Sea Lessons: Oceanography major Deana Crouser’s adventures aboard the R/V Carson
A year ago, UW Oceanography undergraduate Deana Crouser would never have imagined herself filming marine animals in the dark. At the time, she was a chemical engineering major struggling to figure out how to apply her education to helping the environment, a cause she had always believed in. Then she took an introduction to oceanography course.
“It felt like I was in a TED Talk every time I went to class,” says Deana, now a senior. “The lab is very hands-on. You have to do lots of experiments, and then you go on a day trip on the R/V Carson. Once I did that, I was all in.”
After changing her major to oceanography at the UW College of the Environment, Crouser landed a summer internship and worked in the lab of Professor Julie Keister. As part of her studies, Deana joined a 10-day research cruise to study the relationship between local water conditions and tiny marine animals in Hood Canal.
Bubble streams off Washington’s coast provide clues to what will happen during a major earthquake
Off the coast of Washington, columns of methane bubbles are being squeezed out of sediment and rising up through the water. A study by the University of Washington and Oregon State University suggests that the locations of these bubble plumes provide important clues to what will happen during a major offshore earthquake.
Analysis of the underlying geology suggests that the bubbles emerge here because of the gas and fluid rising through faults which are generated by the motion of geologic plates—the same plates that produce major offshore earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest.
This research, the first large-scale analysis of these gas emissions along Washington’s coast, has found more than 1,700 bubble plumes, primarily clustered in a north-south band about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the coast.
“If you were able to walk on the seafloor from Vancouver Island to the Columbia River, you would never be out of sight of a bubble plume,” said lead author Paul Johnson, a UW professor of oceanography.
The study was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.
Help share immersive learning experiences with all students at the college
As part of UW’s first annual Husky Giving Day on April 4, 2019, the College of the Environment is asking for your help ensuring all students at the College can engage deeply with their area of study through immersive outdoor learning experiences.
At the College of the Environment, we boast some of the brightest science minds in the world, and we offer real-world learning opportunities to match. But these immersive learning experiences are out of reach for many. From learning about sustainable forestry at Pack Experimental Forest and studying marine invertebrates at the world-renowned Friday Harbor Laboratories, to participating in the Geology Summer Field Camp in Montana, or research cruises in Puget Sound and around the globe, these are among the most transformative experiences a student can have, but we need your help making them a reality for all.
With your support, we can provide funding so all students can participate in key field experiences, gaining first-hand knowledge of the ecosystems and socio-political systems they study in the classroom. We are especially committed to expanding opportunities for low-income students, first-generation college students and students from underrepresented groups.
This Husky Giving Day, every gift of every size will help us ensure that College of the Environment students have access to these life-changing and career-defining experiences both now and in the future.
Gary Handwerk named director of UW Program on the Environment
The UW College of the Environment is pleased to announce that Gary Handwerk has been named director of the Program on the Environment (PoE), effective March 16, 2019.
Gary is a scholar and teacher of the environmental humanities, working in the branch of literary and cultural studies known as “ecocriticism,” which aims to understand the effects of representations of nature. He has extensive experience in departmental administration, serving as chair of both Comparative Literature, and of English, over the last two decades. Gary’s ability to bring faculty from diverse programs and disciplines together is evident in his leadership role in creating the environmental humanities (EnviroHum) group at the UW, his participation as a founding faculty member in the newly created academic unit Comparative History of Ideas (CHiD), his leadership of the Study Abroad program in Paris, and his long involvement with the Program on the Environment including serving on the newly reconstituted Faculty Advisory Board.
The College also wants to thank Kristi Straus for her exceptional service as acting director. “Kristi has been a passionate and tireless advocate for Program on the Environment.” Lisa Graumlich, dean and Mary Laird Wood Professor at the College of the Environment said. “I am particularly appreciative of her ability to skillfully and positively bring together exceptional faculty from across the college and the campus to serve on the PoE Faculty Advisory Board, and to guide the unit forward in discussions of how the goals and structure of the unit should support each other.”
Finally, thanks are also due to the advisory search committee for their energy, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness, including Chris Anderson (search committee chair and associate professor, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences), Juliet Crider (associate professor, Department of Earth and Space Sciences), P. Sean McDonald (lecturer, Program on the Environment), and Richard Watts (associate professor and chair, Department of French & Italian Studies.)
“I want to take this opportunity to thank students, staff and faculty from the unit and more broadly throughout the college who participated in the search process.” Graumlich said. “In particular, I would like to publicly acknowledge the work of the Advisory Search Committee. This service to the college requires care, patience and commitment, and when well done—as is certainly the case here—results in the recruitment of an exceptional colleague into our midst.”
