Jul 8, 2015

UW oceanographers wire up an undersea volcano to study Earth’s most extreme environment

Several hundred miles off the coast of Oregon and Washington, there’s an undersea volcano known as Axial Seamount. Thanks to a set of high-tech instruments installed last summer by a team of scientists, many from the College of the Environment, the deep sea is online and oceanographers were able to observe an eruption of the Axial Volcano in April 2015. PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan recently spoke with the School of Oceanography‘s John Delaney and Debbie Kelley about their team’s deep sea observatory, including a network of sensors, moorings, and cameras that collect troves of new information about this underwater world.

College of the Environment scientists named 2015 CoMotion Presidential Innovation Fellows

University of Washington Interim President Ana Mari Cauce recently announced the appointment of 17 new members to the university’s prestigious CoMotion Presidential Innovation Fellows program, including two scientists from the College of the Environment. As part of the 2015 class of fellows, the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences’ Ivan Eastin and the Department of Atmospheric Sciences’ Cliff Mass were chosen for fostering a culture of innovation at the UW through initiating groundbreaking programs, collaborating with industry professionals, and by sharing their ideas, knowledge, and entrepreneurial thinking with other visionaries at the UW.

Jul 6, 2015

Scientists weigh in on carbon emissions' effect on future ocean conditions

Ahead of major climate talks at COP21 this year in Paris, scientists are offering insights to the far-reaching effects of rising carbon dioxide levels on the ocean. Spearheaded by the Oceans 2015 Initiative, which brought together 22 scientists and policy experts from nine different countries, the results were published this week in the journal Science and focus on how warming waters, rising seas, and ocean acidification drive changes to the global ocean.

UW scientists engage the next generation of oceanographers through STEM partnership

A participating teacher works to build an underwater temperature sensor.

For nearly 40 Washington State teachers attending the Olympic STEM Pathways Partnership workshop at the University of Washington in late-June, it was like Christmas had come early. Each educator sifted through a toolkit full of techy gadgets—a breadboard, ribbon cables, wires, antennas, and a microprocessor. The teachers used their cache of materials to assemble a powerful, data-collecting underwater sensor; and over the next several years, they’ll develop an approach to bring their new expertise back into the classroom.

Steller sea lions, ship tracks, livestock grazing and more: This week's published research

Each week we share the latest peer-reviewed publications coming from the College of the Environment. Over the past week, eleven new articles co-authored by members of the College of the Environment were added to the Web of Science database, including two open-access studies, one on Steller sea lions and one on the Monterey Bay ship track experiment. Read on!