Determining the proper time to flower, important if a plant is to reproduce successfully, involves a sequence of molecular events, a plant's circadian clock and sunlight.

Understanding how flowering works in the simple plant used in this study – Arabidopsis  – should lead to a better understanding of how the same genes work in more complex plants grown as crops such as rice, wheat and barley, according to Takato Imaizumi, a University of Washington assistant professor of biology and corresponding author of a paper in the May 25 issue of the journal Science.

"If we can regulate the timing of flowering, we might be able to increase crop yield by accelerating or delaying this. Knowing the mechanism gives us the tools to manipulate this," Imaizumi said. Along with food crops, the work might also lead to higher yields of plants grown for biofuels.

At specific times of year, flowering plants produce a protein known as Flowering Locus T in their leaves that induces flowering. Once this protein is made, it travels from the leaves to the shoot apex, a part of the plant where cells are undifferentiated, meaning they can either become leaves or flowers. At the shoot apex, this protein starts the molecular changes that send cells on the path to becoming flowers.

Changes in day length tell many organisms that the seasons are changing. It has long been known that plants use an internal time-keeping mechanism known as the circadian clock to measure changes in day length. Circadian clocks synchronize biological processes during 24-hour periods in people, animals, insects, plants and other organisms.

Imaizumi and the paper's co-authors investigated  what's called the FKF1 protein, which they suspected was a key player in the mechanism by which plants recognize seasonal change and know when to flower. FKF1 protein is a photoreceptor, meaning it is activated by sunlight.

Takato Imaizumi and Young Hun Song in the Takato plant lab at the University of Washington.

U of Washington

"The FKF1 photoreceptor protein we've been working on is expressed in the late afternoon every day, and is very tightly regulated by the plant's circadian clock," Imaizumi said. "When this protein is expressed during days that are short, this protein cannot be activated, as there is no daylight in the late afternoon. When this protein is expressed during a longer day, this photoreceptor makes use of the light and activates the flowering mechanisms involving Flowering Locus T. The circadian clock regulates the timing of the specific photoreceptor for flowering. That is how plants sense differences in day length."

This system keeps plants from flowering when it's a poor time to reproduce, such as the dead of winter when days are short and nights are long.

The new findings come from work with the plant Arabidopsis, a small plant in the mustard family that's often used in genetic research. They validate predictions from a mathematical model of the mechanism that causes Arabidopsis to flower that was developed by Andrew Millar, a University of Edinburgh professor of biology and co-author of the paper.

"Our mathematical model helped us to understand the operating principles of the plants' day-length sensor," Millar said. "Those principles will hold true in other plants, like rice, where the crop's day-length response is one of the factors that limits where farmers can obtain good harvests. It's that same day-length response that needs controlled lighting for laying chickens and fish farms, so it's just as important to understand this response in animals.

"The proteins involved in animals are not yet so well understood as they are in plants but we expect the same principles that we've learned from these studies to apply."

First author on the paper is Young Hun Song, a postdoctoral researcher in Imaizumi's UW lab. The other co-authors are Benjamin To, who was a UW undergraduate student when this work was being conducted, and Robert Smith, a University of Edinburgh graduate student. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and the United Kingdom's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

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For more information:
Imaizumi, 206-543-8709, takato@uw.edu

Organized by staff with Conservation Magazine and the University of Washington Department of Biology, the event is meant to appeal to a mix of students, scientists and other citizens of Puget Sound.

"We want people to come away from this event with a sense that conservation isn't just about stopping bad things from happening, but also about starting good things. They will get a glimpse of the kind of environmental innovations that are possible when we include engineers, architects, cooks and entrepreneurs in the environmental conversation," said Estella Leopold, UW professor emeritus of biology and an event host. "It turns out that environmental inspiration can be found in the most unexpected places."

The event will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 2, at Seattle's Town Hall and will feature 11 speakers talking about food, agriculture, built environments, energy, technology and business. Two are from the UW, the rest are with other U.S. and European institutions and organizations. Veteran science journalists David Malakoff with Science magazine and John Nielsen, a former environmental correspondent with National Public Radio, will guide discussions audience discussions.

"This event is not only about listening to the speakers – it’s also about listening to the audience," said Dee Boersma, UW professor of biology and co-organizer of the event. For example, Earthfix, a media project of Northwest public radio and television stations, will host a digital story booth where participants can share their thoughts and stories about environmental issues.

Now is the time for this kind of regional event, Boersma said.

"The Puget Sound region and the UW are emerging hubs for environmental innovation," she said. "We have a tremendous combination of interests and expertise here—environmental concern, technological know-how, and business entrepreneurship. This event mixes these communities up and brings smart people together to imagine a greener future."

Winter 2012 edition

Tickets can be purchased online for $50 – $25 for students– and include a catered lunch and a one-year subscription to Conservation Magazine, a quarterly UW publication distributed in 58 countries. There will be a limited number of tickets available at the door.

Major sponsors of the event with Conservation Magazine are the Bullitt Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, UW College of Arts and Sciences and UW College of the Environment. Fifteen other UW and community organizations are partners.

"Just as TED originally brought to the web ideas worth spreading about technology, entertainment and design, we hope to launch something similar for the environment," said UW's Kathryn Kohm, editor of Conservation Magazine and the other co-organizer of the remix event.

For more information contact Lindsey Doermann, doermann@uw.edu, 206-221-5292.

###

For more information, news media can contact:
Boersma, 206-616-2185, boersma@uw.edu
Kohm, 206-685-4724, kkohm@uw.edu

For the past decade scientists have outlined new areas suitable for mammals likely to be displaced as climate change first makes their current habitat inhospitable, then unlivable. For the first time a new study considers whether mammals will actually be able to move to those new areas before they are overrun by climate change. Carrie Schloss, University of Washington research analyst in environmental and forest sciences, is lead author of the paper out online the week of May 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We underestimate the vulnerability of mammals to climate change when we look at projections of areas with suitable climate but we don't also include the ability of mammals to move, or disperse, to the new areas," Schloss said.

The percentage of mammal species unable to keep pace with climate change in the Americas range from zero and low (blue) to a high of nearly 40 percent (light orange).

