June 2019
Fueled by floods: Cambodian people’s food security threatened by hydropower demands
What does the 2019 fire season look like for Washington? UW experts weigh in
Wildfire season is already upon us. In 2018, roughly 1700 fires occurred in Washington, burning 500,000 acres of forested land and immediately affecting thousands of people in rural communities. Wildfires have a larger, regional impact too – long term exposure to smoke can increase the risk of heart and lung disease, as well as increase sensitivity to asthma.
So what’s in store for Washington this year as the 2019 wildfire season gets underway? We asked four of UW’s climate and wildfire experts to weigh in.
Wildfire season is here in Washington – how is this year shaping up compared to other years? What might we expect?
Brian Harvey, assistant professor in Environmental and Forest Sciences:
Wildfire season is certainly here. When you look at the historical record of large fire years in this part of North America, the trend corresponds well with snowpack. Lower snowpack means an earlier than average start for fire season. We have lower than average snow pack this year – the ingredients are here for a fire season that could be fairly active in Washington.
Crystal Raymond, climate adaptation specialist at the Climate Impacts Group:
The exceptionally dry March enabled several small fires to start in western Washington, much earlier than normal. Although some moisture returned to the region in Spring, western Washington is still drier than average and has an elevated potential for wildfire this season. This dry trend is expected to continue through July and August, and by July, northeastern Washington is also expected to have an elevated potential for wildfire.
Karin Bumbaco, assistant state climatologist in the Office of the Washington State Climatologist:
The Wildland Fire Potential Outlook from the National Interagency Coordination Center has increased chances for wildfires in western WA beginning in May throughout the summer. It is fairly unusual to see these elevated odds of fire this early in the season, particularly west of the Cascade Mountains. Winter as a whole was drier than normal in western WA and even with the impressive lowland snow we saw in February, our snowpack was below normal. On top of that, May was warmer and drier than normal in western WA. For these reasons, Governor Inslee declared a drought emergency in several watersheds, anticipating potential problems for water supply this summer. This translates into a potential increase in wildfire activity and associated impacts, like poor air quality.
Susan Prichard, research scientist in Environmental and Forest Sciences:
This chart shows us that the snowpack in North Cascades is lower than in previous years. In our region, dry summers generally correspond to more severe wildfire seasons but it’s not as simple as saying “when there is a dry spring there will be wildfires.” For example, the summer of 2015 was a record-setting wildfire year for Washington State with numerous lightning events and hot, dry windy days that led to explosive fire spread. However, an even drier spring in 2005 didn’t add up to a severe wildfire season because we didn’t have numerous fire starts lining up with extreme fire weather.
When we think about changing wildfire regimes, do other factors come into play besides increasing regional and global temperatures?
Karin Bumbaco:
There are lots of factors that determine the severity of the fire season, and one important ingredient is a fire ignition. Fires are typically classified as either lightning or human-caused, and the jury is still out on whether weather patterns will change in such a way where lightning-caused fires will increase in the future or not. Other important ingredients are extended periods of dry conditions, low humidity, and wind to help spread the fire.
Susan Prichard:
The majority of forested landscapes in eastern Washington have a legacy of fire exclusion. As we move into an era of warmer, drier summers with longer and often more severe wildfire seasons, many forests are chock-full of live and dead vegetation (called fuel) and predisposed to large fires. Through a combination of factors, including displacement of Native people (and the associated cessation of indigenous burning practices) as well as widespread livestock grazing in the late 1800s and early 1900s that reduced grass cover, fires became less frequent in our region. In the absence of fire, forests have grown denser and multi-layered, leaving them vulnerable to large wildfire events.
Brian Harvey:
In some areas of the state, past suppression of fires has led to forests that now have uncharacteristically high levels of fuel. This is particularly true in forests covering much of the east (dry) side of the Cascades, where risk of severe fire is greater now than it would have been naturally. On the west (wet) side of the Cascades, fires were historically less frequent but when they did occur tended to be large and severe because the fuel loads regularly accumulated over centuries between fires, naturally. But as climate warms, we could be seeing conditions more conducive to big fires occurring more frequently on the west side.
