“When we talk about land, land is part of who we are. It’s a mixture of our blood, our past, our current, and our future. We carry our ancestors in us, and they’re around us. As you all do.” — Mary Lyons, Leech Lake Bank of Ojibwe
Native American Heritage Month
November is Native American Heritage Month, which the National Congress of American Indians describes as a time to celebrate rich and diverse cultures, traditions, and histories and to acknowledge the important contributions of Native people.
The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Duwamish, Puyallup, Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.
-University of Washington land acknowledgement
One way to begin to honor Native people is through land acknowledgement, a formal statement that pays tribute to the original inhabitants of the land you occupy. At the University of Washington, it is common to hear a land acknowledgement shared at the start of a meeting or as part of a unit’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion work.
Developing a meaningful land acknowledgement takes some considerable effort, education and self-reflection. As Kanyon Sayers-Roods, a Mutsun Ohlone activist in Northern California, told Teen Vogue, “The acknowledgment process is about asking, What does it mean to live in a post-colonial world? What did it take for us to get here? And how can we be accountable to our part in history?”
Indigenous Territories Map
Native-Land.ca is a digital map that “strives to map Indigenous lands in a way that changes, challenges, and improves the way people see the history of their countries and peoples.” This is a resource that has been developed to help non-Indigenous people around the world understand the rich and diverse cultures that have evolved from the land on which you live.
However, your education doesn’t end at simply finding your location and learning the names of your local Tribes. According to the Native-Land.ca teaching guide, “This map must be used critically. Maps potentially function as colonial artifacts and represent a very particular way of seeing the world – a way primarily concerned with ownership, exclusivity, and power relations.”
This map does not represent or intend to represent official or legal boundaries of any Indigenous nations. To learn about definitive boundaries, contact the nations in question. Native-Land.ca
Honoring Place Training
At the University of Washington, the UW Tribal Relations group is another excellent resource for guidance on how to develop and share a land acknowledgement. We’re proud to partner with the UW Tribal liaison Iisaaksiichaa (Good Ladd) Ross Braine for an Honoring Place training scheduled for Wednesday, December 2 at 12:00 p.m. This presentation, open to everyone at UW, will share pathways to UW land acknowledgement as well as research partnerships with Tribal nations.
Whether or not you decide to develop a land acknowledgement statement, it’s important to remember that honoring Indigenous people is an ongoing journey that lasts beyond any one month.
A commitment to innovation powered the University of Washington to a No. 7 ranking for graduate entrepreneurship programs by The Princeton Review. The 2021 ranking marks an all-time high — solidifying UW and the Foster School of Business as a leader in entrepreneurial education and incubation within the Pac-12 and across the Western United States.
The Princeton Review considers responses to a 60+ question survey sent to more than 300 undergraduate and graduate schools offering entrepreneurship studies. The survey looks at the opportunities for aspiring student entrepreneurs both inside and outside the classroom including the quality and quantity of courses, faculty and mentors available.
“We are a world-class innovative community built on the impactful work and collaboration of the Foster School’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, our faculty and partners like UW CoMotion across the UW,” said Frank Hodge, Orin and Janet Smith dean of the Foster School. “The insights we foster together will better humanity and propel us forward for a better tomorrow.”
UW and the Foster School also rose seven spots to No. 21 overall for undergraduate entrepreneurship programs. The 40+ survey data points in the ranking methodology include the number of startups founded by recent alumni. Over the past ten years, graduate alumni have launched more than 540 ventures independent of the school and brought in over $270 million in fundraising and investment. During the same timeframe, undergraduate alumni launched more than 468 independent ventures and raised over $85 million.
During the past five years, UW CoMotion executed more than 1,950 licenses and spun out 73 startups which have gone on to raise over $4.4B in funding. Today, UW spinoffs employ more than 4,000 people in the state of Washington.
