The world's oldest trees are getting fatter at the highest reaches of their habitat.
The fact that bristlecone pines, which live for up to 5,000 years, grow better in warmer weather is no shock, in itself.
Researchers say, though, that the unprecedented growth spurt of the past 50 years is another signal that temperatures are warming more rapidly on mountaintops, where cooler temperatures are needed to regulate snow melt for downstream water needs.
Increasing temperatures at high altitudes are fueling the post-1950 growth spurt seen in bristlecone pines, the world's oldest trees, according to new research. Pines close to treeline have wider annual growth rings for the period from 1951 to 2000 than for the previous 3,700 years, reports a University of Arizona-led research team. Regional temperatures have increased, particularly at high elevations, during the same 50-year time period.
A Western Washington University teacher has received a grant to work with NASA to study global climate change, according to a university release.
Andy Bunn, an assistant professor of environmental science at Western's Huxley College of the Environment, is part of the $289,000 grant to study how the planet's cold-weather forests are responding to climate change. The grant includes Bunn and his students as well as collaborators at the University of Arizona.
It's celebrated in song, dissected in scientific journals and detailed on government Web sites. It's the subject of international conferences, amateur theater performances, and gatherings of Northwest tribal leaders. Ask Bert Webber, and he'll say we dip our toes in it, admire it and sail across it every day.
But how many people know where the Salish Sea is?
"Likely as not, nobody knows what you're talking about," said Webber, a retired Western Washington University marine biologist.
Andy Bunn, an assistant professor of Environmental Science at Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment, is part of a new $289,000 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to study how the planet’s boreal, cold-weather forests – chiefly those in Siberia – are responding to global climate change, and how that change could affect the rest of the world’s climate.
Western Washington University Associate Professor of Environemtnal Studies Nicholas Zaferatos has been named the principal investigator of the EuroMed Sustainable Communities project, an effort sponsored by the European Union to build sustainable economies across cultural and political boundaries.
The island of Kefalonia, Greece, with its ancient ties to the Mediterranean olive-oil industry, will be one of the first test-case subjects in the EuroMed Sustainable Communities project led by Western Washington University's Nicholas Zaferatos.
Western Washington University faculty member David Shull is researching how climate change and global warming are affecting the Bering Sea, one of the most important commercial fisheries on the planet.
The Bering Sea produces a catch worth $1 billion annually – half of all the seafood taken in the United States each year, according to statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Her feet planted in sodden feltsoled boots, Rosie Cullinane sweeps her fishing rod over her head, orange line arcing above the creek rushing high and loud with snowmelt.
Cullinane won’t be graded on whether she catches a fish on today’s field trip with her class, “The Art, Science and Ethics of Flyfishing,” but she is eager to see if the casting techniques she learned on the lawn in front of Old Main will tempt a rainbow trout onto her hook.
Western Washington University’s Institute for Global and Community Resilience, an organization within the Huxley College of the Environment, has received a $2,500 Quick Response grant from the Natural Hazard Center to research the effects of 2008's Centralia River flood on the area’s businesses.
Retrieving a stream-flow meter from under a few feet of Swedish ice is nobody's idea of a good time.Like much of the Pacific Northwest, Sweden's extraction of its timber resources has been a boon for its economy, but has imperiled many of its native fish populations because of habitat loss; reversing the environmental damage on these key watersheds caused by more than a hundred years of intensive logging is the goal of a research project involving Western Washington University assistant professor James Helfield.
One of the keys to understanding our quickly changing global climate is to know how fast climate has changed in the past – answers locked within the rings of the world’s longest-lived organisms, the bristlecone pine.
Andrew Bunn, an assistant professor in Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment, is researching the pines – which can live to be up to 5,000 years old – in their natural habitat atop California’s White Mountains, near the Nevada-California border.
Scientists at Western Washington University’s Shannon Point Marine Center have received a trio of federal grants totaling more than $1.1 million to study why certain kinds of algae create toxic blooms in Puget Sound waters.
Some of these algae – both microscopic single-celled algae and larger seaweeds – contain toxins and can cause fish kills and close shellfish beds due to Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP).
BELLINGHAM - Mandatory water restrictions could be lifted as early as next week, assuming Bellingham residents keep up the good work, said Joy Monjure, communications coordinator at Bellingham Public Works.
Robin Matthews, director for the Institute of Watershed Studies at Western Washington University, agrees with city officials that it is unlikely the diversion dam operations would impact the algal populations, partly because of the sheer size of the lake.
After precious gems and metals, fossils are perhaps the most intriguing things for amateurs to discover in rocks.
In Whatcom County, while the petrified remains of long past ages don't contain the most spectacular of fossil finds: dinosaur bones, rock sleuths can still make interesting discoveries from three periods spanning a considerable breadth of Earth's history.
Western Washington University's Environmental Studies Program provides informal and confidential consultation to landowners discovering plant and animal fossil-bearing resources on their property as well as to other persons who f
I recently learned about the Polaris Project, a fascinating scientific and educational expedition under way on one of the more remote, unusual rivers on the planet, the Kolyma in eastern Siberia. It is the largest river in the world that is completely underlain by permafrost. The region, like most of the Arctic, has seen substantial warming, and the expedition, among other things, is aiming to measure how much carbon dioxide and methane could be liberated if the permafrost thaws in a big way.
Andy Bunn will walk through a starkly beautiful landscape in September, where twisted and ancient bristlecone pines grow from a dry, rocky land scoured by high winds and blanketed in snow much of the year.
The Bellingham scientist's aim during those 10 days in Great Basin National Park in Nevada will be to extract small core samplings from as many as 100 trees. The diameter of a pencil, the cores will be taken to his lab at Western Washington University's Huxley College of the Environment.
Andrew Bunn, assistant professor at Western Washington University's Huxley College of the Environment, will for the second consecutive summer take a pair of WWU undergraduates on a summer research project to the Siberian arctic to study the effects of climate change on these ecologically vital and sensitive areas.
Scientists and undergraduate students from across the United States and Russia are departing July 2 for a month-long field course in the Russian Arctic. The program, known as The Polaris Project, is training future leaders in arctic research and education, and informing the public about the impacts of climate change.
Ian Smith, an environmental science graduate student at Western Washington University, has won a John Knauss Fellowship and will serve a year in Washington, D.C., helping to formulate the country's marine fisheries policy.
Scientists and undergraduate students from across the United States and Russia are departing July 2 for a month-long field course in the Russian Arctic. The program, known as The Polaris Project, is training future leaders in arctic research and education, and informing the public about the impacts of climate change.
Western Washington University Environmental Science graduate student Ian Smith has won a prestigious John Knauss Fellowship and will serve a year in Washington, D.C. helping formulate the country's marine fisheries policy.
He is the first Western student to ever be awarded a Knauss Fellowship.
