The bivalve-rich beaches of Hood Canal were all summer after detection of a marine biotoxin that causes , a life-threatening foodborne illness that affects the nervous system.

Given that Washington’s commercial shellfish industry employs nearly 2,400 people and brings in more than $240 million each year, a monthslong closure during peak season had sweeping consequences.

Detecting harmful algal blooms early is critical for consumer safety and trust in the industry. The Washington State Department of Health oversees a that monitors toxin levels in shellfish tissue from various growing areas. The effort is supported by an unofficial partner: , a program launched by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2006 that migrated to Washington Sea Grant several years later.

Unlike the DOH, SoundToxins screens the water for harmful algae, which can expedite detection. When SoundToxins monitors detected   — a species of phytoplankton that produces the toxin that causes PSP — they quickly relayed the information to the DOH, which closed the impacted marine areas before anyone got sick.

Although this type of advance warning can save lives, the future funding of the program is uncertain. Washington Sea Grant relies on a patchwork of 91���� grants and federal and state funds to operate SoundToxins. Recent cuts to 91���� funding and the current state of Washington’s budget have illuminated the precariousness of funding for vital programs like this. Washington Sea Grant remains committed to working with state and federal partners to find the right funding pathway to keep SoundToxins running.

A quantified the value of SoundToxins with survey data. UW News spoke with program manager about the results and the program.

How is the monitoring program and the early detection of harmful algal blooms (HABs) valuable?

Michelle Lepori-Bui: Harmful algal blooms can be really detrimental to the shellfish industry as closures have a direct impact on revenue and because recalls and illnesses affect the reputation of shellfish as a safe and healthy food source. Robust monitoring programs and early warning of these events help protect public health and minimize these impacts. There are many benefits to early detection of HABs to the general public and recreational and commercial harvesters that can be hard to quantify. Farmers can benefit by modifying harvesting activities to minimize losses, avoiding recalls, and maintaining trust in the market, while shellfish consumers and coastal communities benefit from safe local food sources and working waterfronts.

How does the new study demonstrate the value of SoundToxins?

MLB: This survey sought to capture the many tangible and intangible benefits of the program and distill them into a single economic metric using an approach called ‘willingness to pay.’ The study found that shellfish growers value the program with a willingness to pay $533/year for phytoplankton monitoring. With changing environmental conditions, shellfish mortality events, and heat waves, growers are facing an extremely challenging production environment. The finding that they are willing to pay this amount, even during these challenging economic times, shows how valuable this program is to coastal communities.

How does SoundToxins support the state-led effort?

MLB: The DOH’s biotoxin monitoring program is a series of steps in compliance with the National Shellfish Sanitation Program that starts with monitoring for biotoxins in mussel tissue. Mussels typically pick up toxins faster than other species, so they are a good indicator, but other species are tested as well. If toxins are detected, they can initiate recreational and commercial closures.

We’re not part of the official regulatory process, but our work can guide the DOH’s efforts through early warning. We maintain a database populated with volunteer data and a map that uses red, yellow and green color coding to report HAB presence on the coast and in Puget Sound and surrounding waters. We notify the DOH via email when something changes and it uses that information to prioritize certain samples or request additional samples.

Who collects the data?

MLB: SoundToxins is a very cost-effective program because we have really amazing monitors, partners and volunteers. A lot of different folks do the actual monitoring. We work with tribes, growers, environmental education groups and individuals at 35 different sites throughout the region. We provide them with equipment and training and support the database, and they collect and analyze the samples, posting everything online within 24 hours.

What happened this summer? How was it different from years past?

MLB: We got an alert from our monitor in early June that they found Alexandrium cells in a sample from Hoodsport, which is pretty far south in Hood Canal. That alert went straight to the DOH and it reacted quickly, requesting more samples from various parts of Hood Canal.

Historically, there haven’t been many incidents of PSP in south Hood Canal. There were a few blooms in the early 2000s and a big bloom in 2015 that went further south than usual, close to Hoodsport but not to the end of Hood Canal. That was considered unprecedented and this year surpassed that.

It’s understood globally that harmful algal blooms are increasing in frequency, severity and impact. This is partially related to changing climate conditions. Also, phytoplankton like Alexandrium respond to nutrients in the water. The input of nutrients from human activities can influence blooms. We have seen things showing up in places they haven’t been before and increasing in intensity.

A lot of people are working on models to predict harmful algal blooms, but it’s complicated, especially in our area where there are a lot of complex water bodies. We need to continue doing the 91���� to try to understand things better, but in the meantime, monitoring is critical.

Co-authors include Michelle Lepori-Bui, marine water quality specialist at Washington Sea Grant; , water quality specialist at Washington Sea Grant; Vera Trainer, a UW 91���� scientist in environmental and forest science and director of the Olympic Natural Resource Center; of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and of NOAA; and Jerry Borchert and Tracie Barry of WA DOH.��

This 91���� was funded by the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science Prevention, Control, and Mitigation of HABs.

