A heat-loving archaeon capable of fixing nitrogen at a surprisingly hot 92 degrees Celsius, or 198 Fahrenheit, may represent Earth’s earliest lineages of organisms capable of nitrogen fixation, perhaps even preceding the kinds of bacteria today’s plants and animals rely on to fix nitrogen.
Author: Sandra Hines
Seismometers in the right place at the right time detected the growing swarm of tiny undersea earthquakes that culminated in a volcanic eruption last January off the coast of Mexico.
A technique used since the 1930s to estimate the abundance of fish has shown for the first time that enforcement patrols are effective at reducing poaching of elephants, African buffaloes and black rhinos in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
A technique used since the 1930s to estimate the abundance of fish has shown for the first time that enforcement patrols are effective at reducing poaching of elephants, African buffaloes and black rhinos in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.
A particularly resilient type of carbon from the first plants to regrow after the last ice age – and that same type of carbon from all the plants since – appears to have been accumulating for 11,000 years in the forests of British Columbia, Canada.
With a potentially huge supply of woody material thinned from Washington forests, the state’s pulp and paper mills could become the “biorefining” backbone for turning woody plant material into fuel and other products, a University of Washington professor says.
With a potentially huge supply of woody material thinned from Washington forests, the state’s pulp and paper mills could become the “biorefining” backbone for turning woody plant material into fuel and other products, a UW professor says.
University of Washington faculty members are able to provide background on the ways local watersheds have been managed, the effects of land-use changes on watersheds or other information concerning flooding and landslides as the region continues to experience wet weather.
A 730-mile road trip in mid-September found long-tenured College of Forest Resources profs rubbing shoulders with faculty so new some hadn’t fully unpacked since moving to Seattle.
While the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was running a six-part series on problems plaguing Puget Sound, UW undergraduates, graduate students and faculty were at work on board the UW’s 274-foot research vessel gathering information needed to help puzzle out some of the sound’s most pressing problems.
NOTE: Last week newspapers trumpeted a report in Science magazine that predicted the collapse of all seafood fisheries by 2048.
Twenty-five small businesses that supply goods and services to the University of Washington will be showcased in a vendor fair Nov.
David Fluharty, a University of Washington marine affairs expert, has been named to chair the science advisory board of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that manages and conducts research about the nation’s ocean and atmospheric resources.
A University of Washington professor who says that solving today’s fisheries problems will best be accomplished by applying lessons learned in the many successful fisheries in the world is one of three winners of this year’s Volvo Environment Prize, announced in Sweden this week.
The Columbia River is the source of three quarters of the water pouring into the Pacific Ocean from the West Coast.
Globally each year, hundreds of thousands of seabirds looking for a free lunch end up snagged on baited hooks as commercial longline vessels set their gear.
James Palais, considered a key figure in establishing the Korean studies field in the United States, will be honored at a memorial service from 3 to 5 p.
Based on current trends for both air and water temperatures, by 2100 the body temperatures of California mussels — found along thousands of miles of coast in the northeast Pacific Ocean and not just in California — could increase between about 2 degrees F and 6.
The bear that found itself in the University District earlier this week was a rarity, but bears in Seattle’s outer suburbs aren’t uncommon this time of year as they scavenge for springtime food in what once was their habitat, Fish and Wildlife Department’s Kim Chandler told the The Seattle Times.
Washington’s first formal ocean policy, the blueprint for which is due on the gover-nor’s desk by the end of the year, aims to prepare for looming changes along the shores of a state renowned for its natural resources.
A new home for the hollies — the design for which includes both elegant and humorous elements — is being planned at the Washington Park Arboretum, a part of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens.
This year’s University of Washington-led North Pole Environmental Observatory program, which ran April 10 through early May, was followed immediately by another UW-led expedition concerning what’s called the freshwater switchyard of the Arctic Ocean, which is underway until about May 17.
“They call their project the North Pole Environmental Observatory, but that name gives the impression that it’s some exotic domed facility,” writes New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin.
Among the events coinciding with Earth Day this year are the College of Forest Resources’ annual Arbor Day Fair for area first- and second-graders, and a day of trail building and clean up with volunteers from the Student Conservation Association at the Washington Park Arboretum, a part of the UW Botanic Gardens.
Stabilizing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at tolerable levels may be possible using cost-effective technology that already exists.
With few of the Pacific Northwest’s 200 coastal rivers remaining unaltered by human development, watershed scientists are meeting this week to consider emerging policy issues and scientific challenges they foresee in the decade ahead.
With warming temperatures as the possible underlying cause, scientists wonder what is pushing Greenland’s glaciers out to sea as much as 50 percent quicker than before.
Like an armada of small rototillers, female salmon can industriously churn up entire stream beds from end to end, sometimes more than once, using just their tails.
Still hundreds of miles from Hawaii, the Wright family was getting into trouble at sea after their fuel filters were fouled by poorly refined diesel they’d taken on in the Marquesas Islands.
Like an armada of small rototillers, female salmon can industriously churn up entire stream beds from end to end, sometimes more than once, using just their tails.
While biologists sort out what levels of noise go unnoticed, are annoying or cause harm to marine mammals, physical oceanographer Jeff Nystuen is giving scientists and managers a way to sift through and identify the sounds present in various marine ecosystems.
While biologists sort out what levels of noise go unnoticed, are annoying or cause harm to marine mammals, physical oceanographer Jeff Nystuen is giving scientists and ecosystem managers a way to sift through and identify the sounds present in various marine ecosystems.
With the extent of Arctic ice reaching record-breaking lows in recent seasons and Antarctic ice sheets losing dramatic, miles-wide pieces of ice, the world’s attention has been focused on changes underway at both ends of the Earth.
When fishing boats return with catches of increasingly less-valuable fish, the commonly held notion is that the more valuable species have been fished out.
The woman who helped shape marine policy at the national level and spoke before Congress and federal ocean agencies on behalf of 83 of the nation’s largest oceanographic institutions has joined the UW as director of the Washington Sea Grant Program.
When fishing boats return with catches of increasingly less-valuable fish, the commonly held notion is that the more valuable species have been fished out.
Smart lighting choices and a solar panel provided by Seattle City Light are among the reasons the U.
The authors of a paper in last week’s Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Section B, who say their 7.
The authors of a paper in this week’s Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Section B, who say their 7.
Senior Jennifer Glass was back in class Monday after returning from Ecuador where she had a chance to lead a group making the first detailed maps of a seafloor rift that’s part of the hot spot responsible for the formation of the Galapagos Islands.