Seismologists, locals weigh in on 4.2 earthquake that hit western Washington

A magnitude 4.2 earthquake occurred on the Kitsap Peninsula on Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 28. Pacific Northwest Seismic Network Director and ESS Professor Harold Tobin is interviewed.

Watch the coverage at Kiro 7

The north pole of Mars is less dusty than scientists thought

A study from the APL’s Aditya Khuller, ESS affiliate assistant professor, and former ESS undergraduate student Pari Mohan shows that the top layer of ice contains approximately 3% dust by mass, compared to previous estimates of 25%. A dusty layer of frost covers the ice in the winter but disappears in the summer, revealing cleaner, older ice. Studying the ice on Mars gives researchers more information about what the climate used to be like, and whether the planet is or was ever habitable.

Read the full story on UW News

September research highlights: New capybara fossil changes the forecast for the ancient Atacama region

This highlight features a recent paper co-authored by ESS Adjunct Professor Caroline Strömberg, UW professor of biology. Capybaras like their habitats wet and thrive in low-elevation wetlands. Researchers were surprised to find an 8.8 million-year-old fossilized capybara tooth in northern Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the driest regions on Earth.

Read more at UW News

Dave Montgomery's new book "ReGen" included in UW News faculty book round-up

In “REGEN: A New Future For Farming, Food, and Health,” David R. Montgomery, professor of Earth and space sciences at the UW, lays out practical and productive solutions to recover the health of our land through soil-building regenerative agriculture. Drawing on the work of farmers, historians and researchers, he articulates the power of rebuilding soil health by minimizing or avoiding physical and chemical disturbance of the soil, such as through combining cover cropping, no- or low-tillage and crop diversity.

Read more at UW News

How salmon evolved to cope with the ice age

Most salmon migrate from the sea into fresh water to spawn. This became difficult during the last Ice Age, when populations of salmon were cut off from icebound spawning grounds. A study recently published in Quaternary Research, led by fisherman-scientist Patrick Martin, used genetic analyses of more than 32,000 chum salmon to suggest that some populations survived the last Ice Age isolated in freshwater glacial lakes. The researchers propose that salmon trapped in these lakes treated them like miniature oceans, migrating up glacial streams to spawn. This prolonged isolation could explain the unusually high genetic divergence and distinctive life-history traits observed in some populations in Alaska and the Salish Sea. UW researchers David Montgomery, Harvey Greenberg, and Ralph Haugerud are co-authors.

Read more on The Economist

ESS Lightning Network data featured in Global Climate Report

“Earth’s climate swings increasingly out of balance,” according to a World Meteorological Organization press release discussing findings from the State of the Global Climate 2025 report, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) on Aug. 

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Antarctica’s brief rebound was caused by climate variability, not a ‘new normal’

Between 2021 and 2023, Antarctica appeared to be growing. Heavy snowfall fueled by wetter weather caused parts of the continent to gain mass, leading some to question whether climate change is really causing the ice to melt. However, a new study published on Aug. 19 in Nature, co-authored by ESS Professor Eric Steig, shows that the precipitation increase was an anomaly related to extra warm tropical ocean temperatures, not part of a long term trend.

Read more at UW News

Soil has an image problem. David R Montgomery is here to help

ESS Professor David Montomgery discusses his new book, ReGen in this interview with USA Today.

Read more on USA Today

3 College of the Environment teams funded to pursue AI projects that support teaching and learning

Michelle Koutnik, ESS research associate professor, will lead a project, "Supporting interdisciplinary Arctic learning with AI chatbot tool," that will design, develop and test an AI chatbot tool to support interdisciplinary learning about the Arctic. Akshay Mehra, ESS assistant professor, is part of an interdisciplinary team for a project, "Designing responsible AI for learning: A pedagogical framework for undergraduate education," that will generate transferable resources, clarify expectations for appropriate AI use and provide scalable models for responsible AI-informed pedagogy across disciplines at UW.

Read more at the College of the Environment

Has NASA already found life on Mars?

In searches for past and present Martian life, some scientists say we've been too cautious to see what's right in front of us. ESS Professor and UW Astrobiology Program Interim Director David Catling is quoted.

Read more on Scientific American