How’s the snow on Northwest mountains this year? Overall a little deeper than normal, but it depends where you look. A new collaboration between the University of Washington and the Northwest Avalanche Center lets you see how the current snow depth compares to past years for nine sites in Washington and two in Oregon. The new mountain snow depth tool is freely available on the Office of the Washington State Climatologist’s website.
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As cities become more densely populated, urban planning has traditionally focused more on improving transit infrastructure to move as many vehicles as possible, helping citizens get from home to work, the grocery store, local coffee shop, health center or nearest park. With so much time spent driving in vehicles, cities are facing growing air and noise pollution, while humans are facing social isolation and numerous health impacts from sitting in a car.
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As the planet warms, glaciers are retreating and causing changes in the world’s mountain water systems. For the first time, scientists at the University of Oxford and the University of Washington have directly linked human-induced climate change to the risk of flooding from a glacial lake known as one of the world’s greatest flood risks. The study examined the case of Lake Palcacocha in the Peruvian Andes, which could cause flooding with devastating consequences for 120,000 residents in the city of Huaraz.
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From a small aircraft flying over the Pacific Arctic, scientists with the Aerial Surveys of Arctic Marine Mammals (ASAMM) project surveyed the movements and interactions of marine mammals for more than four decades. Observations and images from these surveys offer clues informing our understanding of the lives, and deaths, of marine mammals in this remote region. A new study, published in Polar Biology and led by researchers at the University of Washington’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies (CICOES), is particularly interested in the ‘death’ part of those survey observations, and has uncovered the first direct evidence of killer whales as the primary cause of death for one of the Arctic’s endangered species, bowhead whales of the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort seas stock.
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If you’ve hit the trails or the water this year, you know COVID-19 has transformed the way many people are recreating in our wild spaces. Places that were previously “off the beaten track” are as popular as they’ve ever been, and the usual hotspots are overwhelmed with hikers, campers and skiers. What does this mean for our wild spaces, and how can we be better stewards?
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