UW group part of national report, meeting on adaptation to climate change

A string of record-breaking summers and a massive storm in New York City have brought new attention to the effects of climate change and prompted discussions about how to safeguard cities and crops. A University of Washington group that has focused on this question for almost two decades is part of a new report and first-ever national meeting on adapting to the effects of a changing climate.  

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Book focuses on 1969 fight to save America’s premier fossil beds

In the summer of 1969, the Federal District Court in Denver heard arguments in one of the nation’s first explicitly environmental cases, one trying to halt real estate developers intent on turning land containing an “extraordinary set of ancient fossils” into a housing development.  So starts the book “Saved in Time: the Fight to Establish Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado“ co-written by University of Washington biology professor emeritus Estella Leopold, who was a key player in the process.  

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Study finds life is shorter for some in the 98108 ZIP code

Some Duwamish Valley residents are sicker and die younger than their neighbors just a scant 10 miles away, a new EPA-funded study has found. Residents of ZIP code 98108, in Seattle’s South Park, Georgetown and parts of Beacon Hill in the Duwamish Valley, are most likely to get sick and be exposed to environmental stresses, from pollution to lack of green space, the study found.  

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Condensation, atmospheric motion, and cold beer

The heat released when water condenses is an important driver of weather phenomena. And as a simple experiment shows, it also makes it tough to enjoy a frosty one in the summertime. Learn more; read this informative story by ATMO’s Dale Durran and Dargan Frierson in Physics Today. 

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Sustaining Our World lecture focuses on "built ecologies"

The College of the Environment and the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences are excited to present the annual Sustaining Our World Lecture on April 4, 2013, from 6-7 p.m. This year’s lecture, Built Ecologies: Regionalism and Resource Integration in the Built World, features Thomas Knittel, vice president and a leading voice and innovator in sustainable design and biomimicry with HOK, a global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm. 

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