SAFS Associate Professor Chelsea Wood is the recipient of a 2022 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This prestigious award will support Wood’s novel research on the historical ecology of parasitism and will allow her to create an active-learning, open-access version of her undergraduate parasite ecology course.

A new paper co-authored by researchers at the Smithsonian’s Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), the University of Washington and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras describes the important contribution of submersibles to increasing our knowledge about the diversity of deep-reef fishes in the Greater Caribbean.

Researchers, including SAFS Assistant Professor Gordon Holtgrieve, have developed a model using artificial intelligence to analyze the environmental impacts of 351 hydropower dam projects currently under evaluation in the Amazon Basin. The model aims to provide information that would help planners and policymakers optimize the capacity and location of new dams to minimize their negative impacts.

The Lenfest Ocean Program (LOP) funds research projects that address the needs of marine and coastal stakeholders and supports grantees who will engage with the people most likely to use the results. By pulling back the curtain on their processes, the LOP hopes they can help managers, stakeholders and others better understand the many ways in which the philanthropic community can help link useful science with decisions. 

The UW College of the Environment is pleased to announce that Professor Tim Essington has agreed to serve for a five-year term as director of the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, effective July 1, 2022. Essington is a fisheries ecologist, whose research focuses on the application of ecological knowledge to sustain fisheries and ecosystems. He has an active research program in Puget Sound examining consequences of climate change, hypoxia, and nearshore restoration on food webs, and he is also well known for his global syntheses of fish and fisheries data to reveal ecosystem responses to fishing.

To find the missing gap in the understanding of hair growth on polar bears, researchers are dyeing parts of their fur with colored dots so they can track the progress visually.

The echosounder-equipped, autonomous underwater glider, Gretel, was launched from the mouth of Resurrection Bay in the northern Gulf of Alaska. After technical adjustments, Gretel will sample the GAK1 line and proceed southeast to rendezvous with the US vessel, the NOAA research vessel Bell M Shimada participating in the 2022 Pan-Pacific International Year of the Salmon High Seas Expedition.

Tropical rivers like the Mekong uniquely overflow their banks and flood for much of the year. These regular flood events create the chemical preconditions needed for methanogenesis to occur in waterlogged soils. A new study led by the University of Washington found that anaerobic processes occurring on floodplains of the Tonle Sap, the largest lake in Southeast Asia, are important contributors of the carbon dioxide that is dissolved in surface waters.

Across the globe, endangered species are at risk for illegal poaching. African elephants are sought out for their ivory, rhinoceros for their singular horns, and armadillo-like pangolins for their protective, brittle scales. Add to that list valuable and environmentally sensitive trees illegally harvested throughout the world where entire ecosystems are being deforested and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing that is devastating oceans. These illicit markets, estimated at $1 trillion annually, cause enormous environmental impacts and have the potential to unleash new, deadly pathogens.

Many nations are calling for protection of 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030 from some or all types of exploitation, including fishing. Building off this proposal, a new analysis led by the University of Washington looks at how effective fishing closures are at reducing accidental catch. Researchers found that permanent marine protected areas are a relatively inefficient way to protect marine biodiversity that is accidentally caught in fisheries. Dynamic ocean management — changing the pattern of closures as accidental catch hotspots shift — is much more effective.