Crystal Raymond:
Precipitation, especially in the summer, is an important control over our fire season. Other important short-term factors include dry lightning storms, low relative humidity, high wind speeds, and east wind events that bring dry air from the interior to the coast. At longer timescales, changes in the vegetation – from management or climate change, for example – can also affect the fire regime. Some trees and plants are well adapted to fire and others are less so – an abundance of poorly-adapted trees result in larger, more severe fires.
How does your work help inform our understanding of wildfire risk and management?
Brian Harvey:
A really solid understanding of fire ecology has been developed over the years by many folks at UW and partner agencies in this region. Now we’re seeing forest fire regimes changing right in front of our eyes. We need to know not only how forests respond to fire, but also to disease and insect outbreaks. In my work, we study how fires and other forest disturbances operate, and then we measure how the forest responds. Are fires burning differently than they did in the past? What kind of forest is coming back after fire? Is it different than how forests responded for fires in the past? We then use these insights to inform approaches to forest management and co-develop new strategies with landowners and managers to promote forests and communities that are resilient to fire.
Susan Prichard:
I study the role of fire as a restoration tool. Forest managers in eastern Washington are successfully using a combination of forest thinning and prescribed burning to reduce fire hazard in fire-prone forests dominated by ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir. Through the reintroduction of fire, forests become more open with less fuel on the ground and fewer layers within their canopies. This change in structure leaves them much less vulnerable to summer wildfires and also more prepared to survive summer droughts and attacks by native insects such as bark beetles.
As we move into a warmer, drier summers in the Pacific Northwest, we need to increase the pace and scale of dry forest restoration projects. Forest management to reduce fire risk and increase the resilience of forests to fire really works. It is both humbling and inspiring to realize that Native people in our Region and elsewhere already knew these lessons and actively used fire to promote more open forest conditions and sustainably live within fire-prone places.
Crystal Raymond:
We are currently working with local, state, federal and tribal governments to increase understanding and action on wildfire risk in western Washington in a changing climate. In western Washington, the response options are less clear than they are in dry forest regions, and we are working with organizations there to better understand the appropriate response.
Karin Bumbaco:
The Office of the Washington State Climatologist monitors weather and climate conditions throughout the entire year, with a specific focus on monitoring for drought conditions.
First book published on fishes of the Salish Sea
The first book documenting all of the known species of fishes that live in the Salish Sea is now available.
“Fishes of the Salish Sea” is a three-volume book and is the culmination of more than 40 years of research by authors Theodore W. Pietsch, curator emeritus of fishes of the Burke Museum and University of Washington professor emeritus of aquatic and fishery sciences, and James W. Orr, a scientist with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and a former graduate student of Pietsch’s and affiliate professor and curator of fishes at the Burke Museum.
The 260 fish species recorded in the book is a new record for the Salish Sea, representing a 20% increase from the last survey about 40 years ago.
“It’s quite astonishing to think that people haven’t really known what’s here in any detail,” Pietsch said. “In preparing this book, we’ve really turned over every stone to make sure we have every fish species ever recorded from our inland marine waters.”
Read more at UW News »Spend time outdoors this summer to reap health benefits
Fresh air, lush foliage, open space and sunshine. Time spent outdoors isn’t just good for the soul—research at University of Washington EarthLab is showing it’s also good for the mind and body.
Even in the Pacific Northwest, where the weather is often, let’s say, less than optimal, getting out into nature brings with it a host of health benefits.
And there are plenty of options in the Seattle area, even in the heart of the city.
“There’s good evidence that spending time outside can reduce stress, depression levels, and anxiety,” says Josh Lawler, UW Environmental & Forest Sciences professor and director of the Nature and Health Initiative, a multidisciplinary research program launched last fall with funding from REI.
