Sustainability progress should precede seafood market access, researchers urge

A fish market in the Solomon Islands, near Papua New Guinea.

A team of researchers, including Edward Allison from the College of the Environment’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, has evaluated fishery improvement projects designed to bring seafood from wild fisheries to the certified market while promising sustainability in the future. In a policy paper appearing May 1 in Science, the team concluded that these projects need to be fine tuned to ensure that fisheries are delivering on their promises. 

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Antarctic ice core shows northern trigger for ice age climate shifts

Researchers inside a snow pit at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet drilling site in 2008.

University of Washington scientists in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences were part of a multi-institutional research team that has discovered a consistent link between abrupt temperature changes in Greenland and Antarctica during the most recent ice age. Using evidence trapped in ice cores from the West Antarctica Ice Sheet, the team from UW used analyses of oxygen molecules in the ice to uncover precise records of Antarctica’s temperature history. 

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Exploring Earth's final frontier

Photo: T Hawkins/UW

Covering more than 70 percent of Earth’s surface, the oceans act as our planet’s heartbeat, with differences in depths, currents, temperature and salinity marking changes in its pulse. While these measurements are fairly straightforward, the information they relay about Earth’s health is much more complex. As the planet warms, much of the heat is absorbed in the oceans, resulting in rising sea levels and changes to how water mixes and currents move. 

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Tidal tugs on Teflon faults drive slow-slipping earthquakes

Unknown to most people, the Pacific Northwest experiences a magnitude-6.6 earthquake about once a year. The reason nobody notices is that the movement happens slowly and deep underground, in a part of the fault whose behavior, known as slow-slip, was only recently discovered. A University of Washington seismologist who studies slow-slip quakes has looked at how they respond to tidal forces from celestial bodies and used the result to make a first direct calculation of friction deep on the fault. 

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