Climate change projections may “grossly” underestimate the extinction of animal and plant varieties because the models don’t account for species movement and competition, U.S. researchers said. UW researchers were involved.  Read more here. 

As one of the oldest units in the University of Washington, the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences has taken on a new name to denote its expanded scope. Read more in the UW News Digest here. Also in the digest, Ian Joughin has been honored with the Louis Agassiz Medal for 2012 from the European Geophysicists’ Union. Joughin is a principal engineer with the Applied Physics Laboratory and affiliate professor of Earth and Space Sciences.  

2012 will be an exciting year for the Ocean Observatories Initiative, with continued construction of the cabled ocean observatories network and multiple other facets of the project.  John Delaney is mentioned.  Read more here. 

Today marks the beginning of the king tides season, a period where the Puget Sound overflows its banks, drawn by the combined pull of the sun and the moon.  Like the ‘aqua alta’ of Venice, these tides are predictable yet not always convenient, as waves lap at roadways and crash into buildings along Oregon and Washington coasts.  Yet with climate change and attendant sea level rise, these effects will become more common throughout the year.  

In the Introduction to Interaction Design, Art 381, the assignment Tad Hirsch gave his students was straightforward: Design a way to improve access to fresh local food on the UW campus.  Read more about the ideas they came up with!