U of Washington

Indeed, more than half of the species scientists have in the past projected could expand their ranges in the face of climate change will, instead, see their ranges contract because the animals won't be able to expand into new areas fast enough, said co-author Joshua Lawler, UW associate professor of environmental and forest sciences.

In particular, many of the hemisphere's species of primates – including tamarins, spider monkeys, marmosets and howler monkeys, some of which are already considered threatened or endangered – will be hard-pressed to outpace climate change, as are the group of species that includes shrews and moles. Winners of the climate change race are likely to come from carnivores like coyotes and wolves, the group that includes deer and caribou, and one that includes armadillos and anteaters.

The analysis looked at 493 mammals in the Western Hemisphere ranging from a moose that weighs 1,800 pounds to a shrew that weighs less than a dime. Only climate change was considered and not other factors that cause animals to disperse, such as competition from other species.

To determine how quickly species must move to new ranges to outpace climate change, UW researchers used previous work by Lawler that reveals areas with climates needed by each species, along with how fast climate change might occur based on 10 global climate models and a mid-high greenhouse gas emission scenario developed by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The UW researchers coupled how swiftly a species is able to disperse across the landscape with how often its members make such a move. In this case, the scientists assumed animals dispersed once a generation.

While bison cross this highway, they and other mammals may be less able to traverse or go around human-dominated landscapes, such as cities, found in the path the animals are taking to territory with climate that suits them.

C Schloss/U of Washington

It's understandable, for example, that a mouse might not get too far because of its size. But if there are many generations born each a year, then that mouse is on the move regularly compared to a mammal that stays several years with its parents in one place before being old enough to reproduce and strike out for new territory.

Western Hemisphere primates, for example, take several years before they are sexually mature. That contributes to their low-dispersal rate and is one reason they look especially vulnerable to climate change, Schloss said. Another reason is that the territory with suitable climate is expected to shrink and to reach the new areas animals in the tropics must generally go farther than in mountainous regions, where animals can more quickly move to a different elevation and a climate that suits them.

Those factors mean that nearly all the hemisphere's primates will experience severe reductions in their ranges, Schloss said, on average about 75 percent. At the same time species with high dispersal rates that face slower-paced climate change are expected to expand their ranges.

"Our figures are a fairly conservative – even optimistic – view of what could happen because our approach assumes that animals always go in the direction needed to avoid climate change and at the maximum rate possible for them," Lawler said.

The researchers were also conservative, he said, in taking into account human-made obstacles such as cities and crop lands that animals encounter. For the overall analysis they used a previously developed formula of "average human influence" that highlights regions where animals are likely to encounter intense human development. It doesn't take into account transit time if animals must go completely around human-dominated landscapes.

"I think it's important to point out that in the past when climates have changed – between glacial and interglacial periods when species ranges contracted and expanded – the landscape wasn't covered with agricultural fields, four-lane highways and parking lots, so species could move much more freely across the landscape," Lawler said.

Carrie Schloss

U of Washington

"Conservation planners could help some species keep pace with climate change by focusing on connectivity – on linking together areas that could serve as pathways to new territories, particularly where animals will encounter human-land development," Schloss said. "For species unable to keep pace, reducing non-climate-related stressors could help make populations more resilient, but ultimately reducing emissions, and therefore reducing the pace of climate change, may be the only certain method to make sure species are able to keep pace with climate change."

The third co-author of the paper is Tristan Nuñez, now at University of California, Berkeley. Both Schloss and Nuñez worked with Lawler while earning their master's degrees. Lawler did this work with support from the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences using, in part, models he previously developed with funding from the Nature Conservancy and the Cedar Tree Foundation.

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For more information:
Schloss, cell 440-666-6389, cschloss@uw.edu
Lawler, 206-685-4367, jlawler@u.washington.edu (Note: Lawler is away from the office the week of May 14 but will check for messages once or twice a day)

The finding is important because it helps confirm that models that simulate global warming agree with observations, said Stephen Po-Chedley, a UW graduate student in atmospheric sciences who wrote the paper with Qiang Fu, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences.

They identified a problem with the satellite temperature record put together by the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Researchers there were the first to release such a record, in 1989, and it has often been cited by climate change skeptics to cast doubt on models that show the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming.

In their paper, appearing this month in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Po-Chedley and Fu examined the record from the researchers in Alabama along with satellite temperature records that were subsequently developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Remote Sensing Systems.

The UW researchers are the first to come up with an adjustment for the way the Alabama scientists handled data from NOAA-9, a satellite that collected temperature data in the mid-1980s.

NOAA

Scientists like Po-Chedley and Fu have been studying the three records because each comes to a different conclusion.

“There’s been a debate for many, many years about the different results but we didn’t know which had a problem,” Fu said. “This discovery reduces uncertainty, which is very important.”

When they applied their correction to the Alabama-Huntsville climate record for a UW-derived tropospheric temperature measurement, it effectively eliminated differences with the other studies.

Scientists already had noticed that there were issues with the way the Alabama researchers handled data from NOAA-9, one satellite that collected temperature data for a short time in the mid-1980s. But Po-Chedley and Fu are the first to offer a calculation related to the NOAA-9 data for adjusting the Alabama findings, said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“It should therefore make for a better record, as long as UAH accepts it,” he said.

To come up with the correction, Po-Chedley and Fu closely examined the way the three teams interpreted readings from NOAA-9 and compared it to data collected from weather balloons about the temperature of the troposphere.

They found that the Alabama research incorrectly factors in the changing temperature of the NOAA-9 satellite itself and devised a method to estimate the impact on the Alabama trend.

Like how a baker might use an oven thermometer to gauge the true temperature of an oven and then adjust the oven dial accordingly, the researchers must adjust the temperature data collected by the satellites.

That’s because the calibration of the instruments used to measure the Earth's temperature is different after the satellites are launched, and because the satellite readings are calibrated by the temperature of the satellite itself. The groups have each separately made their adjustments in part by comparing the satellite’s data to that of other satellites in service at the same time.

Once Po-Chedley and Fu apply the correction, the Alabama-Huntsville record shows 0.21 F warming per decade in the tropics since 1979, instead of its previous finding of 0.13 F warming. Surface measurements show the temperature of Earth in the tropics has increased by about 0.21 F per decade.

The Remote Sensing Systems and NOAA reports continue to reflect warming of the troposphere that’s close to the surface measurements, with warming of 0.26 F per decade and 0.33 F respectively.

