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Narrowing Down Pre-spawning Mortality Factors for Coho Salmon

Jennifer McIntyre

The annual pre-spawning salmon mortality study at the Suquamish Tribe’s Grovers Creek Hatchery takes a different twist each year.

After six years of learning how coho and chum salmon are affected by runoff from urban streets, scientists are narrowing down which pollutant is killing fish. This year, they focused on how tire residue in water affects juvenile and adult coho and chum salmon.

“We want to figure out which concentration of the tire residue in the water will kill fish and how long after exposure do the fish become sick and die,” said Jen McIntyre, aquatic ecotoxicologist for Washington State University, who has overseen the last few years of the project.

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Northwest Treaty Tribes

How Understanding Soil Could Be One Answer to Help Save the Planet

Marc Kramer
Marc Kramer

The deep, dark depths of the ocean are often called the final frontier—but, according to one researcher, the soils of the Earth are little understood as well.

Some of the soil’s mysteries could reveal how to store carbon, and maybe one day, carbon dioxide—a key greenhouse gas that is causing global temperatures to reach record-breaking temperatures. In a study published on Monday, Marc Kramer, an assistant professor of environmental chemistry at Washington State University Vancouver, digs deeper into what scientists know about soil, particularly uncovering how soil minerals are associated with carbon storage in soil.

“We know more about the surface of Mars than we do about either oceans or soils on Earth,” said Kramer.

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Salmon Sex Reshapes Rivers

Alexander Fremier
Alexander Fremier

Many forces shape the planet’s rugged features: wind, water, fire, and, of course, salmon sex.

That’s the conclusion from Washington State University researcher Alex Fremier and colleagues in a study that’s billed as one of the first attempts to quantify the earth-shaping power of spawning salmon. They titled their study, in part, “Sex That Moves Mountains,” and it’s a new take on the ways living things transform habitats.

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Researchers gain grant to study fire aftermath, regrowth

Kevan Moffett

As wildfires dominate headlines in the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the American West, a Washington State University Vancouver researcher is seeking answers to unknown questions about a fire’s aftermath.

Kevan Moffett, an assistant professor of environmental hydrology at the Salmon Creek campus, and Andres Holz, an assistant professor of geography at Portland State University, recently received about $500,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation grant to research how the soil and landscape changes after multiple wildfires in one area.

It’s a relatively untapped area of research, Moffett said. There’s no data on the hydrology — the movement and quality of water — of soil that’s been burned over and over again in the kinds of forests that cover Washington state, nor is there any information on how repeated burns could affect landslides, downstream flooding, vegetation regrowth or the risk of even more fire.

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The Columbian

Volcanic Eruptions That Shaped Oregon May Have Had a Chilling Effect

John Wolff
John Wolff

There are signs of it all over Oregon and Washington: the dramatic cliffs of the Columbia River Gorge, the layered rock along the Palouse River, the ash deposits around the Zumwalt Prairie. A series of volcanic eruptions, starting 17.5 million years ago, formed the Columbia River Basalt Group, a complex of rock formations that was created over a few million years as lava erupted from fissures in the ground and seeped over the landscape.

The eruptions deposited about 10,000 cubic miles of rock and, according to new research, probably released enough sulfur gas to cool the whole planet down.

“The climate was already warming up rapidly before the whole eruption period started,” says John Wolff, a geologist at Washington State University and coauthor of the study. “Right at the peak of the [Miocene] Climatic Optimum, when these eruptions happened, there’s a little downturn in temperature. It’s actually two peaks of warming, separated by this cooling period.”

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Atlas Obscura