For more information, contact Lepori-Bui at mdtlb@uw.edu.��

Source

Pulling the strings: How stem cells in the developing fruit fly brain organize their DNA from outside the nucleus

Cells are very particular about the proper locations of their contents. For example, DNA is packaged in the nucleus in a highly specific way, but 91����ers are still trying to understand how this happens. For stem cells in the brain of a larval fruit fly — model organisms used to study processes such as early development — the DNA is organized so that the center of each strand, called the centromere, is at the top of the nucleus. In a paper in the Journal of Cell Biology, UW 91����ers describe how proteins outside the nucleus work alongside proteins inside the nucleus to control the position of centromeres. The 91����ers observed this mechanism by imaging stem cells within larval fruit fly brains and then using machine learning to measure how centromere locations change when specific proteins are removed. The 91���� team also followed the locations of two specific genes that are far away from the centromeres. Both genes lost their usual positions in the nucleus when the centromeres strayed from their normal location, suggesting that proper centromere positioning may be important for orienting the rest of the DNA in the nucleus. Studying how and why DNA is organized in these stem cells can help 91����ers better understand how stem cells are regulated and how brains develop.

For more information, contact lead author Jennifer Taylor, UW postdoc in biology, at jatay@uw.edu.��      

The other UW co-author is . A full list of funding is .

Micro language models let AI run instantly on small devices like smartwatches

Though artificial intelligence can refer to many technologies, the current AI boom has been driven by large language models, or LLMs. They power chatbots and AI agents by running predictions based on ever-increasing amounts of variables called “parameters.” Current cutting-edge models are estimated to have several trillion parameters, making them far too large to run on slower phones or small devices like smartwatches. In a paper at EMNLP 2026, UW 91����ers introduced “micro language models,” which run with 8-30 million parameters. These models are small enough to run on devices with limited computing power and give users instant responses that fill the lag before the device can access an LLM through the cloud. For instance, a user could ask their smartwatch a question and the micro language model would start responding instantly; then after four to eight words, the LLM would complete the response. The micro language model made mistakes in 4% to 8% of responses that the other model corrected seamlessly before continuing. In a user study, nine out of 10 participants preferred the paired system to the lagging responses from only a cloud model.

For more information, contact ulm@cs.washington.edu or visit .

The UW co-authors are , , and . A full list of co-authors and funding is in .

Policy gaps impact migrant fishers in Washington state

The commercial fishing industry is key to Washington’s maritime economy, but there are concerns about exploitation and forced labor among fishers. While much of industry is regulated by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, exemptions in U.S. law mean some vessels aren’t subject to the same citizenship requirements. A 91���� team from the UW Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies recently focused on understanding the experiences of migrant fishers pursuing albacore tuna, a highly migratory species, who dock or unload at ports in Washington state. Researchers found the exemptions allow migrant fishers to work without authorization or visas, leaving them vulnerable to forced labor and exploitation. Meanwhile, complicated policy and regulatory frameworks make it difficult to address workers’ rights violations. The 91����ers gathered information from 15 migrant fishers, 14 U.S. citizen fishers, and more than 35 subject matter experts. Every migrant fisher interviewed by the team reported experiences aligned with the International Labour Organization’s indicators of forced labor, and both migrant and U.S. citizen fishers reported difficult living and working conditions. Approaches to combating forced labor are varied and uneven, the 91����ers found, and additional work is needed to better understand and support the needs of Washington’s fishers. Along with the full report, the team also published .

For more information, contact , 91���� director at the Bridges Center, at rerstad@uw.edu.

The other UW co-authors are , and .

Burrowing shrimp are on the move in a mudflat near you

Burrowing shrimp are a pest well known to shellfish growers. These pale-bodied creatures excavate mud as they dig into the ground, creating piles of sediment that suffocate oysters and clams growing on the surface. In estuaries on the west coast, shrimp beds reach densities of hundreds of shrimp per square meter, but the boundaries of beds change. in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science shows that shrimp beds move up to 100 feet each year. The study took place at Willapa Bay over the course of three years and is the first to quantify how rapidly the boundaries of these beds shift over time. Researchers still don’t know why the shrimp move, but they observed a clear pattern in the ecosystem. Shrimp change the texture of sediment by eating organic matter and releasing finer particles, so sediment becomes muddier and more compact once they leave. After several years, these abandoned beds were colonized by eelgrass, a marker of ecosystem health. This “engineering” effect was less evident in areas where moving water keeps mud from settling. Studying these rapid shifts and the types of sediment left behind could ultimately help shellfish growers better protect their product.

For more information, contact co-author Jennifer Ruesink, a UW professor of biology, at ruesink@uw.edu.��      

The other UW co-authors are Wesley Hull, Haleh Mawson, and . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

Source

A scans the sea for fish from 100 feet in the air. Upon seeing a school, it pitches its body into a nosedive, somehow breaking the surface at 70 miles per hour without breaking its neck. This daring maneuver seems to defy the laws of nature, but it’s standard hunting behavior for plunge-diving seabirds.

A 91���� study in the Anatomical Record shows that gannets and boobies have unique morphological adaptations that allow them to survive impact. Several of their neck vertebrae are joined by an additional contact surface that helps stabilize the cervical column. The overall shape of the vertebrae is also stockier than other birds.

“We wanted to figure out what makes gannets so special, so good at diving and looking at their biology helped us understand how they can survive these impacts,” said senior author , a postdoctoral scholar at the UW’s Friday Harbor Labs.

The ecological record shows repeated instances in which birds develop physical traits in response to their environment. Charles Darwin was among the first to record this in in the 1830s — in finches on the Galápagos Islands — and 91����ers are still discovering new examples today. The connection between beak shape and foraging behavior is well documented, but the link between neck structure and feeding has received less attention.

The UW 91����ers began years ago. Gannets are built to withstand immense pressure on the head and neck that compresses the cervical column. Engineers typically favor short and fat structures for things built to tolerate compressive force, but these birds have long, slender necks with segmented vertebrae.