“UW is consistently ranked as the most innovative public university, and with some of the most creative faculty and students in the world, innovation is truly part of our DNA,” said François Baneyx, UW vice provost for innovation and director of CoMotion. “We are thrilled to help these scientists transform their ideas into economic and societal impact that makes a difference at the global scale.”
UW education and programming work in symbiosis with one of the top startup ecosystems in the world. In FY 2018, the university drove $15.7 billion in economic activity for the state. In late January, UW created an Innovation Roundtable featuring leading venture capitalists, angel investors and innovative leaders. UW also launched a new Innovation Imperative website focused on both the on-campus and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The Foster School’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship and UW CoMotion operate as hubs for community, faculty and student collaboration — working with colleges and department across the UW-Seattle, Tacoma and Bothell campuses (as well as the Global Innovation Exchange which operates in partnership with China’s Tsinghua University and Microsoft) to connect students to major VC firms, angel investing groups and entrepreneurs in every industry in the region.
The Buerk Center hosts three student innovation and startup competitions open to colleges and universities across the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia and Alaska — as well as the non-academic Jones + Foster Accelerator program. Since 2010, more than 85% of those who received seed funding from the Accelerator are still in business today.
“Our commitment to empowering students to create impactful ventures has never been stronger,” said Amy Sallin, director of the Buerk Center. “We believe in creating academic and extracurricular experiences with both depth and breadth while also supporting dedicated initiatives to diversity, equity and inclusion. Together, UW’s students, faculty and community partners are building a model for growth that rivals any in the world.”
The Foster School features the Undergraduate Young Executives of Color Program (YEOC), a six-week end of summer Business Bridge program, as well as a women’s Leadership Summit. In 2020, UW’s signature Dempsey Startup Competition had female students as founders or cofounders on 37% of the 97 teams that competed.
Entrepreneurship students are also given the access and opportunity to participate in programs in partnership with global leaders such as Amazon Catalyst, CoMotion Labs, the Institute for Protein Design, the Clean Energy Institute, as well as fellowships in technology commercialization and social entrepreneurship.
In the past two years, UW also partnered to create the Washington Maritime Accelerator, the BECU FinTech Incubator at CoMotion, the UW EarthLab and the WE-REACH Biomedical Entrepreneurship Center among others.
The Princeton Review rankings are available online and will also be published in the December issue of Entrepreneur Magazine.
Today the University of Washington announced that more than 50 UW researchers were featured on the Highly Cited Researchers 2020 list, as reported by the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. We’re proud to share that three researchers on the list have affiliations with EarthLab:
Edward (Eddie) Allison, Ocean Nexus Center
Julian Olden, Future Rivers
Spencer Wood, Nature and Health
Congratulations to these researchers!
The full UW article is reprinted below in its entirety.
The highly anticipated annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. Their names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science citation index.
The list includes:
Edward Hugh Allison
David Baker
Michael J Bamshad
Mike Brauer
Guozhong Cao
William A. Catterall
David H. Cobden
Aaron Cohen
Louisa Degenhardt
Patchen Dellinger
Evan E. Eichler
Jerry F. Franklin
Valery Feigin
Michael J. Gale
Simon I. Hay
Celestia S. Higano
Alex K. Y. Jen
Eric B. Larson
Choli Lee
Chang-Zi Li
Alan Lopez
Gary H. Lyman
Michael J. McPhaden
Sergey Menis
Ali Mokdad
Chris Murray
Mohsen Naghavi
Marian L. Neuhouser
Graham Nichol
Deborah A. Nickerson
William S. Noble
Julian D. Olden
David M. Pigott
Colin C. Pritchard
Ganesh Raghu
Philip J. Rasch
Brian Saelens
Kyle L. Seyler
Jay Shendure
David Smith
John A. Stamatoyannopoulos
Yang-Kook Sun
Joel A. Thornton
Cole Trapnell
Piper Treuting
Theo Vos
Daniela M. Witten
Harvey Whiteford
Spencer A. Wood
Xiaodong Xu
Jesse R. Zaneveld
Maigeng Zhou
Junfa F. Zhu
The methodology that determines the “who’s who” of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts and data scientists at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. It also uses the tallies to identify the countries and research institutions where these scientific elite are based.
