In 2016, the Washington Clean Vessel Act, a joint project of Washington State Parks, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and Washington Sea Grant, helped divert a record 10 million gallons of raw sewage from Puget Sound, Lake Washington and other state waterways that previously would have been dumped into vulnerable waters.
Instead it was collected for safe onshore treatment. This diversion is largely a result of training, outreach and federal funds provided by U.S.
Unseen in the air around us are tiny molecules that drive the chemical cocktail of our atmosphere. As plants, animals, volcanoes, wildfires and human activities spew particles into the atmosphere, some of these molecules act as cleanup crews that remove that pollution.
The main molecules responsible for breaking down all these emissions are called oxidants. The oxygen-containing molecules, mainly ozone and hydrogen-based detergents, react with pollutants and reactive greenhouse gases, such as methane.
A diverse group of the world’s leading experts in marine conservation, including several scientists from the College of the Environment, is calling for a Hippocratic Oath for ocean conservation.
Every other week we share the latest peer-reviewed publications coming from the College of the Environment. Over the past two weeks, five new articles co-authored by members of the College were added to the Web of Science database. They include articles about clingfish, tidal energy and more. Read on!
John E. Vidale, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences, is among 84 new members and 21 foreign associates elected this week as members of the National Academy of Sciences. Academy members are recognized for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research, according to a news release from the academy.
Vidale studies Earth’s interior, including earthquakes and volcanoes.
University of Washington geologist David R. Montgomery, a professor in the College’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences, writes that he never thought he’d write an optimistic book about the environment. Montgomery’s first popular book, “Dirt,” was about how erosion undermined ancient civilizations around the world in places like modern-day Syria and Iraq.
Yet his latest book, “Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life,” is a good-news environment story.
The mountain pine beetle has destroyed more than 40 million acres of forest in the western United States — an area roughly the size of Washington state.
The beetles introduce a fungus that prevents water and critical nutrients from traveling within a tree. They also lay eggs under the conifers’ bark, and their feeding larvae help kill trees — sometimes just weeks after the initial attack.
A new population of invasive European green crab has been found at Dungeness Spit, near Sequim, Washington, rekindling concern over the potential for damage to local marine life and shorelines.
Staff and volunteers from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages Dungeness Spit National Wildlife Refuge, captured a total of 13 European green crab over the past two weeks as part of the UW-based Washington Sea Grant Crab Team early detection program.
Conservation projects that protect forests and encourage plant and animal diversity can benefit humans.
But improved human health is not among those benefits when health is measured through the lens of infectious disease. That’s the main finding of a paper published April 24 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, which analyzed the relationship between infectious diseases and their environmental, demographic and economic drivers in dozens of countries over 20 years.
Every other week we share the latest peer-reviewed publications coming from the College of the Environment. Over the past two weeks, nine new articles co-authored by members of the College were added to the Web of Science database. They include articles about Arctic sea ice, non-native species, and more. Read on!
On the eve of Seattle’s March for Science, faculty from around the UW’s College of the Environment are sharing their perspectives — as scientists and citizens of the world — on the event and whether they’ll participate. The demonstration is being referred to by national organizers as a “celebration of science” that aims to highlight the role science plays in our lives and the need to respect and encourage scientific research.
Researchers from UW and other institutions named the newly discovered species the "duckbilled clingfish" for its broad, flat snout — not unlike the bill of a duck.
Every other week we share the latest peer-reviewed publications coming from the College of the Environment. Over the past two weeks, nine new articles co-authored by members of the College were added to the Web of Science database. They include articles about salmon, black-swan events, and more. Read on!