In recent years, environmental challenges, like climate change, have become a critical focus point of scientists worldwide. Researchers work tirelessly to ask and examine questions that deal with the very future of our world. Taking a closer look, we find that some of the voices answering those questions have a particular essence. Hispanic scientists have taken up the challenge to push forward environmental research to address the issues that ultimately threaten the delicate balance and even the survival of our planet’s ecosystems. Here we shine a light into the work, motivations and the achievements of some of these champions, who call the University of Washington’s College of the Environment home. By uplifting their names, hometowns and stories we honor not only their culture, but their contributions to environmental science as well.

Jacqueline Padilla-Gamiño (Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico)

Jacqueline Padilla-Gamiño is an assistant professor at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. Her research studies the ecophysiology and reproductive biology of marine organisms, and the impact of climate change on coral reefs. Padilla-Gamiño’s optimistic nature, work ethic and passion for her science not only have helped her overcome obstacles along the way but have also resulted in various awards and recognitions over the years.

“There are always highs and lows, take your time when you’re in a low,” she says. “If you love your work, with sacrifice and organization, the highs will come.”

Ernesto Alvarado Celestin (Boquillas de las Perlas, Mexico)

Ernesto Alvarado Celestin is an associate professor of wildland fire sciences in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. He teaches and researches a wide variety of topics including forest fires, climate change and tropical forestry. Coming from humble beginnings, Alvarado has overcome many challenges along the road to being a professor, becoming a strong supporter of indigenous communities and native knowledge.

“You need to be able to see potential in people,” says Alvarado. He underscores the importance of good mentorship and the impact it has on students, while also encouraging them to “dream, work hard and take advantage of opportunities.”

Julieta Martinelli (Mendoza, Argentina)

Julieta Martinelli is a postdoctoral researcher from the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences who grew fascinated by fossilized mollusks she found growing up. Following her lifelong passion for seashells, Martinelli has submerged herself in the study of the connection between humans and marine environments. Martinelli received her PhD from the Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, she went on to follow postdoctoral studies in Chile and subsequently at UW. Her current research focuses on invasive species plaguing mollusks in the Pacific Northwest. For Martinelli, coming to the US was a very exciting experience, although parting with good friends proved to be a challenge initially.

“Always be open to new possibilities, keep an open mind and be willing to let go,” says Martinelli. “Eventually things start falling into place.”

Carrol Gomez (Barranquilla, Colombia)

Carrol Gomez is a Fulbright Fellow and graduate student from the Environmental and Forest Sciences with an industrial engineering background. She is passionate about conservation, territorial planning and the socio-economic development of rural and indigenous communities in the tropics.

“I want to understand the relationships between nature and people within a framework in which we elevate culture and social perceptions for a better decision making about the environment,” says Gomez, describing her research interests. She mentions the unwavering support of her advisor, professor Kristiina Vogt, her friends and family as a key factor in her acclimatization to the US. As advice to future students, Gomez says “challenge yourself to be curious and think more holistically.”

Bryan A. Briones Ortiz (Guayaquil, Ecuador)

Bryan A. Briones Ortiz joined UW in 2013, double majoring in ecology, evolution and conservation biology and Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, with a minor in marine biology. Briones’ passion for research and biology led him to participate in a wide array of projects ranging from the reaction of insects to climate change to the thermal sensitivities of lizards to the genetics of eelgrass populations. His current work studying seagrass seeks to improve coastal management in Washington state.

Despite having contended briefly with the language barrier at first, Briones’ experience in the US has only grown his passion for giving back to his community. Engaged with the Science Clubs International, a STEM outreach organization, Briones hopes to send an uplifting message to young Hispanic students in underprivileged communities, “we did this, you can too.”

Sharing a deep sense of appreciation for family, hard work and perseverance, these scientists have found their calling in the pursuit and advancement of the environmental sciences. Their struggles, passions and achievements serve as inspiration for future Hispanic students from humble backgrounds, to look upward with hope knowing there is a place for them in STEM and at the University of Washington.

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Bernard Hallet/University of Washington

Nature is full of repeating patterns that are part of the beauty of our world. An international team, including a researcher from the University of Washington, used modern tools to explain repeating patterns of stones that form in cold landscapes.

The new study, published Oct. 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses experimental tools to show how needles of ice growing randomly on frozen ground can gradually move rocks into regular, repeating patterns. The team, based mainly in China and Japan, uses a combination of novel experiments and computer modeling to describe these striking features with new theoretical insights.

