A researcher from the UW Wetland Ecosystem Team studies how well the new seawall protects salmon and the organisms that feed them.
Seattle is reimagining and creating a living urban waterfront — building a healthy future for the city’s people, wildlife, culture and economy. The UW has been part of the project from the start.
Seattle’s waterfront renewal is one of the region’s most ambitious and innovative undertakings since the Seattle World’s Fair transformed the city in 1962. Finally reconnecting Seattle’s waterfront to its downtown, this $750 million renovation and restoration will create a network of public parks, cultural celebration spaces and an expanded aquarium — while building a sophisticated, seismically sound, salmon-friendly new seawall. Decades of work and thousands of people — including University of Washington scientists, faculty and alumni — have contributed to transforming 17 waterfront blocks into welcoming walkways and scenic parks cradled between the city’s sparkling skyline and the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains. From research and history to urban planning, ecology, engineering, art, philanthropy and beyond, the UW has been integral to this monumental civic project.
Warming oceans have decimated marine parasites — but that’s not a good thing
Katherine Maslenikov/UW Burke Museum
A researcher holds open a preserved fish specimen that has been inspected for parasites. New research finds a decline in the number of fish parasites as oceans warmed.
More than a century of preserved fish specimens offer a rare glimpse into long-term trends in parasite populations. New research from the University of Washington shows that fish parasites plummeted from 1880 to 2019, a 140-year stretch when Puget Sound — their habitat and the second largest estuary in the mainland U.S. — warmed significantly.
The study, published the week of Jan. 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the world’s largest and longest dataset of wildlife parasite abundance. It suggests that parasites may be especially vulnerable to a changing climate.
“People generally think that climate change will cause parasites to thrive, that we will see an increase in parasite outbreaks as the world warms,” said lead author Chelsea Wood, a UW associate professor of aquatic and fishery sciences. “For some parasite species that may be true, but parasites depend on hosts, and that makes them particularly vulnerable in a changing world where the fate of hosts is being reshuffled.”
Plastic pollution in the oceans is an equity issue, says UW-led report
Mari Shibuya
This illustration, by Seattle-based artist Mari Shibuya, depicts how plastic waste of different sizes can travel through the marine environment to end up in fish, on beaches, or inside people’s bodies.
Many people are aware of plastic pollution in the oceans. Photos of turtles or seabirds entangled in plastic garbage first went viral in the 1990s, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now the focus of highly publicized cleanup efforts.
Less recognized is how marine plastic waste affects human populations, and the unequal burden on different communities. A report, “Towards an Equitable Approach to Marine Plastics Pollution,” outlines the current situation and attempts to address the problem.
“We all benefit from plastics, but some people are paying more of the external costs in terms of the environmental damage, well-being issues and just horrendous scenes that they must live with in places they call home,” said project leader Yoshitaka Ota, a University of Washington professor of practice in marine and environmental affairs and director of The Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center.
Increasingly, the greenhouse gases causing climate change are seen as an issue in which some countries produce most of the pollution while other countries or groups are more at risk from the long-term consequences. Plastic pollution, this report argues, is a similar issue for coastal communities.
The report, published in late November, includes 31 authors from nine countries. It incorporates case studies and analyses from around the world as well as larger, overarching recommendations for change.
The importance of the atmosphere and ocean in determining the fate of Antarctica
NASA/USGS and Frazer Christie/University of Cambridge
Landsat 9 satellite imagery shows the fractured front of the Crosson Ice Shelf in the Amundsen Sector of West Antarctica. The pace of the ice shelf’s retreat slowed in this region from 2003 to 2015. New research shows that changes in offshore winds brought less warm seawater into contact with the glacier.
An international team of researchers has combined satellite imagery and climate and ocean records to obtain the most detailed understanding yet of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet — which contains enough ice to raise global sea level by 11 feet, or 3.3 meters — is responding to climate change.
The researchers, from the University of Washington, the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, found that the pace and extent of ice destabilization along West Antarctica’s coast varies according to differences in regional climate.
The study, published Jan. 16 in Nature Communications, shows that while the West Antarctic Ice Sheet continues to retreat, the pace of retreat slowed in a key region between 2003 and 2015. This slowdown was driven by ocean temperatures, which were in turn caused by variations in offshore winds.
“Ocean and atmospheric forcing mechanisms still really, really matter in West Antarctica,” said co-author Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. “That means that ice-sheet collapse is not inevitable. It depends on how climate changes over the next few decades, which we could influence in a positive way by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
Dan’s research interests focus on land-use change as an outcome of social and ecological processes, and its effects on ecosystems and human well-being. His work connects a simulation modeling of land-use-change processes with GIS and remotely sensed data on historical patterns of landscape change and social surveys.
For the last four years, Dan has served as director of SEFS, playing a vital role in guiding the School’s academic growth and developing new initiatives. Dan provides leadership and management of SEFS programs, centers, and research grants, allocating revenues in a manner that supports its mission while enhancing its sizable and growing endowment. In addition, the SEFS director also sits on the Natural Resources Board of Washington State, which oversees the management of state lands. Dan will continue to serve as the Corkery Family Environmental and Forest Sciences Director’s Endowed Chair.
“I do not need to tell you how challenging the last few years have been for everyone. As such, I am grateful that Dan is willing to stay on to guide SEFS through the strategic planning already underway within the School, and to continue to build up a school that is already thriving in many ways, ” said UW College of the Environment Dean Maya Tolstoy. “The Review Committee highlighted the strong desire of the SEFS community to work together with a mutually agreed upon mission, so the strategic planning is particularly timely and important. I look forward to working with Dan and all of you to help maintain the excellence of the School, within a culture that welcomes and supports all faculty, postdocs, staff and students.”
Thanks are due to the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences Director Review Committee for their hard work and outreach to the SEFS community, including Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh, Chair (Professor Emerita, UW Department of Biology), Greg Ettl (SEFS Associate Professor), Caroline Feng (Dean’s Office), Jim Pfaendtner (Professor and Chair, UW Chemical Engineering), and Aaron Wirsing (SEFS Professor).
Please join the College in congratulating Dan and extending our thanks for continuing to serve in this critical leadership role.