The full 2020 Highly Cited Researchers list and executive summary can be found online here.
This article was originally published in The Skimmer.
In 2017, MEAM (now The Skimmer on Marine Ecosystems and Management) interviewed 17 social science and interdisciplinary researchers from around the world to learn how their work could improve marine conservation and management practice. Since then, the social science of marine management has developed further in these areas and branched out in many other valuable directions. In this issue of The Skimmer and the next, we update our previous coverage by interviewing an ensemble of other social science and interdisciplinary researchers doing innovative social science work with great potential to improve (or a proven track record) of improving marine conservation and management practice. This work ranges from the use of cognitive mapping to create mental models of how fishers in the Caribbean view and organize the world…to testing how “nudges” could cost-effectively increase compliance with conservation regulations…to innovating how communities participate in marine planning processes to reduce feelings of exclusion and suspicion.
Here is the first set of interviews. As with last time, we hope that you find these research and practice profiles as energizing and inspiring for your own work as we found editing them.
Yoshitaka Ota and Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor: Without new scholarship on ocean governance and equity, we risk a future that further separates the haves and have-nots
Editor’s note: Yoshitaka Ota is the director of the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center and a research assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. He can be contacted at yota1@uw.edu. Andrés Cisneros-Montemayor is deputy director of the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center and a research associate at the University of British Columbia Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. He can be contacted at a.cisneros@oceans.ubc.ca and on Twitter @AndresMCisneros.
What we are working on: Working with partners all over the world, we have created the Nippon Foundation Ocean Nexus Center at the University of Washington EarthLab. We do research on oceans, but our focus is on people. Our aim is to close the gap of inequality over the long term and meet the urgent needs of people today. We will do this by recognizing the root causes of inequity; recovering an equitable approach to managing human-oceans activities; and ultimately building new evidence, tools, and narratives that reverse these harms and create a future where oceans are for all people.
Potential and observed influence: After spending a decade working on interdisciplinary socio-ecological research with the Nereus Program to predict the future state of our oceans, it was clear and unsurprising that global environmental changes will negatively impact sustainability – the ability to sustain habitat, biodiversity, and cultural landscapes; protect traditional stewardship; and maintain livelihoods and food sovereignty in coastal communities. What is even more important is that this work has revealed systemic inefficiencies within ocean governance. Decision-makers are unable to respond to sustainability issues in ways that do not exacerbate inequalities between those who benefit from the oceans and those who do not. There are limited governance structures for empowering economically and politically marginalized oceans populations – the people who will be disproportionally affected by the very environmental problems we are trying to solve. Without new scholarship on ocean governance and equity, we risk a future that further separates the haves and have-nots.
To avoid this future, management options must be examined within a much broader context of political powers and social organizations. This does not mean we are getting away from protecting the health of our oceans, but we must prioritize people within the ecosystem that we are trying to improve. In terms of marine management, we must reassess how we make decisions. The usual order linking climate, environment, economy, society, and a policy response may not be the appropriate model. Solutions based on a domino or donut theory, always starting from environmental changes, may fail as an adaptation policy and furthermore cause imbalanced burdens and injustice in our relationships with the oceans (and with each other).
Applicability of this work elsewhere: We view this approach as scalable to other environmental issues because it asks the question: shall humans use and control the environment for our own good or shall we learn to live in harmony for our environment?
Learn more: Learn more about the Ocean Nexus Center and its work here.