The discrepancy among the records stems from challenges climate researchers face when using weather satellites to measure the temperature of the atmosphere. The records are a composite of over a dozen satellites launched since late 1978 that use microwaves to determine atmospheric temperature.

However, stitching together data collected by those satellites to discover how the climate has changed over time is a complicated matter. Other factors scientists must take into account include the satellite’s drift over time and differences in the instruments used to measure atmospheric temperature on board each satellite.

The temperature reports look largely at the troposphere, which stretches from the surface of the earth to around 10 miles above it, where most weather occurs. Climate models show that this region of the atmosphere will warm considerably due to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, scientists expect that in some areas, such as over the tropics, the troposphere will warm faster than the surface of the Earth.

The paper does not resolve all the discrepancies among the records, and researchers will continue to look at ways to reconcile those conflicts.

“It will be interesting to see how these differences are resolved in the coming years,” Po-Chedley said.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and NOAA.

"So far, on average we're seeing about a 30 percent speedup in 10 years," said Twila Moon, a University of Washington doctoral student in Earth and space sciences and lead author of a paper documenting the observations published May 4 in Science.

These icebergs recently calved from the front of the north branch of Jakobshavn Isbrae, a large outlet glacier that drains 6.5 percent of the Greenland ice sheet. The fact that they are upright, indicated by their dirty and crevassed surfaces, suggests they calved from the floating end of a glacier.

Ian Joughin/UW

The faster the glaciers move, the more ice and meltwater they release into the ocean. In a previous study, scientists trying to understand the contribution of melting ice to rising sea level in a warming world considered a scenario in which the Greenland glaciers would double their velocity between 2000 and 2010 and then stabilize at the higher speed, and another scenario in which the speeds would increase tenfold and then stabilize.

At the lower rate, Greenland ice would contribute about four inches to rising sea level by 2100 and at the higher rate the contribution would be nearly 19 inches by the end of this century. But the researchers who conducted that study had little precise data available for how major ice regions, primarily in Greenland and Antarctica, were behaving in the face of climate change.

In the new study, the scientists created a decadelong record of changes in Greenland outlet glaciers by producing velocity maps using data from the Canadian Space Agency's Radarsat-1 satellite, Germany's TerraSar-X satellite and Japan's Advanced Land Observation Satellite. They started with the winter of 2000-01 and then repeated the process for each winter from 2005-06 through 2010-11, and found that the outlet glaciers had not increased in velocity as much as had been speculated.

"In some sense, this raises as many questions as it answers. It shows there's a lot of variability," said Ian Joughin, a glaciologist in the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory who is a coauthor of the Science paper and is Moon's doctoral adviser.

Other coauthors are Benjamin Smith of the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and Ian Howat, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. The research was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation.

The scientists saw no clear indication in the new research that the glaciers will stop gaining speed during the rest of the century, and so by 2100 they could reach or exceed the scenario in which they contribute four inches to sea level rise.

"There's the caveat that this 10-year time series is too short to really understand long-term behavior," Howat said. "So there still may be future events – tipping points – that could cause large increases in glacier speed to continue. Or perhaps some of the big glaciers in the north of Greenland that haven't yet exhibited any changes may begin to speed up, which would greatly increase the rate of sea level rise."

The record showed a complex pattern of behavior. Nearly all of Greenland's largest glaciers that end on land move at top speeds of 30 to 325 feet a year, and their changes in speed are small because they are already moving slowly. Glaciers that terminate in fjord ice shelves move at 1,000 feet to a mile a year, but didn't gain speed appreciably during the decade.

In the east, southeast and northwest areas of Greenland, glaciers that end in the ocean can travel seven miles or more in a year. Their changes in speed varied (some even slowed), but on average the speeds increased by 28 percent in the northwest and 32 percent in the southeast during the decade.

"We can't look at one glacier for 100 years, but we can look at 200 glaciers for 10 years and get some idea of what they're doing," Joughin said.

Moon said she was drawn to the research from a desire to take the large store of data available from the satellites and put it into a usable form to understand what is happening to Greenland's ice.

"We don't have a really good handle on it and we need to have that if we're going to understand the effects of climate change," she said.

"We are going to need to continue to look at all of the ice sheet to see how it's changing, and we are going to need to continue to work on some tough details to understand how individual glaciers change."

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For more information, contact Moon at 406-600-2793 or twilap@uw.edu, or Joughin at 206-221-3177 or irj@uw.edu.

This means just a few towering white fir, sugar pine and incense cedars per acre at the Yosemite site are disproportionately responsible for photosynthesis, converting carbon dioxide into plant tissue and sequestering that carbon in the forest, sometimes for centuries, according to James Lutz, a University of Washington research scientist in environmental and forest sciences. He's lead author of a paper on the largest quantitative study yet of the importance of big trees in temperate forests being published online May 2 on PLoS ONE.

A handful of large-diameter trees per acre, such as these incense cedars, together with remains of big trees like the three-foot-wide white fir snag and downed debris account for half the forest biomass at a Yosemite National park study site.

J Lutz/U of Washington

"In a forest comprised of younger trees that are generally the same age, if you lose one percent of the trees, you lose one percent of the biomass," he said. "In a forest with large trees like the one we studied, if you lose one percent of the trees, you could lose half the biomass."

In 2009, scientists including Lutz reported that the density of large-diameter trees declined nearly 25 percent between the 1930s and 1990s in Yosemite National Park, even though the area was never logged. Scientists including co-author Andrew Larson of the University of Montana, also have found notable numbers of large trees dying in similar areas across the West.

Because of this, scientists have been keen to study a plot large enough to detect forest ecosystem changes involving large trees, including the effects of climate variability and change, possible culprits in the declines, Lutz said.

The new 63-acre study site in the western part of Yosemite National Park is one of the largest, fully-mapped plots in the world and the largest old-growth plot in North America. The tally of what's there, including the counting and tagging of 34,500 live trees, was done by citizen scientists, mainly undergraduate college students, led by Lutz,  Larson, Mark Swanson of Washington State University and James Freund of the UW.

Included was all above-ground biomass such as live trees, snags, downed woody debris, litter and what's called duff, the decaying plant matter on the ground under trees. Even when big trees die, they continue to dominate biomass in different ways. For example, 12 percent of standing snags were the remains of large-diameter trees, but still accounted for 60 percent of the total biomass of snags.

