‘Underwater forecast’ predicts temperature, acidity and more in Puget Sound

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Most of us rely on the weather forecast to choose our outfit or make outdoor plans for the weekend. But conditions underwater can also be useful to know in advance, especially if you’re an oyster farmer, a fisher or even a recreational diver.

A new University of Washington computer model can predict conditions in Puget Sound and off the coast of Washington three days into the future. LiveOcean, completed this past summer, uses marine currents, river discharges and weather above the water to create the forecasts. LiveOcean was originally developed to predict the impacts of more acidic seawater on the local shellfish industry, and has support from the state-funded Washington Ocean Acidification Center, a Member Organization of EarthLab, as a tool for local shellfish growers. This will be the first spring that the tool is available for their use.

EarthLab launches first-ever Innovation Grants

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EarthLab at the University of Washington envisions a world where nature and people thrive. To that end, EarthLab has launched an Innovation Grants program to provide funding for projects that are risky, new ideas with a high potential for impact and the ability to motivate change.

Through this program, EarthLab hopes to increase capacity across the UW for innovations in the application of transdisciplinary scholarship, deepen engagement with diverse community partners (e.g., practitioners, policy makers, tribes, community groups outside of UW), and fund research projects that address problems from multiple perspectives, ultimately generating knowledge that is both usable and used.

This is the pilot year for Innovation Grants. During this first year, EarthLab will invest in first-mile challenges—the envisioning, development or piloting of new projects. First-mile funding supports convening and building teams in novel, sometimes high-risk, high-reward directions that may take a variety of forms. This funding gives teams the chance to test a concept, scope out a project, or take the first steps in developing a team poised to tackle a large, collaborative project. EarthLab encourages proposals from all disciplines at the UW, even those that are not traditionally connected to sponsored research.

If you are UW faculty or an employee with PI status, and wish to pursue work in the co-definition of transdisciplinary research, scholarship and creative activity related to our most pressing environmental challenges, you are encouraged to apply. Deadline is January 30, 2019.

 

3 steps to boost your child’s outdoor time — and health

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A family enjoys the great outdoors at Alki Beach Park in West Seattle in November. Photo: Ellen M. Banner, The Seattle Times

According to the best available evidence, connecting with nature offers considerable promise in addressing a range of health challenges. Pooja S. Tandon, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children’s Hospital, assistant professor at the University of Washington, and active member of UW EarthLab’s Nature for Health initiative, and Kyle Yasuda, the 2018 president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics and co-founder of BestStart Washington, penned an opinion piece in the Seattle Times about how outdoor play is correlated with physical activity, improved motor skills, better vision and vitamin D levels — especially in children.

Center supports an action-oriented social science research agenda for the Salish Sea

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The Center, with the Center for Canadian-American Studies at Western Washington University, was awarded a four-year Title VI grant in September in part to build regional expertise on the Salish Sea. A key initiative includes support for Social Science for the Salish Sea, a project co-led by staff at UW EarthLab and the Puget Sound Partnership, that brings together over 40 social scientists and environmental practitioners from diverse disciplines, organizations, and Tribes and First Nations in the region to outline a research agenda aimed at improving our understanding of the human dimensions of the Salish Sea.

UW, Tableau create interactive tool to explore more than a century of Pacific Northwest weather observations

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UW/Tableau
This figure shows average annual temperatures measured from 1894 to 2017 at Seattle (red); Boise, Idaho (green); Vancouver, Washington (blue); and Helena, Montana (yellow).

The University of Washington’s College of the Environment has teamed up with Seattle visual analytics company Tableau Software to create a new, interactive visualization for historical observations of temperature and precipitation in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana, and for Washington snowpack.

The free online tool lets anybody interact with the records going back as far as 1881 and look for significant trends.

“This tool lets anyone, from researchers to meteorologists to members of the public, look at the actual data to motivate why we should care about our climate changing, and see how it is changing in our own backyard,” said project lead Karin Bumbaco, the assistant state climatologist for Washington.

The tool uses Tableau’s interactive visual analytics platform to select one or several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stations in the Pacific Northwest, plot the trend and play around with time periods, seasons and other variables.