Research led by the UW’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences proposes a new idea that may explain why some Antarctic icebergs are tinged emerald green rather than the normal blue, potentially solving a decades-long scientific mystery.
Most icebergs appear white or blue when floating in seawater, but since the early 1900s, explorers and sailors have reported seeing peculiar green icebergs around certain parts of Antarctica. Now, glaciologists suspect iron oxides in rock dust from Antarctica’s mainland are turning some icebergs green. They formulated the new theory after Australian researchers discovered large amounts of iron in East Antarctica’s Amery Ice Shelf.
If experiments prove the new theory right, it would mean green icebergs are ferrying precious iron from Antarctica’s mainland to the open sea when they break off, providing this key nutrient to the organisms that support nearly all marine life. Iron is a key nutrient for phytoplankton, microscopic plants that form the base of the marine food web. But iron is scarce in many areas of the ocean.
“It’s like taking a package to the post office. The iceberg can deliver this iron out into the ocean far away, and then melt and deliver it to the phytoplankton that can use it as a nutrient,” said lead author Stephen Warren, a glaciologist and professor emeritus in the UW’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences. “We always thought green icebergs were just an exotic curiosity, but now we think they may actually be important.”
The study is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Earth Tones: the student podcast to listen to this International Women's Day
Rachel Fricke and Alanna Greene don’t just want you to know about UW’s scientists, they want you to like them too. That’s what’s driving the two seniors at The UW’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences to broadcast Earth Tones, a weekly podcast dedicated to showcasing University of Washington science grads and the stories naturally emerging from their research.
The podcast is a labor of love for Fricke and Greene, who both believe that the human stories associated with scientific research—the personalities, pitfalls and the comedy—are often as relevant as the core findings more commonly published. “Science is a human-driven profession,” explains Fricke. “This storytelling format, that includes the stress that [grad students] face and the failures that have come along with their research—it’s interesting!” says Greene.
Each episode of Earth Tones runs for around 20 minutes and pins some of UW’s most groundbreaking environmental research to current affairs and issues affecting the Pacific Northwest. Since the first episode went live in February, Earth Tones has attracted hundreds of listeners and examined the work of six UW grad students and their journeys covering topics ranging from wildfires in the Pacific Northwest to the intelligence levels of Seattle’s crows. “As scientists, we do really complicated and difficult work, [but] it doesn’t eliminate the fact that we are humans with normal lives and personal motivations outside of academia,” says Fricke.
More than half of the scientists featured in this first season of the podcast are women, which points to the growing number of female voices in the local science community, and the shift in communication approaches they bring. Fricke and Greene point to several female role models within the College and suggest that these women can bring a uniquely empathetic approach to the practice of environmental science. “It’s really exciting to be a woman in the sciences right now,” says Fricke. “It’s been really cool to see women who are young, in a predominantly male faculty, inspire so many people,” adds Greene.
The latest episode of Earth Tones, ‘The Songs of Science’, features Judy Twedt, a UW PhD who creates stunning music using large sets of climate data. It’s a refreshing way to express the science of climate change and shows how female voices are enhancing the field of science communication.
While the last episode is scheduled for early spring 2019 and the students have no immediate plans to continue the series, they hope their interviews will continue to be heard and shared by those seeking approachable and relatable stories about science. “I personally find a lot of comfort in knowing that there are a lot of really smart people doing important work on these issues,” Says Fricke. “I hope that people listening to our podcast find comfort in that as well.”
Listen to the Earth Tones podcast below here and follow the show onTwitter.
Return of the wolves: How deer escape tactics help save their lives
Washington’s deer populations have begun to change their behavior to evade ever-increasing numbers of their most cunning predator, the gray wolf. Intriguingly, the escape tactics used by the two more common species – the mule deer and the white-tailed deer – vary greatly.
Researchers from UW College of the Environment and other institutions found that when in areas populated by gray wolves, mule deer are spending more time away from roads, at higher elevations and in rockier landscapes than previously observed. Alternately, white-tailed deer appear to sprint across open, gently rolling terrain with good visibility — including along roads.
Tracking and interpreting these behaviors has become more feasible since the recent return of gray wolves to Washington State over the last decade, populations of which were wiped out from the area last century. The research team used wildlife cameras and tracking collars on wolves and deer, and monitored the data from all of the collars over three years, from 2013 to 2016.
“In any particular ecosystem, if you have a predator returning, prey are unlikely to all respond similarly,” said senior author Aaron Wirsing, an associate professor in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. “We show that wolves don’t have a uniform effect on different deer species.”
Their results were published in December in the journal Oecologia.