Live and dead biomass totaled 280 tons per acre (652 metric tons per hectare), a figure unmatched by any other forest in the Smithsonian Center for Tropical Forest Science network, a global network of 42 tropical and temperate forest plots including the one in Yosemite.

Washington State University's Mark Swanson pulls a tape tight around a 4-foot-wide sugar pine, one of the 34,500 live trees counted and tagged for long-term study in a Yosemite National Park study plot.

Washington State University

Trees in the western U.S. with trunks more than three feet across are typically at least 200 years old. Many forests that were heavily harvested in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, or those that are used as commercial forest lands today, don't generally have large-diameter trees, snags or large wood on the ground.

One implication of the research is that land managers may want to pay more attention to existing big trees, the co-authors said. Last year in the Yosemite National Park, for example, managers planning to set fires to clear out overgrown brush and densely packed small trees first used data from the study plot to figure out how many large trees to protect.

"Before the fires were started, crews raked around some of the large trees so debris wouldn't just sit and burn at the base of the tree and kill the cambium, the tissue under the bark that sustains trees," Lutz said.

In some younger forests that lack big trees, citizens and land managers might want to consider fostering the growth of a few big-trunked trees, Lutz said.

Another finding from the new work is that forest models based either on scaling theory or competition theory, which are useful for younger, more uniform forests, fail to capture how and where large trees occur in forests.

"These trees started growing in the Little Ice Age," Lutz said. "Current models can't fully capture the hundreds of years of dynamic processes that have shaped them during their lifetimes."

The research was funded by the Smithsonian Center for Tropical Forest Science.

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For more information:
Lutz, 206-616-3827, jlutz@uw.edu
Facebook page for Yosemite plot
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Yosemite-Forest-Dynamics-Plot/117620576445

Pieces of plastic debris found in the oceans are smaller than many people think. Most are measured in millimeters.

Sea Education Association

After taking samples of water at a depth of 16 feet (5 meters), Proskurowski, a researcher at the University of Washington, discovered that wind was pushing the lightweight plastic particles below the surface. That meant that decades of research into how much plastic litters the ocean, conducted by skimming only the surface, may in some cases vastly underestimate the true amount of plastic debris in the oceans, Proskurowski said.

Reporting in Geophysical Research Letters this month, Proskurowski and co-lead author Tobias Kukulka, University of Delaware, said that data collected from just the surface of the water commonly underestimates the total amount of plastic in the water by an average factor of 2.5.

In high winds the volume of plastic could be underestimated by a factor of 27.

“That really puts a lot of error into the compilation of the data set,” Proskurowski said. The paper also detailed a new model that researchers and environmental groups can use to collect more accurate data in the future.

Plastic waste in the oceans is a concern because of the impact it might have on the environment. For instance, when fish ingest the plastics, it may degrade their liver functions. In addition, the particles make nice homes for bacteria and algae, which are then transported along with the particles into different regions of the ocean where they may be invasive and cause problems.

Giora Proskurowski deploys a net to collect samples that help estimate how much plastic debris is in the ocean.

Sea Education Association

Proskurowski gathered data on a 2010 North Atlantic expedition where he and his team collected samples at the surface, plus an additional three or four depths down as far as 100 feet.

“Almost every tow we did contained plastic regardless of the depth,” he said.

By combining the data with wind measurements, Proskurowski and his co-authors developed a simplified mathematical model that could potentially be used to match historical weather data, collected by satellite, with previous surface sampling to more accurately estimate the amount of plastic in the oceans.

In addition, armed with the new model, organizations and researchers in the future might monitor wind data and combine it with surface collections in order to better estimate how much plastic waste is in our oceans.

“By factoring in the wind, which is fundamentally important to the physical behavior, you’re increasing the rigor of the science and doing something that has a major impact on the data,” Proskurowski said.

The team plans to publish a “recipe” that simplifies the model so that a wide range of groups investigating ocean plastics, including those that aren’t oceanographers, can easily use the model. Following the recipe, which is available now by request, might encourage some consistency among the studies, he said.

“On this topic, what science needs to be geared toward is building confidence that scientists have solid numbers and that policy makers aren’t making judgments based on CNN reports,” he said. Descriptions of the so-called great Pacific garbage patch in widespread news reports may have led many people to imagine a giant, dense island of garbage while in fact the patch is made up of widely dispersed, millimeter-size pieces of debris, he said.

In the future, Proskurowski hopes to examine additional factors, including the drag of the plastics in water, complex ocean turbulence and wave height, that might improve the accuracy of the model. He also may have the chance to examine the relationship between wind speed and depth of plastic particles. The 2010 expedition had near-uniform wind conditions so the researchers were unable to test that relationship.

“This is a first pass,” he said.

Other co-authors of the paper are Kara Lavendar Law and Skye Morét-Ferguson, Sea Education Association, and Dylan Meyer, an undergraduate student from Eckerd College. Support for the project came from NOAA and the University of Delaware. The researchers relied on data collected by students participating in the Sea Education Association’s Plastics at SEA program.

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For more information:
Proskurowski, 206-685-3507, giora@uw.edu

Learn how a net is used to sample water at different depths below the sea surface, checking how the wind mixes floating plastic debris down into the water. Video credit: Sea Education Association

Students
Justin Hellier, graduate student, public affairs and environmental and forest sciences
Katie Stultz, senior, community, environment and planning

Staff
Dean Pearson, gardener lead, intercollegiate athletics
Storm Hodge, assistant director, housing and food services

Groups
Washington Student Athlete Advisory Council
Patio Display Garden Team, UW Tower Green Team

The annual campus observation of Earth Day coincides this year with HuskyFest and events for both will be underway in Red Square.

Music from local hip hop artist Th3rdz and Grayskul kicks off Earth Day events at 10 a.m. Then at 11 a.m., Sierra Club's Sarah Hodgdon, UW College of the Environment's Dean Lisa Graumlich and UW President Michael Young will speak, followed by the announcement of this year's recipients of the Husky Green Award. The award goes to individuals and groups that have shown leadership, initiative and dedication to environmental stewardship and sustainability at the UW.

