Environment

A group with ties to the University of Washington is helping decision makers recognize the importance and benefits of the natural world.

The Natural Capital Project, a partnership that includes UW, published a paper recently in the National Academy of Sciences which shows the benefits of including the values of nature into decisions. Examples include showing how protecting areas in the Amazon improves public health, and how some coastal habitats in Belize can help mitigate the effects of storms and sea-level rise.

The UW Sustainability office is launching a timeline of University of Washington's achievements and milestones in sustainability and environmental stewardship. The project, "A Century of Sustainability," includes entries dating back to the earliest days of the current UW site in 1895 and includes highlights up to the present day. You can view the timeline at: http://green.uw.edu/timeline

Following rapid warming in the late 20th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth’s surface. At first this was a blip, then a trend, then a puzzle for the climate science community.

The largest dam removal project in the United States provided a unique opportunity for a group of students, who spent 10 weeks this spring studying with UW oceanographers to discover how the released sediment is interacting with the marine habitat at the river's mouth.

Researchers from the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory are part of a large-scale effort to closely monitor the summer sea-ice melting in the Arctic.

Sensors placed around ice in the Beaufort Sea will provide a wealth of data on the melting process, which will help discover how changing ocean conditions will affect the ice. The project, funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, includes scientists from several countries and institutions.

Researchers at the University of Washington and University of Arizona have found that background odors like pollution can keep moths from finding the scent of the flowers they need for food.

The University of Washington is one of four universities worldwide, and the only one from the United States, named this week as a Sustainable Campus Excellence Award winner by the International Sustainable Campus Network.

The awards, presented June 3 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, recognize sustainable campus projects that demonstrate leadership, creativity, effectiveness and performance in the areas of building, campus, integration and student leadership.

By summer it will be easier to walk through one of Seattle’s only swamps with its beaver lodge, a lagoon with turtles the size of dinner plates and a hundred different kinds of song birds.

Work has started on the first phase of a 1,200-foot boardwalk trail in Yesler Swamp, a six-acre area on the shore of Union Bay just east of the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture.

Thoreau had it right. Strolling through your neighborhood under the cover of trees and sky is best. Your thoughts become clearer and your creativity bubbles up.

Everyone knows the Burke-Gilman rings our campus and is a great multi-use trail, but have you ever visited the nature reserve known as the Union Bay Natural Area?