Polar bears depend on sea ice for essential tasks like hunting and breeding. As Arctic sea ice disappears due to climate change, bears across the species’ 19 subpopulations are feeling the strain. But even as scientists try to quantify just how much melting sea ice is affecting polar bears, another group that depends on the iconic mammal for subsistence also is at risk of losing an important nutritional and economic resource.
Read more at UW Today »Diversification key to resilient fishing communities
Fishing communities can survive ― and even thrive ― as fish abundance and market prices shift if they can catch a variety of species and nimbly move from one fishery to the next. These findings, published Jan. 16 in Nature Communications, draw upon 34 years of data collected in more than 100 fishing communities in Alaska that depend on fishing for livelihoods, cultural traditions and daily subsistence.
Read more at UW Today »UW-led study shows global evidence of the role of humans, urbanization in rapid evolution
It has long been suspected that humans and the urban areas we create are having an important — and surprisingly current and ongoing — effect on evolution, which may have significant implications for the sustainability of global ecosystems. A new multi-institution study led by the University of Washington that examines 1,600 global instances of phenotypic change — alterations to species’ observable traits such as size, development or behavior — shows more clearly than ever that urbanization is affecting the genetic makeup of species that are crucial to ecosystem health and success.
Read more at UW Today »What makes influential science? Telling a good story
It turns out that even in the world of scientific writing, your eighth-grade teacher was right: how you write can matter as much as what you write. In a study published Dec. 15 in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the University of Washington looked at abstracts from more than 700 scientific papers about climate change to find out what makes a paper influential in its field.
Read more at UW Today »Put people at the center of conservation, new study advises
People must be part of the equation when it comes to conservation projects in order to increase local support and the overall effectiveness of the conservation efforts. That’s the main conclusion of a study published online on Nov. 29 in Biological Conservation. In it, a group of scientists from around the world recognize the need to consider the livelihoods of humans, their cultural traditions and dependence on natural resources when planning and carrying out conservation around the world.
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