in late 2014 and 2015, nicknamed “the blob,” had cascading effects up and down the coast. Its sphere of influence was centered on the marine environment but extended to weather on land.

A University of Washington Bothell study now shows that this strong offshore pattern also influenced air quality. The climate pattern increased ozone levels above Washington, Oregon, western Utah and northern California, according to a study published Feb. 15 in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

“Washington and Oregon was really the bullseye for the whole thing, because of the location of the winds,” said lead author Dan Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric sciences at UW Bothell. “Salt Lake City and Sacramento were on the edge of this event, but because their ozone is typically higher, those cities felt some of the more acute effects.”

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NASA ICE / James Yungel

Thwaites Glacier on the edge of West Antarctica is one of the planet’s fastest-moving glaciers. Research shows that it is sliding unstoppably into the ocean, mainly due to warmer seawater lapping at its underside.

But the details of its collapse remain uncertain. The details are necessary to provide a timeline for when to expect 2 feet of global sea level rise, and when this glacier’s loss will help destabilize the much larger West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Recent efforts have used satellites to map the underlying terrain, which affects how quickly the ice mass will move, and measure the glacier’s thickness and speed to understand the physics of its changes.

Researchers at the University of Washington — including Earth and Space Sciences‘ Ben Smith, Alexander Huth and Ian Joughin — and the University of Edinburgh used data from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 to identify a sudden drainage of large pools below Thwaites Glacier, one of two fast-moving glaciers at the edge of the ice sheet. The study published Feb. 8 in The Cryosphere finds four interconnected lakes drained in the eight months from June 2013 and January 2014. The glacier sped up by about 10 percent during that time, showing that the glacier’s long-term movement is fairly oblivious to trickles at its underside.

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