Gannet necks have 15 stacked vertebrae that bend slightly in an s-curve. that the muscles surrounding their vertebrae help lock them in place to prepare for impact, but few studies have looked at the actual morphology of diving birds’ necks.

To do so, the 91����ers collected specimens of diving birds and non-diving birds from . The team performed CT scans to create detailed three-dimensional models of the cervical vertebrae and then analyzed the images with geometric , a statistical method for studying biological samples that establishes landmarks for comparison. They considered the forces associated with various feeding styles and chose birds that represented a spectrum, pulling in additional morphological data from .

“Birds that rotate their heads side to side, or move them front to back, separate out from birds that use their heads in compression,” said lead author , a graduate student of biology at UW’s Friday Harbor Labs. “We see that the birds that plunge-dive have more robust vertebrae. They’re thicker, wider, and also shorter, shaped more like a square.”

The stocky shape of the vertebrae provides added support, as does the additional contact surface, called an articular facet, in second through the sixth vertebrae. In this case, 91����ers think the extra facet keeps the birds’ necks from bending backward when they hit the water at an angle. Instead, the load gets transferred down the cervical column.

The 91����ers also observed more blocklike vertebrae in other diving birds, such as the kingfisher, but did not detect the extra facet. Kingfishers belong to a different avian family and are much smaller than gannets and boobies, but their necks seem to have evolved in a similar way. The structural relationship is also proportional: the larger the neck, the larger the vertebrae.

Kingfishers and the bigger plunge-divers also experience the same amount of force per neck area during a dive. Although total force scales with neck size, the amount of stress on the tissue is the same. Both groups experienced peak force nearly five milliseconds after impact despite the size difference.

Moving forward, the 91����ers hope to explore how force transfers down the neck in more detail. They also think this link between structure and function could help paleontologists identify plunge-diving birds from fossils.

“It feels like something I didn’t previously think about and probably overlooked before,” Vanderberg said. “I’m curious to start looking more closely at vertebrae in general, not just in birds.”

Co-authors include , professor of biology and of aquatic and fishery sciences at UW; , assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at UW; , graduate student of mechanical engineering at the UW; and of the University of California, Riverside.

This 91���� was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Beatrice and Samuel A. Seaver Foundation, Friday Harbor Laboratories Research Endowment Fellowship, 91���� Friday Harbor Laboratories Award, and Jim and Camille Uhlir.

For more information, contact Vandenberg at megvdb4@uw.edu.

Source

Last month, a group of 175 91����ers, including eight from the 91����, co-authored published in Earth’s Future and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The paper provides a roadmap for future climate assessments in the U.S. by synthesizing the science and identifying 91���� priorities based on existing gaps. “U.S. Climate Collection: Informing Assessment of Risks and Solutions” is the first article to appear in a launched by the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

Many of the scientists who co-authored this commentary were invited to contribute to the sixth National Climate Assessment (NCA), slated for early 2028, but were then dismissed in April 2025 after the Trump Administration for the assessment. The fifth NCA was published in 2023.��

The federal government is legally required to produce a National Climate Assessment chronicling climate change every four years per the . These assessments track new and evolving risks related to climate change, as well as options for mitigation and adaptation. The national scope is key to ensuring that funding and policies represent a broad range of experiences and concerns. 

“International assessments are valuable, but they are not always tailored to the specific regions and issues that are important in the United States. National assessments fill that gap,” said , Washington state climatologist and a 91���� scientist in the UW Climate Impacts Group.

The special collection is not intended to replace the NCA but rather compile 91���� for other scientists, policymakers and members of the public to aid in decision making. The commentary kicks off the collection by identifying where 91���� has advanced, and how risks have changed, in the years since the last assessment. 

“Our understanding of climate change and its impacts continues to evolve,” said , professor of global health, of environmental and occupational health sciences, and of emergency medicine in the UW School of Medicine. “Conducting regular climate assessments allows us to systematically evaluate that new evidence, incorporate it into our understanding of current circumstances, present it to stakeholders, and apply it to near-term decisions in our respective sectors.” 

UW News asked each of the UW contributors to elaborate on their role in authoring the commentary and how it connects to their 91����.

, 91���� scientist, UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies: “I’m an oceanographer with intimate experience in federal 91���� funding mechanisms and with a broad familiarity with ocean warming and CO2 uptake with associated acidification and feedback on marine ecosystems and fisheries. Initially I was appointed to coordinate among federal agencies, academics and policymakers, but that changed dramatically when the Trump administration eliminated NCA6. In the scramble I became more of an author, and an editor of the Ocean section. 

“Some of my 91���� at the UW involves ocean model development in collaboration with NOAA. It was a natural fit to contribute to the discussions on ‘Simulations of ocean conditions’ and on ‘Innovations in ocean observation and data science.’”

, professor of urban and environmental planning “I led the urban team and the section on urban regions. Urban regions are central to climate assessments. They concentrate populations and human activities, contribute substantially to climate change, and shape how impacts propagate across neighborhoods, metropolitan systems, national supply chains, and global markets. They are also critical places to examine where mitigation and adaptation reinforce one another, where they create trade-offs, and how benefits, costs, and risks are distributed across communities. 

“Our section argues that future assessments must represent cities as complex dynamic systems. We call for comparative, long-term evaluation of urban mitigation and adaptation strategies. For nature-based solutions, that means testing performance under future climate conditions and assessing multiple functions, life-cycle costs, social and ecological outcomes, and trade-offs rather than simply measuring short-term, project-level benefits.”

