Next week will be the University of Washington’s third Sustainability Summit, an annual event that celebrates leadership and accomplishments in environmental stewardship and sustainability. While events will take place throughout the week, Wednesday evening will feature a conversation about energy involving a leading Northwest energy and climate expert, Microsoft’s chief environmental strategist and other panelists. Lisa Graumlich, dean of the College of the Environment, will be moderating the panel. 

Fernando Resende, assistant professor in SEFS, is creating technology to be used in the vast swaths of beetle-killed trees across the West, a technology that would not only produce liquid biofuels but would also mitigate forest fires and beetle infestations. Learn more about Resende’s exciting project here! 

Conservation costs money, and the benefits don’t always outweigh the costs. To shed light on how conservation decisions may provide benefits or costs to larger regional goals, researchers from SEFS, and other collaborators, developed an economic model aimed at maximizing the ROI on the cost of the acquisition of lands for conservation. Their work was cited as the Editors’ Choice in Science; read the original open access paper here! 

Why is Antarctica seeing record-high sea ice accumulation? Does this change the game regarding global warming? APL‘s Jinlun Zhang is mentioned in this explanation of the atmosphere-ocean patterns and processes scientists are exploring in our polar regions.