“The presence of these amazing patterns that develop without any intervention from humans is pretty striking in nature,” said co-author Bernard Hallet, a UW professor emeritus of Earth and space sciences and member of the Quaternary Research Center. “It’s like a Japanese garden, but where is the gardener?”

Hallet specializes in studying the patterns that form in polar regions, high-mountain and other cold environments. One of the reasons for the patterns is needle ice. As the temperature drops, the moisture contained in the soil grows into spikes of ice crystals that protrude from the ground.

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After a brutally hot, dry summer, chilly winds and soaking rain have finally returned to mark the start of autumn in the Pacific Northwest. According to Washington State Climatologist Nick Bond and Assistant State Climatologist Karin Bumbaco, both researchers in the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies, chances are we’re due for a lot more cold, wet weather this winter. To understand why, we need to look somewhere unexpected: the tropical waters around the equator in the Pacific Ocean.

How El Niño and La Niña affect the weather

Each year, scientists monitor this region for the telltale signs of El Niño or La Niña conditions, which arise through a process known as El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.

“During La Niña conditions, the waters off the western coast of South America tend to be much colder than normal, and the opposite is true during an El Niño year,” Bumbaco explains. “That affects air circulation along the equator and around the globe, so it has impacts on our weather worldwide.”

For the second year in a row, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center is anticipating a winter characterized by La Niña conditions. But what that means for the weather depends entirely on where you live. Here in the Pacific Northwest, La Niña typically brings cold air and higher than average rainfall from January through March, as well as a slightly elevated chance of snow in the lowlands of Western Washington. In Southern California and the southwestern U.S., however, it tends to result in below-average precipitation.

“What’s even more significant is the difference it makes on our snowpack by April 1,” Bumbaco says. “That’s typically when we have the most snowpack in our mountains, and in La Niña years, that tends to be higher. That’s really good news in terms of our water supply going into spring and summer.”

As this snowpack melts throughout the warmer months, it supplies essential water for agriculture and hydroelectric power generation, as well as the health of our forests, waterways and coastal ecosystems.

Back-to-back La Niñas may bring a gloomy autumn

The fact that it comes on the heels of another La Niña event just last winter could make this a particularly interesting year.

“When our office looked at back-to-back La Niña years throughout history, we saw that the second years tended to be a bit wetter from October to December,” Bumbaco recounts. “So, there may be some indication that it could impact us earlier in the winter than La Niña events traditionally do.”

Though it’ll require more research to confirm just how much influence this phenomenon has had already this year, the autumn’s dreary start could well be thanks to these recurring La Niña events.

How ENSO could change as the climate warms

La Niña and El Niño events don’t follow a predictable pattern, but, on average, they tend to occur every two to seven years. As the climate changes, though, some research indicates that those patterns could change significantly.

“To a certain extent, we don’t really know how climate change will affect ENSO,” Bond says. “Some of the climate models we use show a more vigorous cycle between La Niña and El Niño in the coming decades, while others show a much more muted cycle. The real concern, especially for the southwestern U.S., is that if the ENSO cycle becomes stronger, La Niña years will dry the region out even further and exacerbate droughts.”

Bond is quick to clarify that La Niña and El Niño don’t dictate exactly what the weather will be like in a given winter. “It’s not a switch,” he says. “It just tilts the roulette wheel.” The influence of other seasonal cycles, as well as the randomness inherent in global weather, make it hard to forecast this far out with much certainty. But based on what we know right now, it appears this winter is likely to be a cold, wet and snowy one in the Pacific Northwest.

Still have more questions about ENSO? Check out our video interview with Bond, and find out if he prefers El Niño or La Niña!

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One of the facts of life for humans is the replacement of baby teeth with permanent adult teeth. Whether pulled out prematurely, wiggled loose by eager hands or naturally falling out unexpectedly, this occasion marks an important milestone in the maturation process that is shared amongst all vertebrates in some form. 

Imagine, though, losing and replacing a tooth every single day. For Pacific lingcod, this isn’t some fairy tale gone wrong or the unfortunate result of dismissing dentist recommendations, and is in fact their reality. In a paper recently published in the Royal Society, researchers from the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories assessed over 10,000 teeth in 20 fish to find a daily replacement rate of about 3%.

Using a fluorescent technique called pulse-chase, University of South Florida undergraduate Emily Carr, University of Washington Ph.D. candidate Karly Cohen and professor Adam Summers designed an experiment to track the growth of teeth in these carnivorous fish. Using this method, the researchers were able to observe tooth growth and replacement while the organisms were still alive — which is not the case for other research methods such as CT scans.