Ocean Nexus is proud to welcome five undergraduate student fellows and one graduate student fellow in Indigenous Ocean Ecologies, a new program created in partnership with the UWCenter for American Indian and Indigenous Studies (CAIIS) and Department of American Indian Studies. This year-long research fellowship is focused on the intersections of sovereignty, wellbeing, and environmental justice among Indigenous coastal communities, especially in the Pacific Northwest.
Undergraduate fellows are enrolled in a year-long two-credit micro seminar where they will meet with community mentors who are recognized leaders in Indigenous ocean science and governance. They will also design their own engaged research projects, culminating in a public symposium this spring. In addition to Ocean Nexus, the program has received funding from CAIIS’ Native Knowledge at UW fund and the Research Family peer mentor program. Each undergraduate fellow will receive a stipend of $2,000 over the course of the 2020-21 academic year.
The program was created and is facilitated by P. Joshua Griffin, assistant professor in American Indian Studies, the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs (SMEA), and a Nexus principal investigator. Izzi Lavallee, a Nexus graduate fellow and SMEA MMA candidate, serves as a teaching assistant and project co-facilitator.
“It’s truly an honor to work with this remarkable group of young scholars,” said Griffin. “Each project in some way addresses the complex entanglements between Indigenous self-determination, cultural resurgence, and ecological resilience. Our fellows’ commitment to community–including to one another–is an inspiration.”
The Nippon Foundation and UW EarthLab launched Ocean Nexus Center to create a future where oceans benefit people equitably in a culturally-relevant manner. Science shows that human activities are creating the environmental changes in oceans and coastlines, which are widening the inequality already felt among those who are benefiting from oceans and those who are not. Working in partnership with scholars and institutions around the world, Ocean Nexus Center aims to transform ocean governance so it is socially equitable and prioritizes the diversity of current and future relationships that exist between people and the ocean.
Meet the Fellows
Autumn Forespring, Undergraduate Fellow
Nákʷs, my name is Autumn Forespring and I am a Cowlitz Tribal Citizen. I am a senior working toward my B.A. in American Indian Studies, with a minor in Environmental Studies. After graduation I plan to work with my tribe to incorporate Indigenous knowledges and place-based healing into mental wellness programs for Indigenous women in the PNW. It will be an honor to collaborate with my Indigenous peers during this fellowship.
Sesilina Lane, Undergraduate Fellow
Hi! My name is Sesilina Lane and I am a sophomore at the University of Washington. I am currently majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Oceania and Pacific Islander Studies, and I hope to also declare for Environmental Studies! I am a Tongan-American and I am passionate about issues impacting both Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities.
Izzi Lavallee, Graduate Fellow Izzi Lavallee is a first-year graduate student at the UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs working towards a Masters in Marine Affairs (MMA) and certificate in American Indian & Indigenous Studies (AIIS). Previously, she received an interdisciplinary degree in ‘Coastal Marine Watershed Resilience’ from WWU’s Fairhaven College. Izzi has worked to cultivate change as a student organizer, research diver in Quintana Roo, Mexico, environmental educator at the Padilla Bay NERR, and underwater cinematographer for Children of the Setting Sun Production Films: “Salmon People” & the award-winning “Women of Journeys – Finding Our Medicine”. Beyond an innate passion for marine flora & fauna, Izzi is eager to dive deeper into Marine Affairs & AIIS as they strive towards unsettling & (re)imagining our relationship to water.
Stephanie Masterman, Undergraduate Fellow
Stephanie Masterman is a second-year transfer student at the University of Washington, working toward her Bachelors degree in American Indian Studies with a minor in Arctic Studies. Stephanie belongs to the Tlingit tribe of Southeast Alaska and was born and raised in Seattle, WA. Stephanie is passionate about Indigenous language and cultural revitalization, environmental justice, women’s rights and reproductive justice, and economic sustainability. Stephanie has served in leadership roles for her tribal community including as a Central Council Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska Emerging Leader and Tlingit & Haida Seattle Community Council Youth Ambassador. She aspires to contribute to her community’s effort to strengthen their self-determination through engaging in policy and international relations.