Mauger: “I contributed to the Northwest section of the paper, based on my expertise in regional climate impacts and adaptation science, specifically around water and flooding. Our synthesis reflects many of the emerging issues I see in my work helping communities, tribes, agencies and others to understand and prepare for the effects of climate change. For example, we highlight new 91���� on the effectiveness of resilience actions — as more communities take action on climate, I am seeing a greater need for 91���� of this kind.”

, principal scientist, UW Climate Impacts Group: “I also contributed to the Northwest section of the paper. My work at UW aims to provide the science, tools and guidance needed by governments and communities as they respond to climate impacts and prepare for those to come. Most of this work is focused on the Northwest, with a heavy emphasis on ecosystems and natural resources. The Northwest section of the paper highlights many of the climate risks and adaptation advances and challenges my partners on the ground face every day.”

Hess: “The takeaways from the health section, which I helped draft, are that we need more information on health impacts from extreme weather and compound events, as well as information on the costs of these impacts. We also need more strategies for advancing adaptation in public health and health care systems; we need health care interventions to protect patients at particular risk; we need more information on nature-based solutions; and we need more information to help convey the health benefits of a clean energy transition. 

“The recommendations related to interventions and adaptation in the health sector are particularly relevant to my work at the UW, which is focused on climate change health impacts and opportunities for increasing resilience of the public health and health care systems. I 91���� these issues and also provide leadership related to sustainability and climate resilience for UW Medicine.”

, professor of global health and of environmental and occupational health sciences: “I was an author on the Air Quality chapter that focused on how climate change could alter exposures to poor quality, from pollen to wildfire smoke to indoor and outdoor air quality. One of my areas of 91���� at UW is quantifying the extent to which reducing greenhouse gas emissions could reduce morbidity and mortality from outdoor air pollution. The evidence is robust that the economic value of the health benefits from reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be of the same order of magnitude — if not larger — than the costs of reducing emissions. In other words, reducing greenhouse gas emissions would benefit Americans by decreasing hospitalizations and deaths.”

Other UW co-authors include , 91���� scientist of environmental and forest sciences and Deputy Director of the Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative and , affiliate professor of environmental and forest sciences. 

For more information, contact Alberti at malberti@uw.edu.

Source

Irrigation canals form a sort of circulatory system for global agriculture. Across the world, millions of kilometers of human-made canals carry water from lakes, rivers and reservoirs downhill to farmland. Canals are vitally important to human food production, yet many agricultural areas lack the means to monitor the ebb and flow of water through these waterways. This forces farmers and water managers to rely on scattered gauges, inspections and local reports to make decisions about water use.

A new study from the 91���� suggests, however, that the tools needed for more comprehensive monitoring may already exist. In the study, 91����ers analyzed data from a NASA satellite built to track over time the water level of oceans, lakes, rivers and other large bodies of water. That project was never designed to track smaller bodies like canals. Yet, when the 91����ers looked at roughly 800,000 kilometers of canals in Asia, they found that the satellite could measure water levels with moderate to high confidence at more than 85% of locations.

The discovery could give farmers around the world a powerful new tool to manage precious water resources, prepare for droughts and improve food security in their communities.

“What we are seeing is not simply a new satellite capability,” said co-author , a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering. “It may represent a fundamentally new way of managing the water conveyance systems that sustain modern agriculture.”

Sept. 30 in Geophysical Research Letters.

The satellite at the center of the study, , is a joint effort of NASA and international partners. In orbit since December 2022, the satellite monitors the Earth’s surface water at least once every three weeks using a tool called , which compares multiple radar scans over time to detect elevation changes.

Oceans, lakes and other large bodies of water are relatively straightforward to track in this manner. Irrigation canals, on the other hand, are frequently narrower than 20 meters, which puts them at the extreme low end of the satellite’s observation power. The project’s architects assumed that fluctuations within small canals would be invisible to the satellite.

Hossain wasn’t so sure. In 2025, he and collaborators published the (GRAIN), a global dataset that used and machine learning to chart 3.8 million kilometers of canal networks. Lead author , a UW graduate 91���� assistant in civil and environmental engineering, then overlaid SWOT’s radar data on top of the canal map to see whether he could find meaningful elevation changes where there were canals.

“It was quite the accidental and pleasant discovery to see that SWOT is able to track flow direction and water levels in most of the canals skillfully,” Sharma said. “GRAIN mapped where canals are. SWOT revealed what was happening inside them. They complemented each other beautifully.”

As a proof of concept, the team focused on canals in 22 countries across Asia — a region where irrigation plays a critical role in feeding roughly 3 billion people. Researchers looked at the satellite’s data along 800,000 kilometers of canals within that region. They then assigned a confidence score to each kilometer based on how closely the satellite’s view of the canal water matched the known contours of the land and how strong the signal was compared to the noise in the data. As an additional check, they compared the satellite’s data to real canal measurements in the United States and found that their confidence levels matched the system’s actual abilities.

Of all the kilometers studied, the team designated 37.5% as highly observable, 46.9% as moderately observable and 15.6% as poorly observable. The highest-confidence areas corresponded to well-organized, wider canals, smooth slopes and open surroundings. Dense vegetation around canals proved the satellite’s biggest obstacle. The satellite’s performance is expected to improve over time as Hossain and other scientists working with SWOT data build better algorithms and analysis methods.

The next step for 91����ers is to build practical tools that leverage SWOT data. Hossain and collaborators at the UW are already building such systems to monitor and improve water delivery in South Asia and to aid in canal management in the western United States.

