Sailing into Friday Harbor, you can’t miss the set of long, low-slung buildings along the water’s northern edge. They are home to the famed Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL), a research outpost housed within the larger University of Washington College of the Environment. The labs have operated over one hundred years, first gaining notoriety for their impact in evolutionary and neuroscience. Over the decades, the labs have added marine ecology, seawater chemistry, biomechanics and all flavors of oceanography to their research repertoire.
The School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (SEFS) has been hard at work ensuring that it is an equitable, supportive space for the entire community, both as a member of the SEFS community and physically in the hallways, field sites and labs once classrooms open back up for in-person learning. Armed with a diversity statement voted on and approved by faculty, the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee focused their efforts on drafting a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Plan to carry out the diversity statement with actionable steps.
Freshwater is accumulating in the Arctic Ocean. The Beaufort Sea, which is the largest Arctic Ocean freshwater reservoir, has increased its freshwater content by 40% over the past two decades. How and where this water will flow into the Atlantic Ocean is important for local and global ocean conditions.
A study from the University of Washington, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that this freshwater travels through the Canadian Archipelago to reach the Labrador Sea, rather than through the wider marine passageways that connect to seas in Northern Europe.
After news that summer, fall and eventually winter quarters are mostly to be conducted virtually, many instructors within the College of the Environment found themselves forced to write new lesson plans, while also becoming proficient with an array of new technology quickly. Not only did they have to teach, but in many cases they also had to be a tech wizard to facilitate remote lab work and deliver engaging lectures over a computer screen.
The Arctic’s dramatic changes — warmer winters, earlier springs, shrinking ice and more human development — are impacting native animals. Researchers have long been observing the movements and behavior of animals in this region, but it’s been difficult to discover and access these data for meaningful collaborations.
Now scientists from around the world have established the Arctic Animal Movement Archive, an online repository for data documenting the movements of animals in the Arctic and Subarctic.
The tragic events of spring quarter have emphasized the tremendous amount of work that still needs to be done to counteract the mistreatment and marginalization of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPoC) and create an environment that is more just, more equitable and more inclusive. Schools, programs, institutes and departments within the College of the Environment have been working hard to refine, rethink and deepen their work in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) space, often led by unit-level diversity committees.
Researchers at the University of Washington, Portland State University and the University of Oregon have shown that deep-seated landslides in the central Oregon Coast Range are triggered mostly by rainfall, not by large offshore earthquakes.
The open-access paper was published Sept. 16 in Science Advances.
“Geomorphologists have long understood the importance of rainfall in triggering landslides, and our study is simply driving home just how important it is,” said first author Sean LaHusen, who did the work as part of his doctorate at the UW.
When it comes to invasive species, we tend to hear most about the ones that are the most sensational or scariest to human beings, even though their ecological impact is pretty minor. We have all heard a lot of buzz from Blaine, Washington surrounding the giant Asian hornet (commonly referred to as a “murder hornet” in popular media), but its impact remains to be seen.
Eelgrass, a species of seagrass named for its long slippery texture, is one of nature’s superheroes. It offers shade and camouflage for young fish, helps anchor shorelines, and provides food and habitat for many marine species.
A University of Washington study adds one more superpower to the list of eelgrass abilities: warding off the toxin-producing algae that regularly close beaches to shellfish harvests.
Oxygen first accumulated in the Earth’s atmosphere about 2.4 billion years ago, during the Great Oxidation Event. A long-standing puzzle has been that geologic clues suggest early bacteria were photosynthesizing and pumping out oxygen hundreds of millions of years before then. Where was it all going?
Something was holding back oxygen’s rise. A new interpretation of rocks billions of years old finds volcanic gases are the likely culprits.
Marine life off the West Coast, from Mexico up through Canada, inhabit the California Current. The cool, nutrient-rich water supports life from invisible phytoplankton to the economically important salmon, rockfish and Dungeness crab to the majestic orcas.
A new study led by the University of Washington finds that the animals’ ability to breathe in that water may be key to where and when they thrive.
A container ship leaves a trail of white clouds in its wake that can linger in the air for hours. This puffy line is not just exhaust from the engine, but a change in the clouds that’s caused by small airborne particles of pollution.
New research led by the University of Washington is the first to measure this phenomenon’s effect over years and at a regional scale.
Very occasionally, Earth gets bombarded by a large meteorite. But every day, our planet gets pelted by space dust, micrometeorites that collect on Earth’s surface.
A University of Washington team looked at very old samples of these small meteorites to show that the grains could have reacted with carbon dioxide on their journey to Earth. Previous work suggested the meteorites ran into oxygen, contradicting theories and evidence that the Earth’s early atmosphere was virtually devoid of oxygen.
Scientists know a lot about the Earth’s climate. Over the past sixty years, they have collected temperature and precipitation information, measured the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere, and charted the changing weather. But what if we want to compare today’s climate to past climates—say, a million years ago or more? Traces of those past climates—referred to as paleoclimates—remain in rocks and ice as particles that once made up the ancient atmosphere, rain and soil.
Along the Mekong River in Cambodia, UW researchers are racing to determine how hydropower demand will impact the supplies of rice and fish — and the communities who rely on them.