Other performers include the break-dancing group Massive Monkees that, like the other groups performing, originated in Seattle.

Among the exhibitors are a dozen student groups including the UW chapter of Earth Club, the group that collaborated with a committee to plan this year's events. Various UW departments and off-campus organizations and businesses will also have exhibit booths.

John Sahr with the passive radars on the roof of Sieg Hall. His group uses the radars to eavesdrop on FM radio stations in order to study the ionosphere.

Mary Levin, UW Photography

The past few months have seen a spate of solar flares – bringing spectacular views of the northern lights as far south as Seattle – along with media speculation that the electrical activity could disrupt power grids, satellites or ground airplanes.

John Sahr, a UW professor of electrical engineering who studies the upper atmosphere, is the regional go-to guy for such questions. We found some time in Sahr's busy schedule (he's also the UW's associate dean of undergraduate academic affairs and a part-time zombie hunter) to get his read on the space weather forecast.

Q: Can you describe what we've been seeing in the last few months?

Well, let's start with the sun. The sun has an 11-year cycle of times when it's more busy and less busy, more stormy and less stormy. For the past five years the sun has been pretty quiet. We're now rising up into the next solar maximum, which will last for about five years.

When the sun is stormy, there are more solar flares and more of what are called coronal mass ejections, which are basically just big puffs of electrically charged gas that burst out of the sun.

When this solar wind is gusty, it rattles the magnetic field around the Earth. That drives electric currents up and down along the Earth's magnetic field lines. When those currents run into the Earth's upper atmosphere, at altitudes of about 60 to maybe two- or three-hundred miles, they collide with the ionosphere and release energy in the form of light, causing the visual displays that we know of as the aurora.

The sky above Washington's Methow Valley on March 9, 2012.

Ed Stockard (MS '75), www.flickr.com/coastaleddy

The solar wind is a pretty good conductor, so it stretches the Earth's magnetic field downwind, and it wiggles and moves. To know what's happening during a solar storm, go over to the UW's Red Square and look at the flagpole. When there's a big stiff wind you hear it snapping and popping. That mechanical energy is the source, ultimately, for the northern lights. The Earth acts like a flagpole and the magnetosphere drapes past it, like the flag around the flagpole.

The lines of the Earth's magnetic field act like wires, and it's easy for the charged particles to move along the lines of the magnetic field. When people see the curtain effect of the aurora, what they're seeing is light emitted from currents that flow along the Earth's magnetic field. You actually can see the Earth's magnetic field with your eye.

Q: Can we see predict solar activity and northern lights?

We can, to some extent. If you look at the sun through a telescope, the part of the sun that's right in the center is roughly the part that's throwing gas at you. If there's a solar flare or sunspot that's more out toward the edge of the sun, we'll see that it happened, but the gas won't hit the Earth.

When there's a solar flare, the light gets here in eight minutes, but the coronal mass ejection gets here typically about two or two-and-a-half days later.

The other predictability has to do with the fact that the sun rotates every 30 days or so. So if you got hit with a bunch of solar wind from a particular sunspot, if the sunspot's still there when the sun has rotated around, there's a greater likelihood that we'll get a burst of solar wind a month later.

And then, finally, there's the 11-year cycle. We're not surprised that we're getting more magnetic storms now than we were for the past four or five years.

Q: Reporters often ask you to talk about solar activity. What do you think about the public's reaction to solar storms?

Well, it comes up that there's a solar storm, and sooner or later I'll get the phone calls. And there's always this hype about: "Whoa, it's a really big magnetic storm, and what's that gonna do?" And the answer is: "Well, people probably won't notice."

It used to be a more significant effect on the power grid, because the currents that flow in the upper atmosphere can disturb the power system by driving big currents through the transformers along transmission lines. But the power companies know how to modify their system so that it's much more robust to those great big surges.

Airlines that are flying over the poles will change their routes to be more southerly to reduce the energetic particle exposure, for the crews and passengers. By and large, we actually know how to respond to these things very well.

Probably the most significant impact of really big solar flares is the exposure of satellites. Satellites have to be designed with X-ray exposure in mind. One way is to have the satellites be within the Earth's magnetosphere, but there are some that manage to be outside the Earth's magnetosphere. One of the things that makes GPS a relatively reliable technology is that everybody wants it so badly, and there are now three or four different GPS-like systems. There's the U.S. GPS one, there's the Russian GLONASS, there's a European system. These systems work about the same, and they're constantly launching new satellites. They actually park spare satellites in orbit just to make sure the service keeps working. So I think [satellite] is something people can safely rely upon.

A little longer point of view, it's important to remember that when we have people in orbit, these magnetic storms are really providing extra energetic particles and more X-ray exposure. As we begin to think about doing things like traveling to Mars, one of the things for people to remember is that those spacecraft will probably have to travel during a sunspot minimum, just to keep the radiation exposure of the astronauts to a minimum.

Q: What can we expect to see over the next few months?

We expect the actual peak in the sunspot cycle to be somewhere between about a year and two years from now. So what we've been seeing for the past several days or weeks will be typical for the next three or four years. The prediction is that this sunspot cycle will actually be somewhat less intense than the last one, which peaked in 2000 and was very active all the way through 2004.

This particular sunspot cycle is interesting because the depth of the minimum was remarkably deep, and the time since the last solar max is closer to 14 years, so this has been a bit of an unusual solar cycle.

Q: Where do you recommend going in Seattle to see the northern lights?

The Northern Lights can happen any time of day, but of course you need a pretty dark sky to actually see them. What I always advise is anytime they fly across the nation at night, to get a window seat on the north side of the plane. I've seen great aurora that way.

You really just need a dark sky and a view to the north. I've seen them from my front porch. There's something called the k-p index, which is kind of the Richter scale for the upper atmosphere. If it's evening, and the k-p index is greater than 7, you should go look.

John Sahr and a former graduate student designed the radars, that work by eavesdropping on rock 'n roll radio broadcasts.

Mary Levin, UW Photography

Q: How are solar storms related to your research?

Solar storms generate a sonic boom, which is very loud sound waves in the plasma that scatter radio waves, at an altitude of about 60 miles. We can study this phenomenon directly with our radar. You can think of it as when the ionosphere is smooth, it's like a window that you can look through. But when it's been roughened up with sound waves, then it's like frosted glass, and so now you can actually see the glass instead of just looking through the glass.

