November 2018

Nov 8, 2018

University of Washington announces new marine biology major

A marine biology student surveys the diversity of invertebrates and algae in an intertidal zone.

From iconic orcas to life-sustaining salmon runs, the Pacific Northwest and Seattle itself have always been deeply connected to the sea.

Uniquely positioned in the region, the University of Washington is a world leader in the fields of oceanography and aquatic and fishery sciences, and UW’s College of the Environment is pleased to announce it will be expanding its scope to include a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Marine Biology.

“Students learn core biological concepts in a marine setting, as well as have the opportunity to study a variety of relevant topics that incorporate advanced skills,” said Kerry Naish, director of the marine biology program. “The combination of subject matter and skill-building means students will graduate with the knowledge necessary to solve emerging issues in the marine environment and beyond.”

The College of the Environment, with support from the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, School of Oceanography and Friday Harbor Labs, developed the marine biology major to complement established programs. The joint approach will pave the way for collaboration and community across disciplines, and provide undergraduate students the chance to work with a broad range of faculty, staff and graduate students.

The major was designed to give students a strong foundation in the sciences, sharing learning goals with the degrees in oceanography, aquatic and fishery sciences, and biology. Additionally, students will select from a range of specialized courses offered through the three participating programs, including advanced skills in areas of biotechnology, instrumentation, programming and modeling, statistical analysis, science communication, resource conservation and management, food security and climate impacts.

“The curriculum integrates field experience, laboratory skills and incredible courses taught by world-class scientists,” said Jacqueline Padilla- Gamiño, assistant professor of aquatic and fishery sciences.

Jennifer Ruesink, a professor in the Department of Biology, adds, “In marine biology, students practice how to communicate what they know and how they know it, scientifically. To make progress on environmental issues, scientists have to find logical solutions and convince others.”

Undergraduate students examine a juvenile shortfin mako shark and wolf eel, both part of the Burke Museum’s Ichthyology Collection.

Katie Hearther, an undergraduate student who recently declared a double-major in marine biology and oceanography, says few institutions in the U.S. offer such a variety of marine science foci. “Despite popular belief, marine biology and oceanography are extraordinarily different, and I am equally passionate about both.”

A standout feature of the new marine biology program is that students complete an integrative field experience. Located on a 484-acre wildlife preserve on San Juan Island, Friday Harbor Labs is one field station where marine biology students immersive themselves in their research.

“Students who learn best by doing thrive at Friday Harbor Labs,” said Megan Dethier, associate director for academics and the environment at Friday Harbor Labs. “Most time is spent seeking patterns in the field, studying live organisms in the lab, conducting hands-on experiments and communicating science to others.”

With a degree in marine biology from UW, graduates of the program will be well-equipped for careers at local, national and international management agencies, environmental consultancies, nonprofit organizations and a range of educational institutions.

“The ocean is beautiful, diverse, complex and under-explored. It’s also changing,” said Alex Gagnon, assistant professor at the School of Oceanography. “The next generation of marine biologists will pair discovery with stewardship as they build a sustainable future for humans and marine life. It will require scientists who can bring an interdisciplinary approach to complex challenges, which is precisely what marine biology majors at the UW will receive.”

Marine biology is an open major that can be declared at any time by students currently enrolled as undergraduates at the UW. To declare the major or learn more, contact Joe Kobayashi, marine biology academic advisor, at marbiol@uw.edu.

Visit the Marine Biology website »

Nov 16, 2018

New resources support tribes in preparing for climate change

A tribal fire crew member in Oregon monitors a prescribed burn, a key tool for preventing large wildfires that are likely to become more common under climate change.

As the natural world responds to climate change, American Indian tribes across the country are grappling with how to plan for a future that balances inevitable change with protecting the resources vital to their cultural traditions.

The University of Washington Climate Impacts Group and regional tribal partners have developed a collection of resources that may be useful to tribes at any stage in the process of evaluating their vulnerability to climate change. The project is a partnership among tribes, tribal associations, universities and the federal government.

“This work really is to support tribes’ leadership in climate adaptation, and the goal is to make it easier for every tribe that wants to complete the process,” said Meade Krosby, a research scientist at Climate Impacts Group and the project lead. “This is a way to support the tribes that are leading the way, but also to make sure those that are having a harder time getting started have the resources to begin.”

Read more at UW Today »

Nov 16, 2018

First tally of U.S.-Russia polar bears finds a healthy population

An adult female and cub in fall 2017 on Wrangel Island, where hundred of Chukchi Sea polar bears spend the summer months.

