An experiment using hundreds of plastic drifters in the Gulf of Mexico shows that rather than simply spread out, as current calculations would predict, many of them clumped together in a tight cluster.
Tag: College of the Environment
More than three centuries ago, a French monk made thousands of drawings of plants and animals, traveling under the authority of King Louis XIV to the French Antilles to collect and document the natural history of the islands. These drawings were often the first ever recorded for each species and were completed in remarkable detail. The illustrations were nearly lost forever during the tumultuous French Revolution, and the volumes compiled by Father Charles Plumier were discovered by chance, found serving…
A new study in the Journal PLOS ONE details what removing the two dams on the Elwha River meant for the nearshore marine ecosystem.
A new grant will let a 天美影院-based project add a new fleet to its quest to learn more about past climate from the records of long-gone mariners. The 天美影院is among the winners of the 2017 鈥淒igitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives鈥� awards, announced Jan. 4 by the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Library and Information Resources. The new $482,018 grant to the UW, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and the National Archives Foundation will support 鈥淪eas…
A small group of fishes 鈥� possibly the world’s cleverest carnivorous grazers 鈥� feeds on the scales of other fish in the tropics. A team led by biologists at the 天美影院’s Friday Harbor Laboratories is trying to understand these scale-feeding fish and how this odd diet influences their body evolution and behavior.
A new partnership between the 天美影院and Paul G. Allen Philanthropies will use a network of robots to observe conditions beneath a floating Antarctic ice shelf.
Recognizing that many large dams are here to stay, a 天美影院 team is investigating an emerging solution to help achieve freshwater conservation goals by re-envisioning the ways in which water is released by dams.
Researchers from the 天美影院, Chapman University and University of Guelph have published new research showing how hagfishes survive an initial attack from predators before they release large volumes of slime to defend themselves.
A new NSF-funded project will use findings in the Mekong River basin as an example of how three critical issues 鈥� feeding people, generating energy and maintaining functioning ecosystems 鈥� can be addressed thoughtfully and progressively in the developing world.
New faculty member Shuyi Chen answers some questions about hurricane science, hurricane forecasting and the 2017 storm season.
The 天美影院, Arizona State University and other collaborators have proposed a method in the Dec. 8 issue of Science that allows hydroelectric dam operators to generate power in ways that protect 鈥� and possibly improve 鈥� food supplies and businesses throughout the Mekong river basin in Southeast Asia.
Three 天美影院 astrobiologists will discuss their research and introduce the new 3-D IMAX movie “The Search for Life in Space” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6, in the PACCAR Theater of the Pacific Science Center.
The ocean’s deepest fish doesn’t look like it could survive in harsh conditions thousands of feet below the surface. Instead of giant teeth and a menacing frame, the fishes that roam in the deepest parts of the ocean are small, translucent, bereft of scales 鈥� and highly adept at living where few other organisms can. Meet the deepest fish in the ocean, a new species named the Mariana snailfish by an international team of researchers that discovered it. The Mariana…
The amount of biomass 鈥� life 鈥� in Earth’s ancient oceans may have been limited due to low recycling of the key nutrient phosphorus, according to new research by the 天美影院 and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
A new 天美影院 study points to yet another human factor that is hampering the ability of fish to reproduce: the timing of our fishing seasons. The study considers how the timing of fishing efforts might disproportionately target certain fish and change the life history patterns of entire populations.
One of the saltiest bodies on Earth, an analog to how water might exist on Mars, shows signs of being one piece of a larger aquifer.
A 天美影院 team is trying to make poplar a viable competitor in the biofuels market by testing the production of younger poplar trees that could be harvested more frequently 鈥� after only two or three years 鈥� instead of the usual 10- to 20-year cycle.
A 天美影院 team wants to simplify the process for discovering detrimental water leaks by developing “smart” paper that can sense the presence of water.
The largest number yet of detailed simulations for how a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake might play out provides a clearer picture of what the region can expect when the fault unleashes a 9.0 earthquake.