The experiment involved transporting the fish from their normal saltwater tank into a tank filled with red dye, kept at a constant temperature and covered with a black tarp to block out light. The lingcod remained in this solution for 12 hours before they were returned to the normal tank. The red dye will stick onto anything hard or mineralized, and will remain in the mineralized tissue even after the organisms are transferred out of the tank containing the dye — allowing Carr, Cohen and Summers to mark off the teeth that were present in the lingcod’s mouth during their tenure in the red dye tank.

The fish stayed in the normal tank for 10 days, then were moved to a tank containing green dye for another 12 hours. At the end of this process, the researchers could tell which teeth were present for the first treatment if they were both red and green, whereas new teeth were just green. Using this information, they could then deduce how quickly lingcod lost and grew teeth, locate tooth replacement “hotspots,” identify tooth replacement patterns, and compare tooth replacement in feeding versus fasting fish.

After sitting in a dark room for days to count over 10,000 lingcod teeth, Carr found that lingcod replace approximately 20 teeth a day, with 500 total teeth in their mouths at any given time — which is approximately a 3.6% replacement rate. Much like in humans, tooth damage in lingcod doesn’t drive tooth replacement. When separated into feeding and non feeding groups, no significant differences were found in tooth replacement rates. Carr was able to find hotspots at regions of great replacement frequencies (60% or greater) towards the back of the mouth, signaling that the teeth experiencing greater stress had a higher replacement rate. Bigger teeth in less risky positions, such as those towards the front of the mouth, showed slower replacement rates. Much like in humans, tooth replacement is predetermined — teeth will be replaced by the same kind of teeth (e.g., molars will replace molars), and teeth don’t grow bigger over time.

“We know shockingly little and a lot about teeth,” said Cohen. “We know that the same genetic network is responsible for tooth development in fish, but we know very little about what controls tooth replacement. This study laid the groundwork for others to look at the evolutionary origins of tooth replacement, and allows us to ask bigger questions about its mechanics.”

This work was made possible thanks to the FHL Adopt-a-Student Program Fund, a Kozloff undergraduate endorsement fund to Carr, NSF and Seaver Institute grants to Summers, and the Stephen and Ruth Wainwright Endowment, Edwards Award, Wingfield-Ramenofsky Award and Orians Award to Cohen.

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Jacob Betzen/University of Washington

As its name suggests, the bigleaf maple tree’s massive leaves are perhaps its most distinctive quality. A native to the Pacific Northwest’s wet westside forests, these towering trees can grow leaves up to 1.5 feet across — the largest of any maple.

But since 2011, scientists, concerned hikers and residents have observed more stressed and dying bigleaf maples across urban and suburban neighborhoods as well as in forested areas. Often the leaves are the first to shrivel and die, eventually leaving some trees completely bare. While forest pathologists have ruled out several specific diseases, the overall cause of the tree’s decline has stumped experts for years.

A new study led by the University of Washington, in collaboration with Washington Department of Natural Resources, has found that bigleaf maple die-off in Washington is linked to hotter, drier summers that predispose this species to decline. These conditions essentially weaken the tree’s immune system, making it easier to succumb to other stressors and diseases. The findings were published Sept. 16 in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.

“These trees can tolerate a lot, but once you start throwing in other factors, particularly severe summer drought as in recent years, it stresses the trees and can lead to their death,” said co-author Patrick Tobin, associate professor in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

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University of Washington oceanographer Parker MacCready is one of 59 new fellows elected this year by the American Geophysical Union. The scientific organization recognizes only 1 in 1,000 of its members as global leaders and experts who have propelled our understanding of the geosciences.

MacCready, a professor in the UW School of Oceanography, was recognized for his work to advance fundamental understanding of ocean coasts and estuaries, or marine environments where freshwater and saltwater mix. MacCready earned his bachelor’s in architecture at Yale University, his master’s in engineering at the California Institute of Technology, and his doctorate in oceanography at the UW. He did postdoctoral research at the University of Miami before returning to the UW in 1993.

In his research, MacCready collaborates with biologists, chemists and computer scientists to understand the physics that drive natural phenomena such as ocean acidification, low-oxygen water and harmful algal blooms. With the UW’s Coastal Modeling Group he has created realistic computer simulations of coastal and nearby waters, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, and has developed an underwater forecast for the complex waterway.

MacCready and the other newly elected fellows will be honored in December at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting, to be held this year as a hybrid event based in New Orleans.

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