New research shows that the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere work to transform elemental mercury into oxidized mercury, which can easily be deposited into aquatic ecosystems and ultimately enter the food chain.
Environment
Nitrogen derived from human activities has polluted lakes throughout the Northern Hemisphere for more than a century and the fingerprint of these changes is evident even in remote lakes thousands of miles from the nearest city, industrial area or farm.
Some 99 species of fishes glide and snake across a supersized 15-foot mural by Alaskan artist and confessed fish groupie Ray Troll, unveiled last month at the University of Washington.
New research shows accelerated melting of two fast-moving glaciers that drain Antarctic ice into the Amundsen Sea Embayment is likely in part the result of an increase in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
Pacific Northwest trees grown and harvested sustainably can both remove existing carbon dioxide from the air and help keep the gas from entering the atmosphere in the first place. Thats provided wood is used primarily for such things as building materials, instead of cement and steel, and secondarily that wood wastes are used for biofuels.
Follow the serious science – and the development of novel “Will it crush?” segments inspired by the YouTube hit “Will it blend?” – as University of Washington Wavechasers work in the South Pacific near Samoa.
Ignoring the potential beneficial roles of non-native species is no longer a valid option, says UWs Julian Olden. His public talk Oct. 25, “Invasive Species: Exonerating Crimes to Envision a New Global Future,” is the annual deans lecture from the College of the Environment.
Aeronautical engineers are devising ways to boost the efficiency of open-air refrigerated cases, which are increasingly common in supermarkets. Results could lower the energy use of existing cases by up to 15 percent — potentially saving $100 million in electricity costs each year.
Naturalists, kayakers and other volunteers – including University of Washington students, faculty and staff – are needed to look for as many birds, plants, insects, mammals and fungi as possible during the 24-hour Bioblitz 2011 at the Washington Park Arboretum.
Learn about some of the inaugural projects by students, faculty and staff using money from the student-funded Campus Sustainability Fund as part of the second annual Sustainability Summit on campus Oct. 26.
The University of Washington and Washington State University are leads for two separate grants of $40 million each that will use Pacific Northwest woody biomass to expand whats been a Midwest-centric biofuels industry into Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana and northern California.
The Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability (ESS) office has created a Green Office Certification Program.
The phrase “no guts, no glory” doesnt just apply to athletes who are striving to excel. Salmon and other fish predators take the adage literally.
Students already knowledgeable about the science behind ocean acidification and warming will learn more about the challenges those ocean changes pose for tribes, shellfish growers and other sectors of society – as well as helping seek solutions ¬– under a just-announced National Science Foundation grant of $3 million.
The researcher who used chemical sleuthing to uncover whats in scented products now has turned her attention to the air wafting from household laundry vents. Air from laundry machines using the top-selling scented liquid detergent and dryer sheet contains hazardous chemicals, including two that are classified as carcinogens.
On July 1, the 30-year average temperatures used to determine “normal” changed, dropping the decade of the 1970s and adding the decade of 2001 through 2010. As a result, normal temperatures are now a bit warmer.
Submarine cables for the nations first regional cabled ocean observatory, a project led by the University of Washington, made landfall last week on the Oregon coast.
Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to grow, so forests have long been proposed as a way to offset climate change. But rather than just letting the forest sit there for a hundred or more years, the amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere could be quadrupled in 100 years by harvesting regularly and using the wood in place of fossil-fuel intensive steel and concrete.
A forest resources professor whos an expert on invasive species and rare plants became director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens July 1.
With the launch earlier this month of NASAs satellite Aquarius, more than half a dozen University of Washington researchers are involved in projects to calibrate data from space with actual measurements of ocean salinity.
Keiko Torii, professor of biology, is among 15 of the “nations most innovative plant scientists” selected to share $75 million for fundamental plant science research.
The snowpack decline of the last 50 years in the Rocky Mountains is highly unusual in context of the past 800 years, according to findings published June 10 in “Science.”
A new system called EnerJ helps computer programmers go green, allowing them to cut a program’s energy consumption by as much as 50 percent.
University of Washington statisticians used a computer model to study the effect of replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct on commuter travel times. They found that relying on surface streets would likely have less impact on travel times than previously reported, and that effects on commute times are not well known.
The 25-story construction crane used since 1995 to investigate such things as how Pacific Northwest forests absorb carbon dioxide, obtain sufficient water and resist attacks by pests and diseases is being pruned back to just the tower.
Timothy Essington, UW associate professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, is one of four Pew fellows in marine conservation in the world this year.
For more than two decades scientists have suspected theres a substantial source of energy for ocean mixing at ocean fronts. Researchers with the Applied Physics Laboratory are the first to devise a way to prove it.
This Saturday, join local and nationally known speakers as they compare the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon oil spills and look in particular at how people and organizations told stories about the two events.
In new research published in “Science,” engineers at UW and UCLA used nanotechnology to control and observe how molecules react. They plan to use their method to develop more efficient solar molecules.
Sea-ice algae – the important first rung of the food web each spring in places like the Arctic Ocean – can engineer ice to its advantage, according to the first published findings about this ability.
UW engineers and architects are collaborating on smart windows that can change transparency depending on conditions and actually harvest energy from the suns rays.
On her plane trip to Ecuador Wednesday, UWs Kiki Jenkins will write her first entry for the “New York Times” blog “Scientist at work: Notes from the Field.”
Last summers disastrous and deadly Pakistan floods were caused by a rogue weather system that wandered hundreds of miles farther west than is normal for such systems, new UW research shows.
Want to hear one of the biggest icebergs of the last decade crack up? UW researchers compressed a five-hour event in Antarctica into a two-minute audio file that you can listen to.
New research indicates that if humans reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly in the next decade or two, enough Arctic ice is likely to remain intact during late summer and early autumn for polar bears to survive.
UW scientists are helping to prepare for a tidal energy project in Puget Sound. Researchers say this pilot project will have the most comprehensive environmental monitoring of any tidal energy installation to date.
Engineers are developing computer models to study how changes in water pressure and current speed around tidal turbines affect sediment buildup and fish health.
Summertime fog, a common feature along the West Coast, has declined since 1950 while coastal temperatures have increased slightly, new research shows.
New technology is letting UW researchers get a much better picture of how episodic tremor events relate to potentially catastrophic earthquakes every 300 to 500 years in the Cascadia subduction zone.
New research shows that notches carved by rivers at the bottom of glacial valleys in the Swiss Alps survive from one glacial episode to the next, protected in part by the glaciers themselves.