Q: Why are you interested in studying sonic booms in the ionosphere?

One reason is that Mother Nature does it, so we study it. That's the most pure reason, I suppose.

Another reason is that the plasma physics of that part of the atmosphere are unusual. It's a relatively cold plasma, and it's a molecular plasma unlike plasmas that you find in the sun, which are atomic plasmas. It's surrounded by neutral gas, so there's a lot of chemistry that goes on.

It's also in a part of the sky that's very difficult to study because it's too high for balloons and aircraft, and too low for satellites. This is the part of the sky that ultimately burns up all the meteors, so instruments can't be there for very long. So remote sensing is the name of the game for getting long-term data for this part of the atmosphere.

Q: What instruments do you use to view the ionosphere?

The radar that the students and I operate was invented here at the UW in about 1997, by me and my former graduate student Frank Lind (PhD '01). The radar is the first of its kind, and it works extremely well. It's a very safe radar to be around, so it's good for educational purposes. We can teach students about radar and not have to worry about them being exposed to high-power radio waves.

I'm extremely grateful to the National Science Foundation for thinking it wasn't a crazy idea, and for funding it. Right now my student, Laura Vertatschitsch, is building a brand-new receiver that will work extremely well for digital TV as well as FM broadcasts.

Q: How does your radar work?

The thing that makes it novel is we don't have a transmitter. We listen to other people's broadcasts. In particular, we listen to commercial FM broadcasts.

Even more particularly, we prefer to listen to rock 'n' roll stations, which for interesting signal-processing reasons provide the best waveform for radar operation. Basically, they're noisy. Rock 'n' roll is much noisier than, say, classical music, which has quiet places, or for that matter talk radio, which has pauses.

We have receivers here on Sieg Hall, and then another set of receivers on the UW's Manastash Ridge Observatory, which is shielded from the Seattle transmitters by the Cascade Mountains. If there's any signal above the mountains it scatters back down to the receivers at the observatory near Ellensburg.

By comparing the data from the two places, we can see the echoes of turbulence in the ionosphere up to about 700 miles to the northeast. We can tell how far away the echoes are, how fast they're moving, and some of the spectral characteristics of the echoes that come back.

Q: What radio stations to you listen to?

Mostly we listen to 96.5 and 98.9. Several years ago I was interviewed by KUOW so we turned the radio to KUOW so my voice could be the transmitter signal. We didn't get anything, but it was fun to do.

Q: What does the increase in solar activity mean for your research?

It means we detect the turbulence we study more often, perhaps weekly, as opposed to yearly. In 2003 and 2004 we would see irregularities two or three times a week. But for the past several years it's been very, very scarce. So we're excited that we’re entering a new sunspot maximum.

Q: How did you first become interested in radio waves?

I became a radio amateur in junior high school. I picked up more physics and math and science and engineering along the way, but basically I turned my junior high-school hobby into my career.

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For more information, contact Sahr at 206-616-7175 or jdsahr@uw.edu.

The students did not disappoint. A presenter sporting a tie and dress shoes rolled a solar-powered electric bike on stage. Another carried a hunk of rubber and mustered the enthusiasm of a used-car salesman to pitch an idea for rubber lane dividers. One maker of a smartphone-controlled LED promised office workers everywhere could use it as “a direct replacement for the buzzing, flickering, hated fluorescent tube.”

Members of the team Green Innovative Safety Technologies (GIST), won first prize and $10,000 for developing a recycled alternative to concrete highway jersey barriers.

University of Washington

“The students are tackling bigger problems, and I think they’re being fearless about it,” said Connie Bourassa-Shaw, director of the UW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “When you actually have to build a prototype, it’s an incredibly difficult process.”

This year’s competition, put on by the Foster School of Business in partnership with the College of Engineering and the College of the Environment, was the largest ever, with 32 applicants. For the first time the organizers held a screening round to winnow the field to the final 23 presenters.

“This is about the right size,” Bourassa-Shaw said. “You want the judges to see the prototypes, to engage with the students and to provide some feedback.”

The College of Engineering provided $25,000 in prototype funding for UW teams, and Washington Research Foundation donated $5,000 to fund prototypes for non-UW entrants. The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship held a fall quarter course and optional winter-quarter resource nights.

The teams included 98 students split about evenly between undergraduates and graduates, from five colleges and universities. Each team had to be led by students from a Pacific Northwest institution.  This year's field included the first out-of-state team, from the Oregon Institute of Technology.

The grand prize of $10,000, from the UW’s Center for Commercialization, went to Green Innovative Safety Technologies (GIST), the highway lane dividers made of recycled rubber tires. Team members are UW undergraduates Hin Kei Wong in mechanical engineering, Lloyd Pasion in civil and environmental engineering and Ricky Holm in business; and civil and environmental engineering graduate student Jessica Tanumihardja.

Second prize went to Barrels of Hope, billed as a safe, affordable and environmentally friendly house built from parts that fit inside a rain barrel, to be used in emergency situations. The four UW business graduate students and one civil and environmental engineering undergraduate claimed the $5,000 prize from Puget Sound Energy.

Many other teams will pursue their ideas, even if they didn't win. EcoSel, an eBay for land management and conservation, is conducting a pilot project on the UW campus. The team for Scout Aviation’s unmanned drone aircraft, designed to perform inspections on wind-energy turbines, is talking to a major wind turbine supplier who is a former employer of one of the members. Vampp has submitted an app to the Apple store that consumers could buy to tame the so-called “vampire appliances” that consume power even while in sleep mode.

Last year, Schwartz advised a graduate student team, Carbon Cultures, that turns forestry waste into fertilizer; this year he advised an undergraduate team, OmniOff, which developed a nontoxic alternative to Teflon nonstick coatings.

This year was an experiment, Schwartz said, on how to offer this experience to more students.

“I need to figure out how to make it scalable, to offer it to maybe a quarter to a half of our students as an alternative to our traditional design coursework,” he said.  To do that, Schwartz is considering establishing an alumni innovation fund, or providing graduate students with time to advise undergraduate student teams.

Schwartz's team, OmniOff, won an honorable mention and a $2,500 prize. The other two honorable mentions went to UrbanHarvest, which proposes to grow hydroponic vegetables on commercial buildings’ rooftops; and LumiSands, which developed a nanoparticle-based coating to improve the quality of LED light.