Research has shown we’re spending more and more time cooped up inside. The Environmental Protection Agency found that Americans spend an average of 90 percent of their time indoors.
The risks aren’t limited to the effects of a sedentary lifestyle: people indoors are exposed to levels of pollutants, like cleaning products and paint, that are 2 to 5 times higher than outdoors.
Time spent in nature, on the other hand, offers a catalogue of positive effects that is long and often surprising.
Outdoor time can reduce the risk of type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and preterm birth. Surgery patients who can see a natural scene out a window experience less pain and recover faster.
The mechanism isn’t exactly clear yet, Lawler says. “We suspect that one of the routes for the physical benefits is through decreased stress and anxiety.” In other words, feeling better on the inside benefits the entire body.
Some studies have even shown that people who start out more depressed and anxious seem to experience a greater effect, Lawler says.
In 2018, a research team at the UW College of the Environment launched a pilot study on how outdoor expeditions can help war veterans grappling with PTSD. A full clinical trial is planned as early as 2020.
The upside of outdoor time is especially important to children, says Pooja Tandon, a pediatrician at UW Medicine. “Our indoor environments are increasingly filled with screens and other reasons to be sedentary.”
Today’s kids spend less time outdoors than any previous generation: an average of only four to seven minutes, versus a daily recommendation of a full hour.
Tandon says that studies focusing on the mental health benefits to children from playing outdoors are the most compelling. For example, children diagnosed with ADHD can concentrate better after spending time outdoors.
Time spent outdoors may also be crucial for normal eye development in kids—provided they wear sunglasses when necessary.
One angle researchers are still exploring is what exactly qualifies as “nature,” Lawler says. The spectrum ranges from hiking in wilderness areas to filling your house with plants to viewing a leafy scene on television.
“The hypothesis is that more is better, but we don’t know yet,” Lawler says. An important study done by UW’s Peter Kahn found that viewing an outdoor scene on a plasma screen does have some effect, but not as much as a real view.
Whatever form it takes, the importance of enjoying the outdoors is becoming increasingly clear. “Our family time is easier when we’re outdoors, definitely,” Tandon says. “Whether it’s just us or with friends, my boys tend to have a more positive experience outdoors—and so do I.”
Where to Get Outside in Seattle
There aren’t many cities that have as many outdoor options close at hand as Seattle does. Here are just a few.
Tree Nirvana
One of Lawler’s favorite local destinations for a green fix is the 90-acre Center for Urban Horticulture, part of the UW Botanic Gardens. “You get water, trees, a bunch of different environments, and the birds that come through in the spring are great,” he says.
The gardens also include the 230-acre Washington Park Arboretum on the shore of Lake Washington.
“People just can’t even believe that this space exists in the middle of the city. It’s really an opportunity to disconnect from the urban busyness of life,” says Adult Education Supervisor Jessica Farmer. Unlike most botanical gardens, she adds, admission is free.
The gardens offer numerous activities for families and kids, from the Fiddleheads Forest School for preschoolers to summer camps and tram tours of the arboretum.
Paddle and Row
Want to explore Union Bay? Rent a kayak, rowboat or canoe at the UW Waterfront Activities Center, a short hop from the UW light rail station.
Keep an eye peeled for bald eagles and osprey, and if you’re feeling ambitious, you can paddle all the way to the Washington Park Arboretum.
Natural Medicine
It’s surprising how few people know about the Medicinal Herb Garden run by the UW Department of Biology, considering it started in 1911.
The two-acre plot has thousands of plants native to most environments on Earth, from deserts to tropical rainforests.
Its collection is constantly changing and growing with additions from around the world.
The garden’s entrance is near the UW chemistry building; look for the monkey statues on top of a pair of columns.
Take a Hike
It takes a little over an hour to drive to Pack Forest in Eatonville, an outdoor classroom where UW students study sustainable forestry.
