SMEA Professor and Director Terrie Klinger co-authored a paper recently published in Nature Climate Change titled “Ocean acidification can mediate biodiversity shifts by changing biogenic habitat.” Biodiversity researchers from the University of British Columbia, the University of Washington and colleagues in the U.S., Europe, Australia, Japan and China, combined dozens of existing studies to paint a more nuanced picture of the impact of ocean acidification. 

SMEA Professor Nives Dolšak and Political Science Professor Aseem Prakash recently co-authored an article for Slate titled “Trump Can’t Abolish the EPA.” The article acknowledges that environmentalist will face challenges under the new administration, but they must remain open to working with and when needed be willing to stand up to the president-elect. They should also pay more attention to state and city level politics because this is where a lot of the real action is taking place. 

SMEA Professor Nives Dolšak and co-author and UW Professor Aseem Prakash recently published an article on Slate titled; The Dakota Pipeline Protests Should Think Big. The piece discusses the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and how protesters should turn the momentum into something larger. The article goes on to say “For Native American groups, DAPL protests provide the platform to initiate a social movement that asks basic questions about environmental justice and the rights of native communities in resource-hungry systems. 

Congratulations to Professor Nives Dolšak and her co-authors on their latest article Corporate Environmentalism: Motivations and Mechanisms. The article, published in Annual Review of Environment and Resources, reviews two broad categories of corporate environmentalism (CE); direct CE and indirect CE. As the article goes on to explain, three key lessons emerge. First, firm-level characteristics, particularly size and economic performance, encourage CE. 

Assistant Professor Ryan Kelly and SMEA second year graduate student James Kralj were recently interviewed by The Daily about their research involving eDNA and ocean ecosystems. Professor Kelly shared his excitement that this was the first time eDNA has been used to look at the interaction between humans and the ecosystem. Microbiologists have been using eDNA for a decade to take microbial surveys of the ocean, but only recently have scientists started to consider the technique for taking broader surveys of animal biodiversity. 

SMEA Professor Nives Dolšak, along with UW Professor Aseem Prakash, and SMEA alum Maggie Allen wrote a piece recently featured in The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog about the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The posting discusses how the the federal government’s decision to  temporarily block construction of the DAPL, the pipeline that was supposed to carry 570,000 barrels of crude oil per day from the Dakotas to Illinois, is the result of a new kind of environmental activism that treats energy pipelines as a chokepoint for activities that contribute to global warming, and builds alliances with other groups to stop them. 

Congratulations to SMEA Assistant Professor Ryan Kelly, the lead author of the recently published paper “Genetic signatures of ecological diversity along an urbanization gradient.” Kelly and his co-authors, which include SMEA Post-doc Jimmy O’Donnell and SMEA Alum Natalie Lowell, used environmental DNA — or eDNA, and found that urban Puget Sound shorelines support a denser array of animals than in remote areas. 

Congratulations to Professor Eddie Allison and his co-authors who scored the cover of Nature with their article ‘Bright spots among the world’s coral reefs‘. The article was originally published in June and the study is one of the largest global studies of its kind. Nearly 40 scientists from 34 different universities and conservation groups conducted the research. Professor Allison reviewed more than 6,000 reef surveys in 46 countries across the globe, and discovered 15 bright spots — places where, against all odds, there were a lot more fish on coral reefs than expected. 

Professor Eddie Allison was a co-author on two articles published today in Nature. The article ‘Bright spots among the world’s coral reefs‘ is one of the largest global studies of its kind. Nearly 40 scientists from 34 different universities and conservation groups conducted the research. Professor Allison reviewed more than 6,000 reef surveys in 46 countries across the globe, and discovered 15 bright spots — places where, against all odds, there were a lot more fish on coral reefs than expected. 

Assistant Professor Ryan Kelly and Professor Nives Dolšak were both recently featured in articles discussing water and the valuable, as well as harmful things it can contain.
An article published in The Mercury News took a look at eDNA as a new tool for marine biologists. As the article explains, Professor Kelly and other scientists took stock of the marine mammals and fish in Monterey Bay in a study designed to show how eDNA stacks up against traditional dive surveys.