A satellite technique provides a new way to monitor the status of more than 1,200 mountain glaciers in the lower 48 states.
Paul Bodin, a 天美影院seismologist and manager of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, has been named interim director of the network that monitors earthquakes and volcanoes in Washington and Oregon.
The eighth annual Northwest Climate Conference will take place in Tacoma, and begins with a free public discussion featuring 天美影院experts on Monday evening.
A new study has found that cover in tall trees is the key habitat requirement for the spotted owl, not total canopy cover. It indicated that spotted owls largely avoid cover created by stands of shorter trees.
天美影院 oceanographers are working with a local company to develop a simple new technique that could track seafloor movement in earthquake-prone coastal areas.
Researchers analyzed nearly 30 years of revenue and permitting records for individuals fishing in Alaskan waters and tracked how their fishing choices, in terms of permits purchased and species caught, influenced their year-to-year income volatility.
A new study by 天美影院 scientists has found that, for dozens of fish populations around the globe, old fish are greatly depleted 鈥� mainly because of fishing pressure. The paper, published online Sept. 14 in Current Biology, is the first to report that old fish are missing in many populations around the world.
Climate change will force many amphibians, mammals and birds to move to cooler areas outside their normal ranges, provided they can find space and a clear trajectory among our urban developments and growing cities. But what are the chances for fish to survive as climate change continues to warm waters around the world? 天美影院 researchers are tackling this question in the first analysis of how vulnerable the world’s freshwater and marine fishes are to climate change. Their…
More than a decade of lightning strikes over the Indian Ocean shows for the first time that ship exhaust along major shipping routes alters thunderstorm intensity.
The National Science Foundation is funding the largest marine seismic-monitoring effort yet along the Alaska Peninsula, a region with frequent and diverse earthquake and volcanic activity. Involving aircraft and ships, the new Alaska Amphibious Community Seismic Experiment will be led by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with partners at the 天美影院 and seven other research institutions. “This effort will really change the information we have at our disposal for understanding the seismic properties of subduction zones,” said…
A new book focuses on climate change risks in the Northern Rocky Mountains, and how managers of public lands can prepare.
This exceptional, sudden nosedive in Antarctic sea ice last year was due to a unique one-two punch from atmospheric conditions both in the tropical Pacific Ocean and around the South Pole.
A $2.5 million National Science Foundation grant will daylight thousands of specimens from their museum shelves by CT scanning 20,000 vertebrates and making these data-rich, 3-D images available online to researchers, educators, students and the public. The 天美影院 is a partner institution contributing most of the fish and bat scans.
While many people across the country donned viewing glasses and prepared to watch Monday’s solar eclipse, a group of 100 teenagers from tribes across the Pacific Northwest launched balloons thousands of feet into the air, gaining a novel perspective of the eclipse 鈥� and the chance to send meaningful artifacts to the edge of space during a memorable moment in history.
As corals face threats from warming oceans, a new study uses modern genetic-sequencing tools to help reveal the relationships between three similar-looking corals.
Researchers from the 天美影院 and several small companies have conducted the first large-scale experiment on a Superfund site using poplar trees fortified with a probiotic 鈥� or natural microbe 鈥� to clean up groundwater contaminated with trichloroethylene, or TCE.
The 天美影院 is the new host for the federally funded Northwest Climate Science Center, a consortium that supports climate-adaptation research in the Northwest.
A new 天美影院statistical study shows only 5 percent chance that Earth will warm less than 2 degrees, what many see as a “tipping point” for climate, by the end of this century.
Oceanographers are building swimming robots to carry out an ambitious mission gathering climate data from one of Earth’s most challenging locations: the icy water that surrounds Antarctica.
A first test of humans’ ability to modify clouds would help explain the behavior of clouds and aerosols, while also testing a possible future climate emergency measure.
Bottom trawling techniques are not all created equal. The most common, otter trawling, removes about 6 percent of the animal and plant life from the seabed, while other methods remove closer to one third.