At the end of 2011, Science Magazine invited essays to answer the question, “how will the practice of science change in your lifetime?” The purpose was, apparently, two-fold: to kick off a new section in Science Magazine, called NextGen VOICES, and to explore “how can we promote the wide-ranging conversations that will be necessary to meet [the] critical challenges [of a crowded and resource-limited world]?”  

In the first lecture of the 2012 Bevans Series on Sustainable Fisheries, SAFS’ David Armstrong shared “crab sagas” from around the region.  He illustrated the challenge of defining or achieving sustainability in fisheries when they fluctuate with multiple drivers at many scales of space and time.  Read the UW News coverage here.  The next lecture is this Thursday, and focuses on global dynamics in recreational fisheries.  

On January 10 in Olympia, Science Cafe will host SEFS Professor John Marzluff, who will talk about the amazing yet not fully understood members of the corvid family: crows and ravens. Dr. Marzluff will talk about their weird habits, and the neurobiology behind them.  Read more here. 

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.