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College of the Environment launches new Outstanding Diversity Commitment Award

Doris Duke Conservation Scholars at UW are helping define how diverse groups shape conservation.

Diversity is more than a word, more than an ideal, and more than the attainment of a particular quantifiable goal. Diversity is the realization of difference and inequity, as well as an understanding of power and privilege. Heightened diversity is nourished through inclusion, the desire to create equal opportunities for all, and the understanding that a diverse community is stronger, richer, and more sustainable than one that actively or passively excludes people who are different.  

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Imaging the Arctic

Imaging the Arctic project

Imaging the Arctic is an interdisciplinary project and exhibition that explores the ecology and culture of West Greenland through the work of University of Washington marine mammal biologist Kristin Laidre, expeditionary artist Maria Coryell-Martin,  Finnish photographer Tiina Itkonen, and graphic novelist Owen Curtsinger. The project is oriented around Laidre’s research on the impact of climate change in the Arctic, and sea ice loss on narwhals and polar bears. 

Read more on the Imaging the Arctic website »

Sea-star wasting culprit is virus

Sea-star along the Pacific coast

Disintegrating sea stars—a process described as melting, with the arms detaching and crawling away from each other—is being caused by a virus that’s been detected in West Coast waters for more than 70 years. That’s according to new findings published in late November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by 24 co-authors including the University of Washington’s Carolyn Friedman, a professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, and Colleen Burge, who earned her bachelor’s and doctorate from UW and is now back as a postdoctoral researcher here after four years of postdoc work at Cornell University. 

Read more at UW Today »

UW-made tool displays West Coast ocean acidification data

Marc Dewey

Increasing carbon dioxide in the air penetrates into the ocean and makes it more acidic, while robbing seawater of minerals that give shellfish their crunch. The West Coast is one of the first marine ecosystems to feel its effects. A new tool doesn’t alter that reality, but it does allow scientists to better understand what’s happening and provide data to help the shellfish industry adapt to these changes. 

Read more at UW Today »