The experimental forest covers over 4,300 acres of rolling Rainier foothills.
Within its boundaries, the Newton Creek Reserve protects 300 acres of lowland old growth forest.
A handful of trails snake through the forest. The 5.2-mile 1000 Road Loop is open to mountain bikers, while the 1.8-mile Hugo Peak Trail climbs almost 1,000 feet through second growth Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar.
Nature and Health is housed within UW’s EarthLab, an organization dedicated to accelerating and focusing UW expertise to address large-scale environmental challenges, making a positive impact on people’s lives and livelihoods.
Article by Julian Smith
Seismologists seek space on volunteers’ floors and lawns to study Seattle seismic risks
The Puget Sound area is vulnerable to several types of seismic risks. We might fixate on “The Really Big One” – the offshore hazard famously profiled in The New Yorker – but other dangers lurk closer underfoot, and might actually deliver more damage to Seattle.
The nature of the ground beneath the city — a roughly 4-mile-deep basin filled with soil and soft rock — makes the urban core especially vulnerable to seismic shaking.
“In our 3D simulations, we see these basins light up with strong shaking, but we need to verify that these basins are shaped the way we think they are,” said Alex Hutko, a research scientist with the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network based at the University of Washington. “We know the basics, but there’s a lot of useful detail that could help us strengthen infrastructure in the right locations.”
Hutko is coordinating volunteers for a series of experiments, and is lead scientist of one of them, all of which aim to better map the Seattle Basin and study how the soft fill can magnify and distort the trapped seismic waves that can slosh back and forth like water in a bathtub.
The UW group has six very sensitive seismometers that can detect both fast and slow shaking. The researchers will put them out for three to six weeks at each site, moving from the Seattle area gradually south toward Tacoma.
“It seems crazy to put very sensitive instruments in the middle of a noisy city,” said Paul Bodin, a UW research professor of Earth and space sciences. “Seattle has all kinds of ambient vibrations — traffic, waves on bodies of water, wind blowing on buildings, trains. It’s a situation that most seismologists would run from. But in this case, that noise is providing us with the data.”
The first round of data collection, now under way, includes a site at Woodland Park Zoo and other cement floors north of Seattle’s ship canal. Hutko’s team will remove the equipment in the first week of June and install the six instruments at new sites, moving slightly southward each time. They hope to eventually expand the study’s scope to include neighboring sedimentary basins in Tacoma, Everett and beyond.
Puget Sound residents who want their property to be considered to host a station can submit their address and contact information at https://pnsn.org/about/seattle-tacoma-urban-experiment.
Read more at UW News »Building SciComm skills through lessons from Washington’s coast
The coast of Washington is a remote and wild place, where waves bash the rocky shoreline, whales meander just offshore and tidepools teem with eye-popping displays of life. That wildness is precisely what Zoe van Duivenbode relished about her time as a marine educator stationed at Kalaloch Beach, working for Olympic National Park. She spent her days exploring the coast, taking detailed notes and painting the seascapes in front of her, thinking about ways she could connect the lessons of the sea to visiting tourists on their summer vacation.
“I spent all my time in the intertidal zone,” Zoe says. “If I wasn’t leading interpretative programs during the low tide, you could find me knee deep in water searching every crevasse for nudibranchs, chitons and any other marine invertebrate that may be hiding.”
A native of Long Beach, California, Zoe’s connection to the sea stretches over her life and is a constant. Now in her second year at the College of the Environment’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, she focuses on how climate change and ocean acidification will impact social and ecological communities. A core piece of her work includes becoming a better communicator of science to inspire people of all ages to be caretakers of our planet.
So when the opportunity arose to work on the coast and work with visitors across the United States and world, Zoe jumped at the chance. She was awarded the Future Park Leaders for Emerging Change Internship, a program for graduate students to work on climate issues related to emerging needs in national parks. Zoe brought her expertise on climate and oceans, helping with the Junior Ranger program, leading park visitors on tide pool walks, and hosting evening programs at the Kalaloch campground.
