The UW College of the Environment has experienced tremendous growth in undergraduate student majors since its inception 15 years ago, with most of that growth coming in recent years. In the 2011-12 academic year, the College enrolled nearly 1,050 undergraduate students across seven different majors offered throughout the College. Fast forward to the current academic year, and there are nearly 1,900 students enrolled in eight majors (Marine Biology was added as a major in 2018-19).
Read more at KING 5 »Video: UW cherry blossoms in peak bloom
The cherry trees on the UW Quad have reached their prime. A group of students in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences has been monitoring the timing of blossoms across campus since 2018, with the goal of creating a model that will use weather data to predict the timing of peak bloom in future years.
Read more at UW News »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 new 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.
Read more at UW News »Year in review: College of the Environment story highlights from 2023
From new discoveries in our solar system to insights about how predators and prey interact with humans, 2023 was another impressive year of research in the College of the Environment. Our students tackled new challenges, and we celebrated anniversaries, new honors, new leadership positions and more.
Read more »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. The Atacama Desert’s lack of rain makes it easier to see how those gradual movements shape the landscape over time.
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