More than 100 judges volunteered their time. Teams are judged on the quality of their prototype and pitch, as well as their potential environmental impact.

“It’s a great opportunity for the students to showcase their ideas, and it’s wonderful for the investor and the business community to learn about them,” said judge Susannah Malarkey, executive director of the Technology Alliance. “The fact that they’re required to have a prototype is fabulous."

For many teams, this is just one venue to pitch their idea. LionTail Cycles founder Henry Kellogg, a senior in mechanical engineering, has already sold a few of his solar-powered electric bike conversion kits. His team plans to travel to California in April for CalTech’s First Look West competition, and to enter the UW’s Business Plan Competition in May.

“I love this competition,” said UW alumnus Daniel Rossi, executive director of the Northwest Entrepreneur Network, whose team placed second the 2009 competition. “It forces us to find a hole in the clean-tech market, and plug it with a solution.”

Materials available via the tool or phone application can be used to map out evacuation routes for you, your family, employees or students so everyone is ready when danger arises. There's a way to create a free account so users can map and save multiple locations and evacuation routes in one place.

Enter an address or simply use the map to determine if a specific location is in danger of tsunamis following local quakes (yellow) or distant quakes (orange). Maps like this one of Cannon Beach also include info about such things as emergency assembly places ("A") and bridges that should be used only with caution after a quake (red).

The tool, being publicized on the heels of the one-year anniversary of the Tohoku, Japan, quake and tsunami, was developed by University of Washington researchers in collaboration with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries and the Washington Department of Natural Resources. These departments are responsible for creating maps of tsunami-inundation – or flood – zones which are incorporated into the new tool and app.

Ideally people who live and work along the coast would use the tools in advance of a tsunami warning, as part of their emergency planning, according to Jan Newton, an oceanographer with the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and lead of the UW-based Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems program, where the tool was developed.

In addition to the maps there's information and resources for before, during and after a tsunami. You can, for example, check the status of tsunami warnings being issued by the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Zoom in and use another feature to display locations of schools, bridges, emergency assembly areas and various local government and emergency buildings.

At the portal you can create your own account under "myNANOOS" – NANOOS being short for the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems.

Or you can use the "Places" feature to either enter an address or click on a map to see if that location is in a danger zone. Check out "Brochures" to download evacuation routes and links to emergency services for any of 72 coastal communities.

The maps and evacuation route information has also been integrated into a free smartphone app "TsunamiEvac-N" which is available via iTunes or Android platforms.

Jan Newton and oceanography graduate student at work on UW's vessel.

U of Washington

Although infrequent, tsunamis are a major threat to both life and property on the Washington and Oregon coasts, Newton said.

Based on sediment deposits, Japanese harbor records and Pacific Northwest tribal oral histories, scientists have determined that the last megathrust earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone happened in 1700 and probably was a magnitude 9. Scientists estimate that there is a 10 percent probability that the next megathrust earthquake will occur in the next 30 years.

Tsunamis that result from distant earthquakes, like the 1964 magnitude-9.2 Alaska earthquake or the 2011 magnitude-9.0 Japan earthquake, can cause damage in the Pacific Northwest as well. When the tsunamis from both of these events reached the shores of Washington, Oregon and Northern California, lives were lost and damage in the tens of millions of dollars occurred in several harbors and bays.

"The collaborative effort between the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems, Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries and the Washington Department of Natural Resources will serve as an important tool in preparing for a potentially catastrophic tsunami event along the Pacific Northwest coast," said Jonathan Allan, with the Oregon department.

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For more information:
Newton,  206-543-9152, newton@apl.washington.edu
Allan, 541-574-6658, jonathan.allan@dogami.state.or.us

So says an analysis conducted at the University of Washington that relied on the UW's own cherry trees as one test of a computer model used in the project.

Plant phenology models that consider when plants bloom and bear fruit in response to temperature are used for agricultural crops such as apples and grapes as well as ornamental and forest trees. This appears to be the first time such a calculation has been made for the cherries in the Tidal Basin of Washington, D.C., according to Soo-Hyung Kim, UW assistant professor of environmental and forest sciences. Kim is co-author on a paper about the findings published in the Public Library of Sciences' online journal  PLoS One.

Every spring tens of thousands of visitors flock to see the cherry trees in Washington, D.C. This year's celebration has been extended from two to five weeks to mark the 100^th anniversary of the first planting of 3,020 trees that were a gift from Japan.

To make the estimates, researchers at the UW used an existing computer model and adapted it using the last two decades of National Park Service peak bloom records – peak bloom being when 70 percent of the blossoms are open – and temperature records from Reagan National Airport.

UW's trees were used as one test of a computer model used to predict changes in peak bloom of Washington, DC, cherry trees depending on how much warming might occur.

Mary Levin/U of Washington

Before using the model for future predictions, they tested it using data from additional locations including the UW campus and older peak-bloom records in the Tidal Basin. The UW has the same varieties that are most common in the Tidal Basins: Yoshino, in the UW Quad, and Kwanzan, along Rainier Vista. The scientists gathered general information about when the UW trees bloomed based on news reports.

Projections were then made based on two of the various climate change scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

A scenario with moderate warming suggests that by the 2050s the peak bloom could be five days earlier and by the 2080s about 10 days earlier. Researchers have already established that cherry trees and other plants in Washington, D.C. have been blooming earlier during the last 60 years because temperatures warm earlier. The trajectory of warming that's already been detected essentially mirror the UW's findings using the moderate scenario.

Early-March bloom times in pale blue ranging to late-April times in hot pink are used to contrast the historical record of peak blooms of Yoshino cherry trees 1950 to 2000 (top) with predictions for the 2050s under moderate temperature increases (middle) and more drastic temperature increases (bottom).

U of Washington

If the other – more drastic – scenario of warming should occur, then peak bloom could be about two weeks earlier by the 2050s and four weeks earlier by the 2080s.

The researchers did not attempt to make predictions for the UW trees because they couldn't find long-term, historical records of "peak" blooms for these trees to test the model before applying it to the future, Kim said.