“You have to have people explore historical climate in order to understand the context of future climate,” said Heidi Roop, lead scientist for science communication at the Climate Impacts Group. “We hope Tableau visualizations like these will become go-to resources for engagement and exploration of climate data in our region.”

From skiing to salmon runs, the national climate report predicts a Northwest in peril

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Wildfire smoke blankets Seattle in this scene from August of this year. Photo: Bettina Hansen, The Seattle Times

Climate change’s effects – among them, increasing wildfires, disease outbreak and drought – are taking a toll on the Northwest, and what’s to come will threaten and transform our way of life from the salmon streams to ski slopes, according to a new federal climate assessment released Friday.

The 1,000-plus-page report, produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is the most comprehensive evaluation to date of climate change’s effects on the nation’s economy, human health, agriculture and environment. Thirteen federal agencies contributed to the report, which was required to be published by Congress.

EarthLab initiative connects the UW to community members and practitioners

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Norwegian townTen years ago, the UW formed the College of the Environment. Across the UW, many researchers were already engaged in environmental studies, but were often isolated from each other by departmental niches. The College of the Environment strove to change this and developed a home for environmental science.

“It wasn’t enough to not only just bring all the Earth systems pieces together under the College of the Environment,” Harriet Bullitt Endowed Executive Director of EarthLab Ben Packard said. “The idea was to also be able [to] connect this capacity, to connect it outside the university and apply the amazing scholarship and research that happens here with people who can use that information to work on these environmental challenges. That institute is now EarthLab.”

New resources support tribes in preparing for climate change

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Which Pacific Northwest streams will warm the most in the next 50 years, and where would restoration work make a difference for salmon? Where will wildfires and pests be most aggressive in forests as the Earth warms, and how can better management help?

As the natural world responds to climate change, American Indian tribes across the country are grappling with how to plan for a future that balances inevitable change with protecting the resources vital to their cultural traditions.

The University of Washington Climate Impacts Group and regional tribal partners have developed a collection of resources that may be useful to tribes at any stage in the process of evaluating their vulnerability to climate change. The project is a partnership among tribes, tribal associations, universities and the federal government.

“This work really is to support tribes’ leadership in climate adaptation, and the goal is to make it easier for every tribe that wants to complete the process,” said Meade Krosby, a research scientist at Climate Impacts Group and the project lead. “This is a way to support the tribes that are leading the way, but also to make sure those that are having a harder time getting started have the resources to begin.”

Anthropocene Film Salon

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In Disko Bay, Greenland, 20-story high icebergs broken off from the Greenland Ice Sheet float into the North Atlantic, raising sea level.

Join EarthLab and the Simpson Center for the Humanities for a screening of Chasing Ice, the first in our Anthropocene Film Salon series. After viewing this provocative film, we will host a discussion and social gathering in hopes of connecting people from the humanities, arts, and the physical and social sciences who would not otherwise meet. Our goal is to foster mutual learning and catalyze new, cross-cutting collaborations addressing the unique social-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene.

Details

What: Chasing Ice, a film by Jeff Orlowski

When: November 28th, 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Where: Fisheries Sciences lobby and auditorium (room 102), University of Washington, Seattle

Panelists:
Jesse Oak Tayler, Associate Professor of English and Co-director, Anthropocene Research Cluster (Simpson Center for the Humanities)
Heidi Roop, Lead Scientist for Science Communication, Climate Impacts Group (EarthLab)

Please RSVP

Sponsored by:

 

A dose of nature: New UW initiative to spearhead research on health benefits of time outside

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Time spent in nature can reduce anxiety and help you sleep better at night, experts have found. It also offers promising benefits for a range of health issues, including cardiovascular disease, depression and obesity.

But there are still many questions about how time in nature can help with these health conditions, and others. A new University of Washington initiative announced this week seeks to advance research on these questions, connecting academic researchers with pediatricians, childcare providers, mental health practitioners and others who work with various populations on critical health issues.

“The Nature for Health initiative is aimed at accelerating our understanding of the health impacts of time spent in nature,” said Joshua Lawler, the initiative’s lead and a UW professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. “The group is not only about doing this critical research, but also about applying it to create programs and policies that are good for human health.”

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