A UW scientist’s work aided a Greenland ice study that could indicate where Earth is headed with climate change.
Environment
A new international assessment found that soot, or black carbon, is a major contributor to global warming — second only to carbon dioxide.
Salmon runs are notoriously variable: strong one year, and weak the next. New research shows that the same may be true from one century to the next.
Fisheries managers should sharpen their ability to spot environmental conditions that hamper or help fish stocks, and not assume that abundance translates to sustainable harvest.
Christopher Meek, research associate professor of architecture, answers questions about the book he co-authored, “Daylighting Design in the Pacific Northwest.”
Taking into consideration size, an ancient relative of piranhas weighing about 20 pounds delivered a bite with more force than prehistoric whale-eating sharks or – even – Tyrannosaurus rex.
Microorganisms – 99 percent more kinds than had been reported in findings published just four months ago – are hitching rides in the upper troposphere from Asia.
The U.S. Department of Energy this month awarded $4 million to a team, led by UW chemical engineers, that aims to develop bacteria to turn the methane in natural gas into diesel fuel for transportation.
Oceanographer Ginger Armbrust has received a multi-million dollar award to spend as she wishes on her research into ocean microbes and their role in regulating ocean environments and our atmosphere.
Research suggests rising atmospheric acidity is probably why levels of the isotope nitrogen-15 in Greenland ice samples dropped around the time of the Industrial Revolution.
Moths are able to enjoy a pollinator’s buffet of flowers because of two distinct “channels” in their brains, scientists have discovered.
Climatologists have reconciled their measurements of ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland during the past two decades. A second article looks at how to monitor and understand accelerating losses from the planet’s two largest continental ice sheets.
Food webs needed by young salmon in the Columbia River basin are likely compromised in places, something that should be considered when prioritizing expensive restoration activities.
The UW has the strongest sustainability performance in the Pac-12 according to a new rating system.
UW researchers find the flash flood was set off by a string of unusual weather events similar to those that caused catastrophic U.S. floods in the 1970s.
The University of Washington has become the first university nationally to sign the e-Stewards Enterprise Commitment, a pledge to be globally responsible in recycling electronic equipment.
The University of Washington marked the start of the data-gathering phase of the UW Smart Grid Project with an event featuring Washington’s two US Senators.
Next week will be the University of Washington’s third Sustainability Summit, an annual event that celebrates leadership and accomplishments in environmental stewardship and sustainability.
Representatives of the Encyclopedia of Earth and the Encyclopedia of Life will be on the University of Washington campus Wednesday, Oct. 24, for the public launch of an encyclopedia unique to Puget Sound.
It’s time to think differently about how we interact with nature because we’re increasingly disconnected from the natural world, said Dan Ashe during visit to campus.
Fish and Wildlife director, a UW alum, speaks Oct. 3 || UW Rideshare options in face of Metro bus route cuts
UW scientists are teaming with the U.S. Coast Guard to study the new frontier in the Arctic Ocean opened up with the melting ice.
A UW doctoral student in musical composition uses sounds from the Washington Park Arboretum to create music that’s part natural, part imagined.
New University of Washington research suggests that early microbes might have been widespread on land, producing oxygen before the atmosphere was oxygen-rich.
A tiny digital tag developed at the UW can for the first time see when birds meet in the wild, offering a window into animal social networks. A study in Current Biology used the tags to track the social habits of New Caledonian crows, and found a surprising amount of interaction among the tool-using birds.
Scientists found that the habitat required for ringed seals — animals under consideration for the threatened species list — to rear their young will drastically shrink this century.
The UW’s new Molecular Engineering and Sciences Building opens this fall with a series of kick-off events focused on this emerging area of research. The associated Institute will focus on research applications in medicine and clean energy.
Crows and humans share the ability to recognize faces and associate them with negative and positive feelings. The way the brain activates during that process is something the two species also appear to share.
New UW research indicates that shortly before an asteroid impact spelled doom for the dinosaurs, a separate extinction triggered by volcanic eruptions killed life on the ocean floor.
Double flowers – though beautiful – are mutants. UW biologists have found the class of genes responsible in a plant lineage more ancient than the one previously studied, offering a glimpse even further back into the evolutionary development of flowers.
The UW’s Alaska Salmon Program, now in its 66th field season, focuses not just on fisheries management, but on ecology and evolution as well, and has just won a top fisheries prize.
A University of Washington scientist has proposed an experiment to test cloud brightening, a geoengineering concept that alters clouds in an effort to counter global warming.
Forest searches using specially trained dogs improved the probability of finding spotted owls by nearly 30 percent over traditional vocalization surveys.
David Montgomery, a University of Washington geologist, is the author of a new book that explores the long history of religious thinking on matters of geological discovery, particularly flood stories such as the biblical account of Noah’s ark.
The University of Washington again has been ranked among the coolest schools in America, placing fourth this year, according to Sierra Magazine.
Salmon conservation shouldn’t narrowly focus on managing flows in streams and rivers or on preserving only places that currently have strong salmon runs. Instead, watersheds need a good mix of steep, cold-running streams and slower, meandering streams of warmer water to keep options open for salmon adapted to reproduce better in one setting than the other, new research shows. Preserving that sort of varied landscape serves not just salmon, it provides an all-summer buffet that brown bears, gulls and other…
When a University of Washington researcher listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters off the east coast of Greenland, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months. Listen to the bowheads repeat their other-worldly song as they cross the Fram Strait. Bowhead whale song 1 Bowhead whale song 2 Kate Stafford, an oceanographer with UW’s Applied Physics…
Robert J. Naiman has received the highest award given by the Ecological Society of America, the world’s largest society of professional ecologists.
University of Washington engineers and scientists are one step closer to deploying sophisticated equipment that will collect important information about ocean properties like currents and temperature and send the information via the Internet in real time to scientists around the world.
Not having enough Chinook salmon to eat stresses out southern resident killer whales more than having boatloads of whale watchers nearby, according to hormone levels of whales summering in the Salish Sea. In lean times, however, the stress normally associated with boats becomes more pronounced, further underscoring the importance of having enough prey.