SMEA alum Mikaela Freeman’s newly published thesis ‘Assessing potential spatial and temporal conflicts in Washington’s marine waters’ is now out in Marine Policy. Applying spatial analysis to current ocean uses in Washington to highlight areas of high- and low- potential conflict offshore, as well as learning GIS along the way, Mikaela looked at the ongoing process of marine spatial planning. The study represents a first step towards quantifying potential conflicts within Washington’s Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) study area by using a cumulative analysis to highlight high- and low-use intensity areas and the novel Marine Potential Conflict Index (MPCI), which incorporates space, time, and intensity of use, to quantify pairwise potential conflicts between uses. 

Professor Tom Leschine was recognized by the College of the Environment for his Outstanding Community Impact. The award recognizes individuals who through stakeholder engagement inspire, and drives interactive uses of environmental science and information to impact the broader community. Tom’s efforts to advance environmental quality at a national level and in Washington state were just some of the examples cited during the college’s award ceremony.  

From a former student
Professor Miles’s (“Ed” as he encouraged his students to call him) first words of advice to our IMS 500 class were less than inspiring. “Study ocean policy because you find it interesting in and of itself, not to change the world.” It was 1978, a few short years after the first Earth Day. I was at IMS to learn how to save the world, at least the watery portion of it; Ed’s admonition seemed too cautious, maybe even cynical. 

SMEA Director and Professor Terrie Klinger and her colleagues on the West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia (OAH) Science Panel released a comprehensive report April 4 that states ocean acidification and the related problem of hypoxia, or low oxygen levels under water, “will have severe environmental, ecological and economic consequences for the West Coast”. As reported on KUOW, the panel called for reducing pollutants that drain into water bodies like Puget Sound from surrounding cities and farms.  

SMEA Professor Nives Dolsak along with a team of researchers from British, American and Australian institutions co-authored a paper titled “Engage key social concepts for sustainability” that was recently published in Science. The paper concludes that social science can contribute significantly to advancing and assessing conservation efforts. As stated in the UW Today article “the authors propose a set of social indicators that can be used to gauge how ecosystem management affects four essential factors in human lives: well-being, values, agency (the ability to act purposefully) and inequality. 

Congratulations to Professor Eddie Allison, Post-Doc Nathan Bennett, Professor Nives Dolsak, Assistant Professor Ryan Kelly, SMEA Alumna Natalie Lowell, Post-Doc Jimmy O’Donnell and SMEA Alumni Jesse Port on their publications that have come out winter quarter covering a variety of topics in marine and environmental affairs.
EDDIE ALLISON
Christophe Bene, Robert Arthur, Hannah Norbury, Edward H. Allison, Malcolm Beveridge, Simon Bush, Liam Campling, Will Leschen, David Little, Dale Squires, Shakuntala H. 

SMEA students Lindsay Gordon and Grace Ferrara recently returned from a 3-day ‘think-tank’ in Honolulu, Hawaii where they focused on the Human Dimensions of Large-Scale Marine Protected Areas. This think-tank was hosted by large-scale marine protected area network Big Ocean and SMEA professor Patrick Christie along with other contributing organizations and sponsors such as National Geographic, NOAA, Conservation International, and Pew Charitable Trusts. 

SMEA Director Terrie Klinger was part of a panel of scientists from California, Oregon and Washington that recently published a paper in the January edition of the journal BioScience titled “What Changes in the Carbonate System, Oxygen, and Temperature Portend for the Northeastern Pacific Ocean: A Physiological Perspective”.  The study takes an in-depth look at how the effects of stressors such as ocean acidification and low-oxygen conditions, or hypoxia, can impact organisms such as shellfish and their larvae, as well as organisms that have received less attention so far, including commercially valuable fish and squid. 

SMEA faculty and students have been out and about this fall quarter!
During the last week of October, SMEA Director Terrie Klinger, Professor Eddie Allison, Post-doctoral Researcher Nina Bednaršek and SMEA Graduate Student Hannah Bassett attended the IMBIZO IV conference in Trieste, Italy. The theme of IMBIZO IV was Marine and Human Systems: Addressing multiple scales and multiple stressors. Bassett presented a talk entitled “A Framework of Frameworks: Assessing existing tools for implementation of Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management (EBFM)”.  

SMEA Professor Eddie Allison and graduate student Hannah Bassett co-authored a paper titled “Climate change in the oceans: Human impacts and responses” that was recently published in Science. The paper was part of a special issue of Science dedicated to informing the upcoming COP21 meeting in Paris. As an article from UW Today explains, the paper “looks at scientific understanding of changes to the world’s oceans and how people around the world are responding to those changes.