No day was the same, and Zoe was struck by the fact that people from all walks of life were drawn to the park, seeking to learn about the forests and the ocean. Many were visiting the coast for the first time.
“There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach when it comes to communicating science and I definitely learned that this summer, “ said Zoe. “Each program I hosted was different as no audience was ever the same. Some days rambunctious kids dominated the audience, while other days the crowd included UW scientists and were primarily adults. Because of how variable and diverse the audience was from day to day, it was a great challenge in learning how to be adaptive and tailor your communication to fit the needs of who were presenting to.”
All of that practice allowed Zoe to hone how she talked about ocean science with park patrons. One topic she talked a lot about was ocean acidification, which can be a difficult concept to convey. But she was able to break down complex topics using analogies and issues people deal with in their daily lives. By learning about marine organisms that were directly impacted by changing ocean conditions during her tide pool walks, visitors began to understand how the oceans are changing, and more people wanted to know what they could do about it.
She was also able to use her time to help the National Park Service take its first steps in developing an ocean acidification communication toolkit, which will help rangers and park scientists track ocean acidification research and monitoring programs taking place in national parks across the country, and to provide them with information on impacts to marine species and ecosystems. Additionally, the toolkit will include a suite of outreach and education materials, effective communication tips, interpretive programs and case studies of different ocean acidification monitoring projects taking place within the national parks for interpreters and educators.
Back on campus, Zoe turned her attention to a more urban setting as a Climate Communications Intern at King County, working to ensure that information on climate change is accessible to all communities in south King County. She is currently wrapping up her time at UW and preparing to head to California, where she accepted a position with San Mateo County’s Office of Sustainability leading a K-12 program on climate change and sea level rise.
“My summer working for Olympic National Park and on the Washington coast really ignited my passion for science communication. For me, this field is about exploring innovative and non-traditional approaches to science communication that are engaging, informative, and inspirational, as a way to foster meaning experiences and connections with people.”
Mysterious holes in Antarctic sea ice explained by years of robotic data
The winter ice on the surface of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea occasionally forms an enormous hole. A hole that appeared in 2016 and 2017 drew intense curiosity from scientists and reporters. Though even bigger gaps had formed decades before, this was the first time oceanographers had a chance to truly monitor the unexpected gap in Antarctic winter sea ice.
A new study led by researchers in the UW School of Oceanography combines satellite images of the sea ice cover, robotic drifters and even seals outfitted with sensors to better understand the phenomenon. The research explores why this hole appears in only some years, and what role it could play in the larger ocean circulation.
The study was published June 10 in the journal Nature.
“We thought this large hole in the sea ice — known as a polynya — was something that was rare, maybe a process that had gone extinct. But the events in 2016 and 2017 forced us to reevaluate that,” said lead author Ethan Campbell, a UW doctoral student in oceanography. “Observations show that the recent polynyas opened from a combination of factors — one being the unusual ocean conditions, and the other being a series of very intense storms that swirled over the Weddell Sea with almost hurricane-force winds.”
Read more at UW News »July 6, 2019 - July 7, 2019
COASST Seattle Training Weekend
July 12, 2019
UW Environment Future Student Visit Day
Check out our calendar for more events
- Teaching the teachers how to teach kids about climate science, The Seattle Times/Climate Impacts Group
- Salmon merging onto new ‘highway’ in Seattle, complete with rest stops and restaurants, The Seattle Times/Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
- Biologists stumped by sudden surge in gray whale deaths, New York Post/Oceanography
- Nature for health: Digging deeper into our need to be outside, Range/EarthLab
- Training the next generation of women scientists, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
- Why scientists are lurking on bears from space, Crosscut/Environmental and Forest Sciences
- Recent grad hired as Pack Forest Operations Manager, Environmental and Forest Sciences
- An even more inconvenient truth , ProPublica/Atmospheric Sciences
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