Western Washington University received a grant for almost $900,000 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop a model to determine the consequences of climate change on sea-level rise and river flow alteration in two of the most ecologically significant estuarine systems in Puget Sound, Padilla Bay and Skagit Bay.
Salmon and trout -- coldwater fish species that get the most attention and money in the Columbia/Snake river basin -- are the most vulnerable to global warming, which a new scientific report calls "unequivocal."
The University of Washington has been allocated $2.2 million from the National Science Foundation for the planning phase to develop detailed engineering specifications for a cabled underwater research facility to be built off the coast of Washington and Oregon, and associated with the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate.
The Bonneville Environmental Foundation announced this week that it signed an agreement with the Entiat Watershed Planning Unit (EWPU) to support an intensive, 10-year Model Watershed restoration and monitoring program in central Washington's Entiat River valley.
An April update by the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group says the outlook for April-May-June is for a greater than 33 percent chance of warmer than normal temperatures for much of Oregon and Idaho, and equal chances for above, below, or near normal temperatures in northwest Oregon, the northern tip of Idaho and all of Washington.
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington published a paper Thursday that states habitat deterioration associated with climate change is likely to make salmon recovery in the Pacific Northwest much more difficult, especially in relatively untouched, high-elevation river basins.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire has announced the membership of the state's new Climate Advisory Team. The team will work to find solutions climate change challenges and to maximize economic opportunities those challenges present.
The California Current system has experienced significant changes during the past decade, resulting in dramatic variations in the ecosystem characterized by shifts in phytoplankton production, expanding hypoxic zones, and the collapse of marine food webs off the western coast of the United States.
Climate scientists from the Pacific Northwest, many from the University of Washington, have played key roles in the major new international study that shows climate change will have serious effects on the world in the coming decades.
Climate change is already affecting Washington's economy, according to a study requested by the departments of Ecology and Community Trade and Economic Development that was released this week.
A Washington climate change impacts analysis will be expanded to include the entire Columbia River basin with the help of a grant approved last week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
A 10-year, satellite-based analysis has shown for the first time that primary biological productivity in the oceans - the growth of phytoplankton that forms the basis for the rest of the marine food chain - is tightly linked to climate change, and would be reduced by global warming.
A sodden November across much of the Columbia River basin may well have provided water users with a hedge against "El Nino" conditions that are expected to settle into the region for the winter.
It's time for the United States to have a national climate service -- an interagency partnership led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and charged with understanding climate dynamics, forecasts and impacts -- say six members of the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group.
Last year Mother Nature ignored expectations, providing the Columbia River Basin with a better than average snowpack and water supply to buoy fish, water crops, generate power and provide for other water uses.
New research suggests that that sea lice from fish farms kill wild salmon.
Up to 95 per cent of the wild juvenile salmon that migrate past fish farms die as a result of sea lice infestation from the farms, concludes research results recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of The United States of America.
Northwest researchers will study the interaction of the massive Columbia River plume with the Pacific Ocean as part of a major grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a center that will be run by three Northwest institutions.
A team of nearly 60 scientists, which just wrapped up a five-year study of the ocean circulation, biology and chemistry off the Oregon coast, has discovered a new cycle of activity in the Jet Stream that has a major influence on upwelling and ocean productivity.
Oregon State University scientists are teaming with commercial fishermen on a new research effort to rapidly identify the home river basin of chinook salmon found in the Pacific Ocean using genetic testing.
New grants, research advances and improved technologies developed by engineers at Oregon State University are moving wave energy in the United States closer to a working reality – and furthering the case for Oregon to be a national leader in this new energy concept.
A developing tool to assess the effects of Columbia/Snake river dams and dam operations on migrating salmon and steelhead should buoy future decision-making processes if remaining technological gaps are filled, according to a March 15 Independent Scientific Advisory Board Review.
Global warming in coming decades may cause the disappearance of large areas of the low-elevation snowpack in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, a new study concludes, with significant impacts on area ski resorts that will face warm winters far more often than they do now.
While biologists sort out what levels of noise go unnoticed, are annoying or cause harm to marine mammals, physical oceanographer Jeff Nystuen is giving scientists and managers a way to sift through and identify the sounds present in various marine ecosystems.
Though some species of fish around the world are likely to be contaminated with mercury, PCBs and other toxins, the benefits of eating seafood continue to outweigh the risks, a panel of scientists said last week at a special symposium this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
When fishing boats return with catches of increasingly less-valuable fish, the commonly held notion is that the more valuable species have been fished out.
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