Sierra Red Bow, Undergraduate Fellow
Háŋ mitákuyepi. Pheži Ĥóta Naĝí-wiŋ emáčiyapi kštó. I am an Oglála Lakȟóta student double majoring in American Indian Studies and Environmental Science & Resource Management. I look forward to advancing sustainability efforts that respect the sovereignty of Indigenous communities and feature intentional co-management for the seven generations.
Isa Kelawili Whalen, Undergraduate Fellow
Hafa Adai, my name is Isa Kelawili Whalen, I am a senior at the University of Washington, Seattle, majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Diversity and Oceania & Pacific Islander Studies. I look forward to exploring the changes in both social and environmental aspects by engaging with the experiences of our AAPI Community. After graduation, my goal is to take my knowledge and experience to expand the world’s view of Oceania through an indigenous academic lens, become involved with agencies that better the cultural programs for minorities in America, and tend to academic and environmental programs in our islands back home!
Ocean Nexus Center Postdoctoral Fellow Kirk Sato wrote this opinion piece for Tide Bites at the Friday Harbor Labs. It was reprinted in the San Juan Islander.
The ocean speaks a language that is understood globally. It has been the mother tongue for generations of people who base their life’s work on its many offerings. We are privileged to work so intimately with such a powerful life source, and we also carry a great deal of responsibility as we participate in this conversation. The resources provided by the FHL Ocean Observatory allow us to translate saltwater properties into numbers, particle motions into 3D vectors and communities of microscopic organisms into high-resolution photos. These data show us how ecologically important microplankton like diatoms, dinoflagellates and ciliates interact with their saltwater environment on scales that have not been possible in FHL’s 100+ years of existence.
Fig. 1: I humbly acknowledge that the San Juan Islands archipelago is the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples and I raise my hands to the original caretakers and their knowledge of this place. Photo of Goose Island (left) and Cattle Point Lighthouse was taken on July 5, 2011, aboard the R/V Centennial after a day of carbonate chemistry sampling. Credit: FHL Ocean Acidification summer class of 2011.
Why? What is the purpose?
Reliable data are crucial to enhancing resilience against climate change Carbon dioxide from human activities is causing the ocean to warm and become more acidic. Environmental monitoring can help us create tailored solutions to meet specific climate change challenges. Without monitoring, we cannot determine the effectiveness of climate change mitigation actions or assess how well we are adapting.
To our knowledge, the FHL Ocean Observatory serves as the only multi-sensor array in the San Juan Islands archipelago that monitors temperature, salinity, pH, carbon dioxide, oxygen, chlorophyll-a fluorescence, turbidity, and current velocity. Time-series data sets like this describe local conditions precisely and accurately, thus providing valuable real-world context for laboratory experiments and validation of ocean forecast models.
Saltwater conditions in the Salish Sea affect fish populations (for recreational, tribal, and commercial fishers as well as iconic wildlife such as the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales), Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), shellfisheries, and the health of key foundation species such as eelgrass, oysters and clams. There is increasing evidence, for example, that prevalence of eelgrass wasting disease is affected both by local seawater temperatures and freshwater input. Ongoing environmental monitoring programs are crucial to help us better understand and prepare for these emerging climate-linked issues. An unprecedented glimpse into the base of the food web
In addition to the suite of ocean properties listed above, we also monitor the microplanktonic community using a state-of-the-art camera system called the Imaging FlowCytoBot (IFCB). The IFCB is an automated imaging flow cytometer that is designed for the continuous monitoring of phytoplankton and microzooplankton. Using a laser-triggered high resolution camera, the IFCB generates images and optical data of individual plankton and other particles in the size range of >10-150 µm (the width of a human hair).
