Salmon-habitat watersheds need a good mix of steep, cold-running streams and slower, meandering streams of warmer water to keep options open for salmon adapted to reproduce better in one setting than the other, new research shows. Preserving such a varied landscape doesn’t just serve salmon, it also ensures an all-summer buffet that brown bears, gulls and other animals need to sustain themselves the rest of the year. 

With about a month and a half remaining in the Arctic melt season, sea ice cover continues to decline at a rapid pace, and is currently on par with where the 2007 record melt season stood at the same time of year. Read more about it here; UW’s Polar Science Center is mentioned. 

The contest doesn’t even start until tomorrow (August 1st), but the UW Botanic Gardens is already receiving beautiful photos by the Arboretum’s Art in the Park Campers. Learn more about this great opportunity, and check out the work of these students, here! 

Kate Stafford, an oceanographer with UW’s Applied Physics Lab, wanted to find out if any endangered bowhead whales passed through the Fram Strait, an inhospitable, ice-covered stretch of sea between Greenland and the northern islands of Norway.  When she listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months.