National Geographic photographer speaks at the Future of Ice Seminar Series

The Future of Ice Speaker Series continued last week with a visit from Paul Nicklen, National Geographic photographer and extreme adventurer. His day on campus was spent visiting with students, faculty, and staff to talk about his storytelling mission though photography and sharing firsthand accounts about the global changes he is seeing. His visit was capped with a 500+ person audience in Kane Hall to hear his tales of frozen and wild landscapes, and to be transported through his pictures of the fantastic animals that live in these environments.

Feb 25, 2014

Vitamin water: Measuring essential nutrients in the ocean

The phrase, ‘Eat your vitamins,’ applies to marine animals just like humans. Many vitamins are elusive in the ocean environment. University of Washington researchers used new tools to measure and track B-12 vitamins in the ocean. Once believed to be manufactured only by marine bacteria, the new results show that a whole different class of organism, archaea, can supply this essential vitamin.

Feb 18, 2014

Resource Management

UW helps protect $30 million to $40 million in U.S. wood exports to Japan

By showing the economic benefit to Japanese saw mills, a University of Washington researcher has helped protect U.S. exports of Douglas-fir logs and lumber worth $30 million to $40 million a year. A recently introduced homebuilding subsidy program in Japan put logs and lumber imported from the U.S. and other countries at a competitive disadvantage, according to Ivan Eastin, UW professor of environmental and forest sciences.

Feb 4, 2014

Secretary of the Interior visits the College of the Environment

College of the Environment Dean Lisa Graumlich and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell

The College of the Environment hosted Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell as she toured through Washington State to discuss climate change. On the heels of President Obama’s State of the Union address, where he spoke of the need to address a changing climate, the Secretary and Dean Lisa Graumlich teamed up to convene a roundtable of scientists, policy makers, natural resource managers and communicators engaged in climate issues.

Jan 31, 2014

Environmental sciences lab ups the bar for green labs at UW

A soils lab that schedules fieldwork to minimize car trips, reuses sampling containers and recycles soils and leftover plant material has achieved the highest score yet in the University of Washington’s 10-month-old Green Laboratory Certification Program. With an overall score of 95 percent, Tom DeLuca’s environmental and forest sciences lab has just topped the 93 percent previously earned by a UW Bothell chemistry instructional lab.