Global fisheries, a vital source of food and revenue throughout the world, contribute between $225 billion and $240 billion per year to the worldwide economy, according to four new studies released this week.
A team of researchers at the University of British Columbia, along with colleagues at the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, has mapped the genome of a microbe that is silently helping to shape the ecology of oxygen-minimum areas in the ocean known as dead zones.
Global warming in the next century could cause a significant increase in the productivity of high-elevation forests of the Pacific Northwest, a new study suggests. However, forests at lower elevations -- which in recent years have accounted for more than 80 percent of the region's timber harvest -- could face a decline in growth.
The potential for outbreaks of spruce and mountain pine beetles in western North America's forests is likely to increase significantly in the coming decades, according to a study conducted by USDA Forest Service researchers and their colleagues. Their findings, published in the September issue of the journal BioScience, represent the first comprehensive synthesis of the effects of climate change on bark beetles.
A new analysis of fisheries management concludes that climate change will significantly increase the variability of the size and location of many fish populations, creating uncertainty for fisheries managers -- and the need for greater flexibility.
El Niño in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean is expected to be a dominant climate factor that will influence the December-through-February winter weather in the United States, according to the 2009 Winter Outlook released this week by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.
Three Seattle-area researchers have received 2009 Outstanding Scientific Paper Awards from the NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. The three scientists are being honored for papers about discoveries on oceanic and atmospheric conditions that affect the West Coast.
A relatively new type of El Niño, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA.
Water supply forecasts for next summer have been pushed down due to the combination of depleted soils in much of the Columbia River basin and the prospect of El Nino conditions holding sway across the Northwest over the next nine months.
In the first major study to examine the effects of climate change on ocean fisheries, a team of researchers from the University of British Columbia and Princeton University finds that climate change will produce major shifts in productivity of the world's fisheries, affecting ocean food supply throughout the world.
Longtime wildlife biologist and science leader Carol Schuler has been named assistant regional director for Climate Change and Science Application for the Pacific Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Schuler's appointment will begin in early December.
As part of the Department of the Interior's effort to build a coordinated strategy to respond to the impacts of climate change on the nation's natural resources, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this week released a proposed strategic plan intended to guide the agency's efforts to respond to threats posed by global warming.
Temperature differences and slow-moving water at the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers in Idaho might delay the migration of threatened juvenile salmon and allow them to grow larger before reaching the Pacific Ocean.
A report released this week by the National Research Council calls on the United States to launch a new multi-agency, multiyear, and multidisciplinary initiative to capitalize on the advances recently made in biology and to accelerate new breakthroughs that could solve some of society's most pressing problems -- particularly in the areas of food, environment, energy, and health.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar this week launched the department's strategy to address current and future impacts of climate change on America's land, water, ocean, fish, wildlife, and cultural resources.
The world's ocean surface temperature was the warmest for any August on record, and the warmest on record averaged for any June-August (Northern Hemisphere summer/Southern Hemisphere winter) season according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The preliminary analysis is based on records dating back to 1880.
An already chilled northeast Pacific Ocean and rapidly cooling equatorial sea surface temperatures likely bode well for Columbia River basin salmonids that start and end their lives in freshwater but spend most of their lives at sea.
A statewide study by the Washington Department of Ecology shows the widespread occurrence of low levels of man-made perfluorinated compounds in Washington lakes and streams, in fish tissue, and in municipal wastewater treatment plant discharges.
Like shifting sand dunes, some clouds disappear in one place and reappear in another.
A new study this week in Nature shows why: Rain causes air to move vertically, which breaks down and builds up cloud walls. The air movement forms patterns in low clouds that remain cohesive structures even while appearing to shift about the sky, due to a principle called self-organization.
Journey 300 miles off the Washington-Oregon coast and dive nearly a mile deep into the ocean as scientists and 20 students use underwater robots to explore the ocean floor.
Just click yourself aboard.
A new cooperative agreement between the National Science Foundation and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership to support the "Ocean Observatories Initiative" will create a global ocean observing network, part of which will operate off the Oregon and Washington coasts.
Water researchers across Idaho are collaboratively embarking on a three-year hydrologic study that will contribute to a greater understanding of the altered distribution of winter snowpack, which is considered a significant climatic impact on the semi-arid mountains in the western U.S.
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been awarded $3.45 million over three years to examine the environmental impacts of marine and hydrokinetic power.
Aquaculture, once a fledgling industry, now accounts for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally, according to a new report by an international team of researchers.
The way that humanity reacts to climate change may do more damage to many areas of the planet than climate change itself, says a new study published in Conservation Letters by Conservation International's Will Turner and a group of other leading scientists.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