In time, farmers around the world could use SWOT-powered tools to monitor which canals are carrying sufficient water; see where water levels drop unexpectedly or where canal flow might be stagnant; and understand the evolution of water delivery across an entire growing season. For example, a farmer preparing to plant rice might see through SWOT that there won’t be enough water arriving to their field to support the growth of the crop, and switch instead to a less water-intensive crop like corn or wheat.

Altogether, this new view of agriculture’s circulatory system could improve drought preparedness, strengthen food security and help 91����ers map humanity’s change to the global freshwater cycle.

“Some of the most important scientific discoveries happen when a tool designed for one purpose unexpectedly reveals something else,” Hossain said. “SWOT may be offering a similar surprise.

“A mission built to study oceans and rivers has begun revealing the hidden dynamics of the canals that sustain agricultural production around the globe. What was once invisible is becoming measurable.”

Co-authors include and , UW graduate 91���� assistants in civil and environmental engineering; , a postdoctoral 91����er at Virginia Tech who completed this 91���� as a UW doctoral student of civil and environmental engineering; and at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

This 91���� was funded by NASA.

For more information, contact Hossain at fhossain@uw.edu.

Source

Although Mars may have once resembled Earth, the rocky red planet now appears far from hospitable. Still, certain details — such as ice-bound water — pique 91����ers’ curiosity. Much like on Earth, ice contains valuable records of past climate that could say whether Mars hosts, or has ever hosted, life.

Aside from the poles, where ice is sometimes exposed, most of Mars’ ice is buried beneath a dusty surface layer. Dust impacts climate by darkening ice, which changes how much sunlight is reflected into space. A 91���� study shows that the north pole of Mars contains less dust than scientists thought.

“We know there is water ice in the area surrounding the north pole of Mars, but there has been widespread disagreement as to how dusty that ice is,” said , a senior 91���� scientist at the UW’s . “If it is dustier, the ice will be darker. Just like a dark T-shirt in the sun makes you warmer, dusty ice gets warmer and vaporizes faster on Mars.”

Much of what we know about how Earth’s climate has evolved through millennia comes from sampling ice. Scientists drill deep into polar ice to draw out long cylinders that contain a record of the local atmosphere. Like a tree’s rings, these records can be dated to ancient periods of Earth’s history. But this is no easy task on Earth. On Mars, it’s even more complicated.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration celebrated its 50 years ago. In 2008, the successfully sampled ice near the north pole, a major triumph after the went missing near the south pole in 1999. The UW 91����ers used data from the Mars Phoenix mission, combined with observations from orbiting satellites, to complete this study.

Several years ago, Khuller discovered a discrepancy in the way 91����ers were analyzing the physical properties of ice on Mars. The leading approach was developed for studying soil on the Moon, but when Khuller checked its accuracy on Earth, the seemed off.

In this study, Pari Mohan, who recently graduated from the UW with a degree in geoscience, worked with Khuller to redo the calculations using a different method. Theirs is based on an approach developed by , UW professor emeritus of Earth and space science, and an expert in analyzing snow and ice.

“His methods had been used successfully to study snow and ice on Earth for decades. So I thought it would be interesting to adapt these Earth-tested methods to Mars,” Khuller said.

The results suggest that the north pole is stacked “like an ice-cream sandwich,” with layers of dustier ice between slabs of cleaner ice. A dusty layer of frost forms over the ice every winter and disappears in the summer, revealing older, cleaner ice. Previous estimates suggested that the top layer of polar ice contained as much as 25% dust by mass, but this study says it’s closer to 3%.

“By looking at how the brightness changed over time, we figured out that there is a frost that forms in the winter and it’s more dusty. In the Martian summer it goes away, exposing cleaner, older ice,” Khuller said.

These layers contain key details about the climate of Mars thousands of years ago, when the ice is thought to have formed from snowfall. Mars experiences massive ice ages that have deposited shallow ice on roughly one-third of the planet.

Earth is stabilized by the gravitational pull of its moon. Mars, having only two small moons, “oscillates wildly,” Khuller said, which causes these dramatic ice ages.

In a , Khuller and colleagues suggested that layers of dust and ice could create conditions for life on Mars. The dark layers could help trap sunlight and form pockets of meltwater within the ice. These pockets, enriched with nutrients from the dust, could potentially host bacteria and primitive life forms.

Similar pockets of shallow, dusty meltwater found in ice on Earth are often teeming with life in the summer. In the winter, the liquid water freezes and the microbes become dormant until the next summer.

“The fact that Mars and Earth both have these similar layers of water ice and dust is interesting,” Khuller said. “Why does one planet have life and the other doesn’t?”

Uncovering details about the climate moves the needle, but answering this question may take years. Khuller hopes to expand on this work by applying these improved methods to other regions of the red planet.

For more information, contact Khuller at akhuller@uw.edu.

Source

Capybaras like their habitats wet. These large rodents thrive in low-elevation wetlands, migrating along creeks and rivers to nibble on foliage and flowers. That’s why 91����ers were surprised to find an 8.8 million-year-old fossilized capybara tooth in northern Chile’s , one of the driest regions on Earth. In a paper in Scientific Reports, 91����ers postulate that the Atacama Desert must have had a wetter climate during the , based on this discovery. This is the first time a capybara species has ever been seen in the Atacama region of Chile — today these creatures reside in the marshy lowlands across Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina and Uruguay. Researchers had at one time assumed that the Andean mountain chain on the eastern side of Chile would have prevented these short-legged rodents from ever entering the Atacama region. With this discovery, the authors propose that capybaras were able to follow a wetland trail along the northern part of South America, trekking from Bolivia to Peru into northern Chile. In addition to capybaras, the ancient Atacama region also likely had palms and other flowering plants, according to plant fossils analyzed by a UW scientist for the study. These findings challenge the idea that the Atacama was just always a desert, and can help 91����ers better understand how shifts in climate can drastically affect the environment.