One day Kim hopes to organize students, staff, faculty and visitors as citizen scientists to record peak blooms on campus. Scientists like Kim who study plant phenology  – when plants bud, flower, bear fruit and lose their leaves – already rely on citizens to document what they see where they live through Project Budburst and other organized efforts.

The models like the one used at the UW for the capital's flowering cherry trees can also be used, "perhaps more importantly, for assessing the agricultural and ecological impacts of climate change," wrote the co-authors. Co-authors with Kim are Uran Chung, who was a visiting scientist in Kim's lab and is now with the United Nations in Mexico doing research on maize and wheat, UW graduate student Liz Mack and Jin Yun of Kyung Hee University, Korea. Kim's lab is part of the UW's Center for Urban Horticulture and the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences.

The work was done as part of a grant to Kim from Korea's Cooperative Research Program for Agricultural Science and Technology, which is interested in models that can be applied to specialty crops such as vegetables, ornamental crops and fruit trees.

"This type of predictive model will become increasingly useful when it is capable of making real-time forecasts," the authors wrote. For fruit crop production, for example, plant-growth models might someday help predict flowering dates so farmers know when to arrange with bee handlers to have their apple, pear, peach trees and other deciduous fruit trees pollinated as well as optimize the use of resources with minimal environmental impacts, Kim said.

The Greenroads Foundation made the award last month to the Meador Kansas Ellis Trail project, which was recognized for doing things such as using low-energy LED streetlights, managing storm water with porous concrete, and accommodating cyclists and pedestrians.

A toilet seat plaque embedded in the completed sidewalk.

City of Bellingham

When project engineer Freeman Anthony with the City of Bellingham heard that a local nonprofit was replacing hundreds of toilets, he called up his regular ready-mix concrete company.

"They said: 'Yeah, I think we can do something with that,'" Anthony said. "'We'll throw it through the crusher and see what we come up with.'"

The project ended up using about 5 tons of toilets, roughly a quarter of the volume in one section of the sidewalk. Perhaps a bigger achievement is that the project incorporated as much as 80 tons of recycled concrete in sidewalks, curbs and gutters, and pushed the roadway asphalt's recycled content up to 30 percent. Overall, it qualified for a Greenroads silver certification.

Greenroads aims to offer a roadway equivalent to the popular LEED rating system used for green buildings. Principal investigator Stephen Muench, a UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, said Greenroads is the only roadway accreditation system that is actively certifying projects.

Jeralee Anderson and Steve Muench present a Greenroads silver plaque to Freeman Anthony, a project engineer with the City of Bellingham.

"It's a big milestone for us," said Jeralee Anderson, who this week defends her UW doctoral work developing the Greenroads system. The certification, she noted, marks the culmination of many years of work.

After first unveiling the rating system in 2010, the team worked with the UW's Center for Commercialization to launch a nonprofit company based in Redmond. The company is the caretaker of the Greenroads Rating System and provides independent, third-party certification of sustainable roadway projects. The foundation has sponsorship from eight companies in the transportation and construction industries.

Anderson acts as executive director of the Greenroads Foundation, and former UW master's student Craig Weiland works as the principal project engineer.

The Bellingham road is the first official Greenroad, but dozens of projects have already been case studies for the research team. Those evaluations offered informal feedback on a project's sustainability while helping the team design a rating system that gave meaningful results without requiring an excessive amount of paperwork.

Over the next few months, Anderson and Muench estimate they will certify at least three more roads. The 12 projects now under contract include eight in Washington and one each in California, Colorado, Nevada and Texas. The foundation is negotiating with managers for another 10 to 20 projects that would like to pursue certification.

"I'm really happy where we're at with the Greenroads Foundation. I think the number of projects we're reviewing is about right," said Muench, who's currently on sabbatical leave and contributing time to the nonprofit. "I'd like that number to grow in the next year, and I think it will."

A number of international collaborations are under way. Closest to completion, Muench said, is a project that would establish a rating system tailored to South African roadways and then apply those methods to South African projects.

The foundation also is developing an accreditation process for people to become certified experts on the Greenroads system. That program is expected to launch late this year.

On the research side, Muench currently works with a half-dozen other students on sustainable roadways. One doctoral student is developing a framework for a rating standard that would work for any country in the world. Another doctoral student is creating a simple energy and greenhouse gas calculator specifically tailored to road projects that will be made available as a free online tool.

UW research contributing to Greenroads is funded by Transportation Northwest, the State Pavement Technology Consortium, the Western Federal Lands Highway Division and the Oregon Department of Transportation.

"I think Greenroads has really done a great job of building a comprehensive assessment for building better roads, I don't think you'll find a better one out there," Anthony said. "I really hope to see it flourish."

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For more information, contact Muench at stmuench@uw.edu or 206-616-1259.

See also Greenroads press release: "Greenroads Foundation certifies world's first Greenroad"

“It’s a big deal for us,” said Charles Kennedy, associate vice president for Facilities Services.

Kennedy said that with electrical costs between $13 million and $15 million every year, conserving even 1 percent of energy use represents a significant savings that can be reinvested in utilities or other needs — or offset rising energy costs.

The funds received as a part of this agreement are rebates for projects in the areas of interior and exterior lighting retrofits and upgrades, building control, ventilation system upgrades and building mechanical equipment upgrades. Funds are issued as a rebate after target projects are installed and verified, which allows Facilities Services to reinvest in the next round of conservation initiatives. Ideas and feedback on ways to reduce energy come from employees at all levels, including Facilities Services’ engineering staff and employees in the shops, as well as from the university’s external energy services  partner, McKinstry.

Beyond direct energy conservation and dollar savings, the City Light investment in energy-efficient equipment and other improvements pays off in other ways.

“It continues to position the university from a reputational perspective,” Kennedy said, “continuing our track record in sustainability, and meeting the (American College & University) Presidents’ Climate Commitment and carbon reduction goals. It provides incentives for people to want to come here — faculty, researchers and students who are interested in green practices.”

Newer equipment is also designed to last longer and reduces maintenance costs.

“Integration of technology in the workplace allows for improvement of the skill sets of our staff to work with these new technologies, providing interest from their side,” Kennedy said.

The December agreement is the latest in an ongoing collaboration with City Light. The UW is one of the utility’s largest single-use customers. The UW has received approximately $7.4 million from City Light during the past 17 years.