Shallow soda lakes show promise as cradles of life on Earth
Charles Darwin proposed that life could have emerged in a “warm little pond” with the right cocktail of chemicals and energy. A study from the University of Washington reports that a shallow “soda lake” in western Canada shows promise for matching those requirements. The findings provide new support that life could have emerged from lakes on the early Earth, roughly 4 billion years ago.
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Open Geology - ESS Alums and Faculty contribute to public geological education in the western U.S.
Locals interested in learning more about Washington State geology may be familiar with Roadside Geology of Washington (2nd ed.), authored by UW geology alum Marli Miller (M.S., 1987; Ph.D., 1992) and Professor Emeritus Darrel Cowan.
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Geology's "Girls in the Boat"
While the world celebrates again the “Boys in the Boat,” our department would like to celebrate two geology majors who played historical roles in UW Husky Women’s Crew.
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Study shows UW Farm practices restore soil health
The soil beneath our feet may not often catch our attention, but keeping it healthy can have major impacts on climate change and the overall sustainability of our food production system.
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In the Field: Tracking seismic clues in one of the driest places on Earth
Unlike the Pacific Northwest, the Atacama Desert in Chile experiences very little rain. But the two regions are both seismically active. Faults in the Atacama Desert are slowly sliding past each other in a way similar to the Seattle Fault in Puget Sound and the San Andreas Fault in California.
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Spirit Whales and Sloth Tales - Book Launch
The book Spirit Whales & Sloth Tales: Fossils of Washington State, written by Elizabeth A. Nesbitt, Burke Museum curator emerita of invertebrate and micropaleontology and former ESS faculty, and David B.
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ESS Alum and "Ranger of the Lost Art" Doug Leen releases new book
Doug Leen, or Ranger Doug as many now know him by, graduated with his Bachelors of Science from UW ESS (then Geological Sciences) in 1970 after serving two years in Vietnam in the United States Navy Seabees Doug joined the National Park Service after graduating and spent the next seven years as a Grand Teton National Park climbing ranger at Jenny Lake.
Read morePowerful 3D modeling software donated to Earth and Space Science Department
The Earth and Space Sciences Department has recently been granted ten academic use licenses for the powerful software package MOVE Suite by PE Limited, valued at more than $2.7 million. MOVE is a 2D and 3D modeling and visualization environment, used primarily for subsurface stratigraphic and structural modeling of basins and tectonically active regions.
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UW Researchers land $10.6M to build subduction zone observatory
Scientists and engineers from the UW School of Oceanography, Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Applied Physics Lab, along with partners at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, recently were awarded more than $10 million to build an underwater observatory in the Cascadia subduction zone.
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Evidence of past large-scale earthquakes - field trip for incoming graduate students
In September, Dr. Brian Atwater, along with graduate students Paul Morgan, Hope Sisley, Andrew Shumway, and Trent Thomas, and postdocs Larry Lai and Jey Kim, led a fieldtrip for the group of incoming grads and postdocs to Copalis, near Ocean Shores, WA.
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