For more information, contact co-author , UW professor of biology, at caestrom@uw.edu.��     

A full list of co-authors and funding is . Adapted from a release .

Multitasking gives marine microbes an edge when nutrients are scarce

The world’s oceans teem with tiny organisms that are difficult to study yet critical to account for. The organisms that make up this microscopic community, many of which are protists, have evolved over time to help keep marine ecosystems balanced. A UW study in the ISME Journal, found that organisms that can both photosynthesize and eat to generate energy do better in nutrient-limited environments, which includes warmer water. This flexibility may help them cope with changing conditions and could help 91����ers gauge how marine ecosystems will respond to future warming. Gathering more data from the bottom of the food web is important for understanding the ecosystem-wide impacts of environmental change. The study also debuted a new genetic method for studying energy production versus consumption that may make it easier to study protists. Samples in this study were collected from the North Pacific, near Hawaii and about 1,000 miles north, but the 91����ers hope to continue expanding the radius to improve global ocean models.

For more information, contact , UW 91���� scientist and engineer of biological oceanography at coesel@uw.edu.

The UW co-authors are Shiri Graff van Creveld, and . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

UW engineers capture behavior of ‘edge waves’ on beaches, putting popular wave models to the test

Coastal engineers and oceanographers often think of the motion of water on beaches as “one dimensional”: waves propagating directly onto the beach from offshore. These simplified wave models are used widely from designing shoreline infrastructure to forecasting coastal flooding. However, some waves propagate along the coast rather than crashing into it, and may push an additional meter of water depth onto the beach. For decades, these “edge waves” have not been accounted for in the one-dimensional models commonly used to understand wave behavior. To find out how edge waves might be impacting model accuracy, 91����ers at the UW and UC San Diego deployed an array of pressure and velocity sensors along a beach in Southern California for 60 days. In a paper in JGR Oceans, the 91����ers describe a model they built to tease out the influence of edge waves in the larger system. While edge waves contributed a significant amount of energy, the team found that ultimately the one-dimensional models that exclude edge waves remain accurate enough for predicting total water levels at the shoreline.

For more information, contact , a postdoctoral scholar of civil and environmental engineering, at cshender@uw.edu.

A full list of co-authors and funding is .

How Colombian environmentalists use law and democracy to redefine mountain landscapes

In 2013 and 2017, Colombian voters in two towns backed a legal effort to stop a large-scale gold mining project. In doing so, they are making the mountainous areas where they live more visible and politically relevant. The decision allowed environmental advocates to organize around a larger area defined by elevation, massive volume, and subterranean and arboreal features. , UW assistant professor of anthropology, a 91���� article in the journal Anthropological Forum that examines how the effort used legal tools for citizen participation to not only voice their opinions on extractive projects, but also reconfigure space in unprecedented ways. The case shows that democratic participation can have far-reaching consequences for how landscapes are defined and lived. The article appears in a special issue, called “Ethnographies of Vertical and Volumetric Worlds,” which was co-edited by Ardila and Steven Schwartz of the University of Rochester.

For more information, contact Castillo at acastil@uw.edu.

Funding information is .

Researchers develop new way to measure how blood clots form

A wound stops bleeding because tiny blood cell fragments called platelets clump together to form a clot. Researchers know that platelets generate forces that help compact and strengthen clots. However, they’ve struggled to understand how blood clots form in real time. To better understand this system, UW mechanical engineers created a device that measures how platelet forces and stiffness evolve together during the first minutes of clot formation. in Advanced Healthcare Materials, the 91���� team used the device to apply magnetic forces to clumps of platelets, causing them to strengthen and stiffen through a process called “mechanotransduction” in which cells convert mechanical forces into biological responses. These findings could be used to study how new drugs affect clot formation, how platelets respond to signals when disease is present, and how blood clotting biomechanics contribute to cardiovascular disorders.

For more information, contact , a UW professor of mechanical engineering, at nsniadec@uw.edu.

The UW co-authors are , , Yoeur-Man Mach and . A full list of co-authors and funding is . Adapted from a story by .

UW 91����ers probe superconducting materials that defy expectations

Most materials resist the flow of electricity to some degree, but unusual materials known as superconductors can carry an electric current with no resistance at all. Superconductors offer a unique window into the physics of materials at tiny scales, and they could one day revolutionize electronics. In recent years, 91����ers have discovered new forms of superconductivity in stacks of atomically thin materials such as . Resistance typically drops to zero as these materials are cooled, but in some cases it mysteriously levels off at a small finite value, which contradicts expectations of superconductor behavior. In a paper in Nature, UW materials scientists tested this behavior with a device consisting of several layers of graphene stacked in a staircase-like pattern. By adjusting voltages applied to the device, the 91����ers could control whether the graphene exhibited true superconductivity or the more peculiar “failed” form, providing clear evidence that failed superconductivity is real. The team is now working to uncover the origin of this mysterious behavior.

For more information, contact , a UW associate professor of both physics and materials science and engineering, at myank@uw.edu..

The UW co-authors are , , and . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

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If someone leaves the faucet running in your bathroom and the house floods, it’s easy to assign responsibility for the damage. But for other disasters — bigger, costlier and more complicated ones — the link between cause and effect isn’t as clear.

