The College of the Environment has an outstanding opportunity for an Assistant or Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to join our team.

As one of the world’s preeminent environmental research institutions, the University of Washington College of the Environment believes that excellent science, teaching and scholarship can only be achieved in a community which is inclusive and supportive of people of all backgrounds and identities. To truly address the many environmental challenges of our day, we must center equity and justice in our research, our approach to solutions and the internal culture we build. Under the strategic direction of our new dean, we are advancing the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, access and justice that are central to our work.

The College is seeking an action-oriented Assistant or Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to lead these efforts. In this role, you will work closely with the dean, senior staff, faculty, postdocs, students and other community members to integrate an equity and justice lens into our shared strategic vision. This position represents an opportunity to shape the future of the College of the Environment’s DEI work, and along with it, the future of some of the most critical environmental research on the planet.

Learn more or apply on the UW Hires website.

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Mira Sytsma

People often visit U.S. national parks to catch a glimpse of wildlife. But how does our presence impact the animals we hope to see?

National park traffic has grown steadily over the past decade, and popular parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone can easily see over a million visitors a year. In these heavily used areas, one might expect animals to change their behavior to avoid humans.

But a new University of Washington-led study has found that even in remote, rarely visited national parks, the presence of even just a few humans impacts the activity of wildlife that live there. Nearly any level of human activity in a protected area like a national park can alter the behavior of animals there, the study found. The research was published Oct. 13 in the journal People and Nature.

“There’s been increasing recognition of how much just the presence of humans in these places, and our recreating there, can impact wildlife,” said senior author Laura Prugh, associate professor in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. “These results are striking in showing that really any level of human activity can have an effect on wildlife.”

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Shuyi Chen, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences, was traveling to a conference in Boston as Hurricane Ian approached the Gulf of Mexico. During breaks at the conference, she provided her thoughts on the closely watched catastrophic storm system that made landfall in Florida on Sept. 28.

Q: What are your thoughts on Hurricane Ian? How does it compare to other storms?

SSC: Each hurricane is unique in many ways. However, Hurricane Ian has some similarity to Hurricane Irma in 2017 in terms of landfall location on the southwest coast of Florida. Both hurricanes caused large storm surges — about 10 feet of water — near Naples and Fort Myers with strong onshore winds, while the water got “sucked” out of Tampa Bay by offshore winds associated with the hurricane. Ian is a larger storm than Irma, in terms of size of strong wind and rain areas.

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Heat-related deaths are an issue across Washington state, and they occur even in regions that typically have milder climates, according to a University of Washington study published Aug. 30 in the journal Atmosphere. This is the most extensive study yet of heat-related mortality in Washington state, and the first to look beyond the major population centers to include rural areas.

Statewide, the odds of dying were on average 8% higher in recent decades on days when the combination of temperature and humidity, known as the humidex, was in the top 1% of recorded values at that location, compared to a day with a mid-range value for humidex.

“This study shows that heat-related mortality, even in a temperate area like Washington state, is a current environmental public health problem,” said lead author Logan Arnold, who did the work as a UW master’s student in quantitative ecology and resource management. “It’s not a future public health problem that will exist in a warming climate — it’s something that we are already experiencing now.”

Although heat stroke is sometimes listed as the official cause of death, other conditions exacerbated by heat are often the immediate focus. Researchers used statistical methods to uncover “hidden” deaths that may have listed something else, like illness or a chronic disease, as the primary cause.

“This research adds to existing evidence that the burden of heat-health impacts resides in the effect on underlying health conditions,” said senior author Tania Busch Isaksen, a UW associate teaching professor in environmental and occupational health sciences and co-director for the UW’s Collaborative on Extreme Event Resilience. “For example, we see an increase in diabetic and cardiovascular-related mortality associated with extreme heat days. Physiologically it is harder for people with underlying health conditions to thermoregulate, but it is also likely that medications play a role in the body’s ability to dissipate heat.”

The study analyzed deaths from 1980 to 2018 recorded by the Washington State Department of Health. The authors included only non-traumatic deaths in the months of May through September and separated them into 10 federally defined climatic zones. Exposure to heat on the day of death was determined based on home address and the humidex on that date.

Results support what previous studies in King County have shown: Heat does lead to more deaths, even in places with milder climates.

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