We collaborate closely with Professor Evelyn Lessard (UW Oceanography), who is using deep learning techniques to automatically ID and count microplankton, in order to convert thousands of photos into user-friendly data in near real-time. This capacity would allow for the continuous monitoring of HAB species and would enable the development of an early alert system for Tribal, State and commercial resource managers. Also, having both ocean chemistry and detailed snapshots of the microplankton community (Figure 2) provides an unprecedented high-resolution data set that will enable researchers to investigate the impacts of ocean change (e.g. Ocean Acidification, hypoxia, warming) and evaluate predictive ecological models.
Fig. 2: The co-location of both ocean chemistry and detailed snapshots of microplankton communities enables researchers to investigate the impacts of ocean change (OA, hypoxia and warming). For example, IFCB images collected during periods of relatively warm and high pH (top left) differ from those captured during colder and more acidic conditions (top right). Arrows point to corresponding pH (green squares) and temperature (orange triangles) conditions in September 2020. The IFCB takes ~1,000-2,000 photos per 5 mL every 20 minutes, or ~100,000 images per day!
Who cares?
Research community at FHL and beyond High-resolution, long-term monitoring data are incredibly valuable to many other ongoing ecological research projects at FHL. We strive to make our data broadly accessible. I make it possible to monitor the data streams, curate them regularly, prepare them for internal peer-review and archive them online. We are working with scientists at the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS) to make the chemical data streams available to the public in near real-time. You can access the most recent curated FHL Ocean Observatory data sets through our project’s metadata webpage (Sato et al. 2020). Students viewing IFCB Serving the next generation Hands-on research experiences cannot be undervalued, especially while COVID-19 restrictions limit our abilities to collaborate (Figure 3).
In March 2020, we were awarded a 2-year Partners in Science grant by the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust to work with Mr. Samuel Garson, a science teacher at Friday Harbor High School. Even at the height of the pandemic when most Partners in Science projects were canceled, we developed a long-lasting partnership program that will provide FHHS students with more opportunities to learn at FHL. We believe the multifaceted Ocean Observatory is an ideal project to support local students of Friday Harbor in STEM pathways, thus supporting the passion that so many of them have for their island home and the Salish Sea.
Fig. 3: Students in the FHL Autumn 2020 Marine Biology class open the weather-proof box to reveal the Imaging FlowCytoBot. Protecting the FHL Ocean Observatory’s electrical equipment from the elements is like protecting yourself and others from COVID-19; regular check-ups and occasional upgrades are necessary for a long-term healthy system. Credit: K. Kull.
Listening to the ocean On its surface, FHL’s Ocean Observatory is a collection of sensors, hardware and cameras, but beneath the data there are many stories to be told about complex ocean dynamics. In order to continue producing high-quality data sets and share these lessons, we need long-term dedicated funding. Our immediate needs include routine sensor part replacements, recalibrations by the manufacturers, and regular independent water sample analyses to monitor instrumental drift. Despite this challenge, we are looking forward to coordinating with other monitoring programs at FHL such as the Smithsonian Institution’s Marine Global Earth Observatory (MarineGEO), which is focused on conducting long-term biodiversity surveys in eelgrass and kelp bed habitats. Through diverse perspectives such as those found across the FHL and UW community, I believe we can help maximize the resiliency of the ocean and envision more equitable and just ocean governance systems.
References:
Sato K.N., Carrington E., Gagnon A., Lessard E.J., Newton J., Swalla B., and K. Sebens. 2020. Seawater data (2018-2020) recorded from the Friday Harbor Laboratories Ocean Observatory (FHLOO). Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO). (Version 1) Version Date 2020-10-16. http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset/826798
Kirk Sato is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the newly formed Ocean Nexus Center at UW’s EarthLab. Kirk’s background in oceanography and ecology is contributing to Ocean Nexus Center efforts to transform ocean governances into new systems that benefit everyone equally. This summer, he has worked to help Japanese oyster farmers build their capacity to adapt to environmental change like Ocean Acidification. He continues to serve the FHL community as the lead project manager of the FHL Ocean Observatory, which received initial NSF funding in 2015 and has been supported by the College of the Environment over the past year.