In recent years, scientists have improved methods for connecting extreme weather events, sometimes called climate disasters, to climate change. Advancements in clarify how burning fossil fuels has increased the likelihood of extreme weather occurring. These findings form the backbone of a attempting to hold major emitters responsible for deaths and damages incurred during climate disasters.

A new 91���� study takes this work a step further by showing that past emissions from — the top 178 oil, gas, coal and cement producers — will continue impacting our environment for decades to come.

The results in PLOS Climate.

“We know that fossil fuel emissions have caused a lot of warming, and we’re seeing the impacts of that, but the question is: How long does that warming last into the future?” said , a UW associate professor of atmospheric and climate science.

If greenhouse gas emissions were to plummet tomorrow, the environment would not revert to its old self. Carbon majors have emitted more than a trillion tons of carbon dioxide, a substantial portion of which will remain in the air, trapping heat, for millennia.

Even if we stop emitting, Earth will remain approximately 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures.

“We expect continued warming of the climate until we stop fossil fuel emissions,” Frierson said. “The only stable future is one with no fossil fuels burned at all.”

To arrive at this conclusion, 91����ers simulated global climate through 2500 using the Finite Amplitude Impulse Response, or , model in both low and higher emissions scenarios, with and without emissions from carbon majors through 2024.

In a future where greenhouse gas emissions are limited, carbon majors are responsible for a larger percent of warming above preindustrial levels.

In higher emissions scenarios, where fossil fuel burning continues unabated, Earth becomes much warmer as emissions rise. In the most extreme scenario tested, future emissions cause a much larger percentage of warming than carbon majors. But the total temperature change from carbon majors is about the same.

“The amount of warming is calculable and relatively independent of future emissions,” Frierson said. “If there are legal decisions about accountability, the responsibility is not just now, it will continue for many many years into the future.”

The relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming is not new. In fact, scientists understood the risks many decades ago. Efforts to hold emitters accountable hinge on allegations that companies knew about those risks and concealed that information from the public, sometimes employing .

This new study shows that the gasses released by leading emitters, from both extracting and burning fossil fuels, may also be responsible for events that have not happened yet. Emissions from the past can increase the odds of a future disaster through persistent warming.

“This is important for current decisions about fossil fuels,” Frierson said. “Future fossil fuel production will exacerbate climate disasters for many decades to come, so new legal battles about who is accountable should be expected for many years.”

Lauren Henrie, a former student of Environmental Science and Resource Management at the UW, is a co-author.��

For more information, contact Frierson at dargan@uw.edu.

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Once coyotes get a taste for city living, the call of the wild fades to a whisper. Food is abundant and predators are few. Research indicates that coyotes enjoy the benefits of urban areas enough to put up with all the people, and Seattle is no exception.

Over the past century, coyotes have colonized every major metropolitan area in North America. Chicago is home to an , and in Los Angeles, urban coyote density is at least seven times higher than in wild areas. Coyotes are often spotted in parks and neighborhoods , but the lack of formal data makes it difficult for 91����ers to track trends.

“We observed a ninefold increase in coyote density in Seattle compared to more natural and wild areas of the state,” said lead author , a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences. “That might surprise people who think of coyotes as afraid of humans, but I think it just shows how ideal the urban setting is for coyotes.”

The results in Environmental Research: Ecology.

In the study, 91����ers analyzed coyote scats collected throughout Seattle and from wild study areas near Winthrop in north-central Washington and Chewelah in the northeastern part of the state. They estimated density based on how often they picked up a scat from the same animal, identifying 261 total coyotes from 842 scats.

Researchers were also curious about factors that influence density within the city, such as the luxury effect — where wealthier neighborhoods have more plant and animal diversity. Researchers compared the coyote density maps to ones showing pollution level, tree cover, buildings and roads, human population density and income level. Of those factors, only human density seemed to influence the coyotes.

“In Seattle, human population density had a negative effect on coyote density. But when you compare coyote abundance in Seattle to areas with far fewer people, the coyote population was much higher in the city,” Prugh said.

Although coyotes are wary of people, the conditions that dense human populations create favor their survival. Urban coyotes are less likely to be killed or go hungry than their wild counterparts.

that fear of mortality may play a role in determining where coyotes live. In the wild, larger carnivores such as wolves and mountain lions hunt coyotes, but in cities they get to masquerade as apex predators. Farmers and landowners are also more likely to kill coyotes to protect their livestock in rural settings.

The only things that regularly kill urban coyotes are cars and disease.

Cities also offer a wider variety of food options for coyotes. Scat analyses showed that urban coyotes’ diets were more than twice as diverse as those of wild coyotes, although .

Rabbits are the choice prey for coyotes in most ecosystems and the abundance of one often impacts the other. Seattle’s over the past few decades changed urban ecology, and may have helped draw coyotes to the region.

“Coyotes and rabbits have a natural relationship, even in a highly altered environment like Seattle,” Prugh said. Rabbit density could be an even stronger predictor of coyotes than humans, she added, but there isn’t enough data to test the theory.

Although long-term coyote population data is also limited, there is overwhelming anecdotal evidence of coyote abundance increasing in the past few decades, Prugh said.

Sightings are more common at dusk and dawn, but coyotes are now as well. They tend to avoid people, but residents have raised concerns about coyotes and displaying territorial or behavior.

Because they are territorial, coyotes will fight each other over turf. This behavior helps control their population in the absence of other predators. Cities can only support so many coyotes, but Prugh isn’t sure whether Seattle has met that limit yet.

