An intensive two week field course – visiting sites of spectacular wildfires as well as forest restoration areas – helped 20 University of Washington students learn firsthand about the challenges of managing dry, fire-prone forests of the Pacific Northwest. Traveling with Jerry Franklin, UW professor of environmental and forest science, the students explored forests of central and southern Oregon to consider how PNW forests have been dramatically altered by human activities in the last 150 years, and ways to possibly restore their resiliency to such things as wildfires. 

Researchers across the University of Washington campus—including College of the Environment professors Ginger Armbrust (Oceanography) and John Vidale (Earth and space sciences)—soon will be able to collaborate in an unprecedented way with a new team of data scientists to advance research through big-data analysis and discovery. The UW, along with the University of California, Berkeley, and New York University, are partners in a new five-year, $37.8 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred P. 

It has generally been thought that flooding made the northern floodplains on our planet fertile.  But in reality, those waters contained almost no nitrogen which is a key ingredient for growing plants.  So how did the nitrogen get there that’s so important for plant life? School of Environmental and Forest Sciences Professor and Director Tom DeLuca explains the key link that has allowed grasslands to thrive in this region.  

College of the Environment Oceanography Professor Jim Murray led a panel discussion at the recent Geological Society of America meeting in Denver, talking about carbon emissions and their connection to climate change.  Panelists argue that the catastrophic effects of climate change may be averted not because of policy changes in how we use fossil fuels, but in the availability of the fossil fuels themselves.