Not all polar bears are in the same dire situation due to retreating sea ice, at least not right now. Off the western coast of Alaska, the Chukchi Sea is rich in marine life, but the number of polar bears in the area had never been counted. The first formal study of this population suggests that it’s been healthy and relatively abundant in recent years, numbering about 3,000 animals.

The study by researchers at the University of Washington and federal agencies is published Nov. 14 in Scientific Reports, an open-access journal from the Nature Publishing Group.

“The very things that make polar bears so fascinating — their remote habitats, long-distance movements, and reliance on shifting and ephemeral sea ice — also make them incredibly hard to study,” says co-author Sarah Converse, a UW associate professor at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences and the leader of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Washington Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. “The research, the first empirical estimates of abundance and survival for the Chukchi Sea population, suggests that they’re currently stable despite sea ice loss. While there is a limit to how much sea ice loss a polar bear population will sustain, we have seemingly not yet reached that limit in the Chukchi Sea.”

Read more at UW Today »

Nov 13, 2018

Common allergen, ragweed, will shift northward under climate change

Common ragweed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, is common in North America and is spreading in Europe. The plant releases a fine pollen in late summer and fall that causes allergy symptoms in people with hay fever.

New research from the University of Washington and the University of Massachusetts – Amherst looks at how the most common cause of sneezing and sniffling in North America is likely to shift under climate change.

A recent study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE finds that common ragweed will expand its range northward as the climate warms, reaching places including New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, while retreating from some current hot spots.

“It was surprising that nobody had looked at ragweed distributions in the U.S.: As climate conditions are changing, where will it spread to in the future?” said corresponding author Michael Case, who did the work as a postdoctoral researcher in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

Read more at UW Today »

Nov 7, 2018

‘Ocean memory’ the focus of cross-disciplinary effort by UW’s Jody Deming

Ocean Wave — The new grant will fund activities around the theme of ocean memory, each led by participants from earlier NAKFI workshops. Deming is among the first group of leaders that also includes two artists, a marine biologist and cellist, and a cognitive scientist.

The vast oceans of our planet still hold many unsolved questions. Uncovering some of their mysteries has been a decades-long focus for University of Washington oceanography professor Jody Deming.

This fall, Deming embarks on a very different type of ocean exploration. A $500,000 grant from the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative, or NAKFI, will allow her and a group representing a wide variety of disciplines in the sciences and the arts to look at the oceans in new ways.

The Ocean Memory Project was one of three selected this fall as the inaugural winners of the NAKFI Challenge Grants, a program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine with funding from the W.M. Keck Foundation. Deming is among a small group of leaders of the effort that will create events, distributed interactive spaces and grants for cross-disciplinary mentoring around the idea of ocean memory.

Read more at UW Today »

Nov 2, 2018

Racial, ethnic minorities face greater vulnerability to wildfires

Firefighters respond to the Taylor Creek and Klondike fires in Oregon’s Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest in summer 2018.

Environmental disasters in the U.S. often hit minority groups the hardest.

When Hurricane Katrina slammed New Orleans in 2005, the city’s black residents were disproportionately affected. Their neighborhoods were located in the low-lying, less-protected areas of the city, and many people lacked the resources to evacuate safely. Similar patterns have played out during hurricanes and tropical storms ever since.

Massive wildfires, which may be getting more intense due to climate change and a long history of fire-suppression policies, also have strikingly unequal effects on minority communities, a new study shows.

Researchers at the University of Washington’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and The Nature Conservancy used census data to develop a “vulnerability index” to assess wildfire risk in communities across the U.S. Their results, appearing Nov. 2 in the journal PLOS ONE, show that racial and ethnic minorities face greater vulnerability to wildfires compared with primarily white communities. In particular, Native Americans are six times more likely than other groups to live in areas most prone to wildfires.

Read more at UW Today »

Nov 26, 2018

UW, Tableau create interactive tool to explore more than a century of Pacific Northwest weather observations

Lummi Island storm waves — “You have to have people explore historical climate in order to understand the context of future climate,” said UW Climate Impacts Group’s Heidi Roop.

UW College of the Environment and Seattle visual analytics company Tableau Software teamed up to create a new, interactive visualization for historical observations of temperature and precipitation in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana, and for Washington snowpack. The free online tool lets anybody interact with the records going back as far as 1881 and look for significant trends.

“This tool lets anyone, from researchers to meteorologists to members of the public, look at the actual data to motivate why we should care about our climate changing, and see how it is changing in our own backyard,” said project lead Karin Bumbaco, the assistant state climatologist for Washington.

The tool uses Tableau’s interactive visual analytics platform to select one or several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stations in the Pacific Northwest, plot the trend and play around with time periods, seasons and other variables.

Read more at UW Today »

November 2018

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