As tourists and residents visit Seattle’s downtown waterfront, it may not be immediately apparent they are walking on arguably the largest, most ambitious urban seawall project in the world that prioritizes habitat for young fish and the invertebrates they feed on.

The first segment of the new seawall along Seattle’s Elliott Bay is nearly complete, stretching north from the Colman Dock to the Seattle Aquarium. The new seawall, part of the City’s Waterfront Seattle project, includes habitat features that protect and encourage young salmon to migrate along the shore, while still allowing for normal waterfront commerce and activity.

University of Washington researchers have published an initial analysis of the effectiveness of the new habitat features as part of an ongoing partnership with the Seattle Department of Transportation. The study found that adding steps ― which are shelf-like structures protruding from the vertical underwater wall ― helped recruit a greater diversity of organisms such as algae and small invertebrates that juvenile salmon feed upon as they migrate along the shore through Puget Sound and out to the ocean.

“The big question with urban shorelines is how to protect infrastructure while maintaining stability with sea-level rise and storms — and still try to restore natural processes,” said Jason Toft, a research scientist at the UW’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and a co-author of the new study appearing in the book Living Shorelines: The Science and Management of Nature-Based Coastal Protection. “We are trying to address what other cities can learn from Seattle’s approach, and what we can add to the global discussion of how to both protect and restore our shorelines.”

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Mark Stone/University of Washington

Unseen in the air around us are tiny molecules that drive the chemical cocktail of our atmosphere. As plants, animals, volcanoes, wildfires and human activities spew particles into the atmosphere, some of these molecules act as cleanup crews that remove that pollution.

The main molecules responsible for breaking down all these emissions are called oxidants. The oxygen-containing molecules, mainly ozone and hydrogen-based detergents, react with pollutants and reactive greenhouse gases, such as methane. 

A University of Washington study published May 18 in the journal Nature finds that during large climate swings, oxidants shift in a different direction than researchers had expected, which means they need to rethink what controls these chemicals in our air. Lei Geng, former UW postdoctoral researcher now at Grenoble Alpes University, is the study’s first author.

“Oxidants are very reactive, and they react with pollutants and greenhouse gases and clean up the atmosphere,” said corresponding author Becky Alexander, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences. “We wanted to see how the ability of the atmosphere to clean itself might change with climate.”

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Nathan Bennett, University of Washington/University of British Columbia

A diverse group of the world’s leading experts in marine conservation is calling for a Hippocratic Oath for ocean conservation ― not unlike the pledge physicians take to uphold specific ethical standards when practicing medicine.

A code of conduct for marine conservation would help prevent human rights violations that might occur during conservation and promote fair, socially responsible decision-making when planning and carrying out actions to protect the ocean. The recommendations were published May 15 in the journal Marine Policy.

“The benefit of developing a code of conduct is that we are taking past mistakes and learning from them,” said lead author Nathan Bennett, a postdoctoral researcher at UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and Fulbright Visiting Scholar. “We are trying to suggest a way forward and ultimately to increase the success of conservation.”

An international group of academics and practitioners from universities, government agencies and nonprofit organizations convened at the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress ― the world’s largest recurring conservation event ― in Honolulu last year to discuss the need for a marine code of conduct and put together a framework for what such a document would include. This discussion, along with a review of existing conservation policies, is summarized in the new paper.

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The sage grouse is an exceptionally showy bird and an icon of the American West. But its sagebrush habitat is disappearing, and there is debate over how best to protect the populations in an increasingly developed landscape.

A new study by University of Washington, state and federal researchers analyzed sage grouse in Eastern Washington and showed a surprisingly large benefit from a federal program that subsidizes farmers to plant year-round grasses and native shrubs instead of crops. Although the program was adopted for many different reasons, the study finds it is probably the reason sage grouse still live in portions of Washington’s Columbia Basin. The study will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management.

“Without these lands, our models predict that we would lose about two thirds of the species’ habitat, and that the sage grouse would go extinct in two of three subpopulations,” said first author Andrew Shirk, a research scientist with UW Climate Impacts Group. 

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John E. Vidale, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences, is among 84 new members and 21 foreign associates elected this week as members of the National Academy of Sciences. Academy members are recognized for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research, according to a news release from the academy.

Vidale studies Earth’s interior, including earthquakes and volcanoes. Some of his research at the UW has looked at how volcanoes ‘scream’ before they erupt, how silent earthquakes release energy beneath Puget Sound, and mapping the volcanic plumbing beneath Mount St. Helens using seismic ultrasound. He is director of the UW’s M9 Project, an interdisciplinary effort to prepare for a magnitude-9 earthquake.

Vidale is also active in applied work and public communication about natural hazards. Since 2006 he has directed the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, which tracks all seismic activity in the region, and serves as Washington’s state seismologist. He also is involved in the current effort to build a West Coast earthquake early warning system, which would provide seconds to minutes of warning for the damaging effects of a large earthquake.

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University of Washington

The mountain pine beetle has destroyed more than 40 million acres of forest in the western United States — an area roughly the size of Washington state.

The beetles introduce a fungus that prevents water and critical nutrients from traveling within a tree. They also lay eggs under the conifers’ bark, and their feeding larvae help kill trees — sometimes just weeks after the initial attack. Dead trees can fall at any moment or add fuel to wildfires, and scientists and land managers are left scrambling to deal with millions of these precarious giants. Harvesting the wood isn’t an option because the infestation stains it and causes the tree to crack inside.

A University of Washington team, including Environmental and Forest Sciences‘ Fernando Resende, has made headway on a solution to remove beetle-killed trees from the forest and use them to make renewable transportation fuels or high-value chemicals. The researchers have refined this technique to process larger pieces of wood, saving time and money in future commercial applications. They published their methods last month in the journal Fuel.

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