Either way, the coyotes aren’t going anywhere fast.

“One thing that coyotes have shown over and over is that they are incredibly resistant to control efforts,” said Prugh. “With enough food, they will just have more pups.”

The study also highlights some of the often overlooked ways that coyotes can benefit the ecosystem. For example, by munching on young plants, and coyotes help them by munching on rabbits.

“Whether there are too many or too few coyotes is sort of a societal question, but ultimately our answer might not matter,” said Prugh. “Coyotes are here to stay in cities, and it is up to us to learn how to live with them.”

Co-authors include , lab manager at the UW; of Purdue University; and of Colorado State University; of the Wildlife Institute of India; of New Mexico State University; and of the University of California Berkeley.

This 91���� was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the UW Royalty Research Fund, the Woodland Park Zoo, the Animal Welfare Institute and the Fulbright India program.

For more information, contact Prugh at lprugh@uw.edu.

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UPDATE Sept. 8, 2026: This story has been updated to correct the total increase in melt season since the 1980s.

Relatively few people have been to the Arctic, and even fewer have set foot in Antarctica. Most of us rely on our imaginations and media to visualize these landscapes and the ways they are changing.

Research shows that the Arctic is than the global average. The sea ice is melting, exposing more open ocean and throwing the ecosystem out of balance. The story of Antarctica contains fewer details, but emerging trends are concerning to 91����ers.

Conceptualizing this change can be challenging for those of us who have only glimpsed Greenland from the airplane window, but for someone with firsthand experience, it’s eye-opening.

, a 91���� scientist at the 91����’s Applied Physics Laboratory, has visited the Arctic at least once a year since 2009, sometimes staying for as long as five months.

Webster is the lead author of a new 91���� paper, in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, that describes how sea ice has changed in the past 50 years.

Their analysis arrives as the world begins preparations for the , a dedicated period of observation that will peak during the 2023 to 2033 season. International Polar years have occurred every 30 to 50 years since the late 1800s to advance polar 91���� and track environmental change. The upcoming International Polar Year will occur just 25 years after the last, held in 2007, due to the acceleration of climate change.

What motivated this study?

Melinda Webster: We have known for a long time now that the extent, or area, and thickness of sea ice is declining, especially in the Arctic. But we wanted to take that a step further to examine the properties of the ice, especially perennial ice, which doesn’t completely melt away in summer. We updated trends for sea ice with 15 to 20 more years worth of data to understand how it has changed through the contemporary period. We also wanted to emphasize the divergent responses we see in the Arctic and Antarctica, and make recommendations for future 91����.

What did you discover?

MW: The Arctic sea ice melt season has gotten approximately seven and a half days longer per decade since 1979, and this is mostly driven by sea ice forming later in the fall. This has sweeping implications for the global climate system. The superpower of sea ice is its high albedo, meaning that it reflects a lot of sunlight — somewhere between 60% and 90% — back into space. Dark ocean water, on the other hand, reflects just 7%. The open ocean absorbs much more sunlight than ice does, and with that absorption comes warming. In the fall, the ocean is too warm for ice to form and it is taking longer for that heat to dissipate.

The seasonal ice that ultimately forms is thinner, and easier to melt in the following spring and summer. So this creates a cycle of warming that reduces ice coverage and increases the amount of energy in our climate system over time.

What’s the deal with Antarctica?

MW: Antarctica is a land mass covered in ice and surrounded by water. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land. Although they share certain qualities, the two regions are very different from one another, with distinct responses to climate change. For a long time, the sea ice cover wasn’t declining in Antarctica, but in the last four years the sea ice cover experienced record losses.

Logistically, it’s a lot more difficult to deploy instruments in the Antarctic than the Arctic. The measurements we do have are less accurate because the Antarctica sea ice system is more complicated. But, we need to unravel these recent changes, which is a priority 91���� area we identify in the paper.

What other impacts do you foresee these changes having?

MW: Another key result we presented is that snow cover on Arctic sea ice has gotten thinner and the sea ice itself is smoother. That has huge repercussions for polar bears and seals, as it impacts their ability to build dens for raising their young.

There’s also a connection to fisheries. Changes in sea ice cover also impact algae, which form the base of the food web. These algae are accustomed to very low light conditions, but thinner snow and ice let more light in and the algae are essentially getting sunburnt.

When you take an ecosystem that was adapted to an ice environment and introduce open ocean, it disrupts its regular functioning. The health of algae impacts the entire food web, which has important implications for fisheries in the sub-Arctic and Arctic. Less food might mean fewer fish, and that introduces a whole new set of concerns.

Are there any potential solutions? 

MW: To mitigate climate change, you have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That’s at the center of the problem. There are various alternative geoengineering strategies floating around but little consensus on how safe and useful they are.

I think that it is critical to have international regulations that are shaped by representative communities on what kind of 91���� we need before any geoengineering action is taken, if at all. Still, at the end of the day, geoengineering is a Band-Aid. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to deal with the underlying cause of climate change instead of just treating its symptoms.

I’m optimistic about solutions for reducing emissions. Technological and scientific innovation are progressing at a rapid pace, which gives me hope about the future.

Co-authors include of the University of Hamburg; of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology; of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; of Université Catholique de Louvain; of the Finnish Meteorological Institute and of Hokkaido University.

This 91���� was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, NASA, the Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, the University of Hamburg, the German Research Foundation, SnowCast, the DFG Emmy Noether Programme Project Snowflake and the Research Council of Finland.

For more information, contact Webster at melindaw@uw.edu.

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