The Climate Adaptation Science Center network is preparing for several positions to come available in the next year, focused on the impacts of climate variability and change on ecosystems, natural resources, cultural resources, infrastructure, tribal lands and waters, urban and rural settlements and economic development. The network is seeking contact information for scholars with experience and interest in these subjects, as well as in developing actionable science with stakeholders with demonstrated commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Indigenous people have depended on Olympic Coast marine species for their livelihoods, food security and cultural practices for thousands of years. Today, these species—and the tribal communities that depend on them—are at risk from ocean acidification. Washington Sea Grant, in partnership with the Olympic Coast Treaty Tribes, federal and academic scientists and coastal managers, is working to understand and plan for the impacts of ocean change to tribal community well-being.
This collaborative investigation and project video were funded by the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program (Project #NA17OAR0170166), and is led by Dr. Jan Newton, UW Applied Physics Lab, and Dr. Melissa Poe, Washington Sea Grant. Dr. Newton is also the co-director of the Washington Ocean Acidification Center, a statewide organization that connects researchers, policymakers, industry and others across Washington to advance the science of ocean acidification and provide a foundation for proactive strategies and policies to protect marine ecosystems and the people connected to them.
This beautiful 18-minute film about the Olympic Coast research partnership uses collaborators’ own voices and perspectives on ocean change and tribal resilience to bring the story to life.
The NW CASC is excited to welcome our 2020-2021 Research Fellows as they kick off their Fellowship activities this fall. These 13 Fellows represent each of our consortium universities across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. Throughout the Fellowship year, each Fellow will conduct research in close collaboration with regional natural resource managers and decision-makers to produce relevant science on climate change impacts and adaptation actions, while receiving training in the principles of actionable science. Through their innovative research, which includes investigating how receding glaciers are affecting fish habitat, exploring how local knowledge of rangelands can inform flexible management, and identifying forest management actions that enhance habitat and biodiversity while buffering climate impacts, these Fellows will help advance the mission of the NW CASC in delivering science to help fish, wildlife, water, land and people adapt to a changing climate.
Phil Rigdon is the superintendent of the Yakama Nation’s Department of Natural Resources
Phil Rigdon, superintendent of Yakama Nation’s Natural Resources Department, has joined the EarthLab Advisory Council. Chaired by former Interior Secretary and REI CEO Sally Jewell, the council guides and advises the EarthLab executive director on strategic objectives and connects EarthLab with organizations, people, resources and ideas outside of the university.
Rigdon is an enrolled member of the Yakama Nation and grew up on the Yakama Reservation in south central Washington state. In his current role, he co-manages and protects the Yakama Nation’s ancestral, cultural, and treaty natural resources. He represents the Yakama Nation on many regional environmental committees and groups, including the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan Executive Committee, Yakima River Basin Watershed Enhancement Project Workgroup & Conservation Advisory Group, the Washington State’s Columbia River Policy Advisory Group, Tapash Sustainable Forest Collaborative, and the Hanford Natural Resource Trustee Council.
Phil’s decades of experience bringing tribal, state and federal agencies together for the betterment of natural resources brings an important perspective to the EarthLab Advisory Council. Many of EarthLab member organizations and Innovation Grant teams work with Tribal Nations on a variety of complex and urgent projects. Tribal communities have deep connections to the land and environment and are on the front lines of climate change, meaning they often feel the impacts the earliest and most severely.
“We’re very fortunate that Phil has accepted our invitation to join our stellar group of business, environment and social justice leaders who volunteer their time to support our mission,” said Ben Packard, executive director of EarthLab. “We are committed to learning from and respectfully engaging with Indigenous leaders in our quest to convert knowledge to action to solve our thorniest environmental problems. Phil’s appointment is just one of the ways we are delivering on that commitment.”
