In the days after Mount St. Helens first erupted—sending some 540 million tons of ash over an area of 22,000 square miles—WSU ecology professor Richard “Dick” Mack was already thinking of its potential research value. “It wasn’t research that I intended to do,” Mack says, “but there was a unique opportunity and it would be […]
When Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, it leveled more than 230 square miles of forest, but it also opened a rare scientific opportunity to study how an ecosystem responds after an extreme disturbance. WSU ecologists John Bishop and Mark Swanson have been involved in Mount St. Helens long-term research for decades and […]
Canada lynx are losing ground in Washington state, even as federal officials are taking steps to remove the species’ threatened status under the Endangered Species Act. A massive monitoring study led by WSU researchers has found lynx on only about 20% of its potential habitat in the state. The results paint an alarming picture not […]
Wildlife need to move to survive: to find food, reproduce and escape wildfires and other hazards. Yet as soon as they leave protected areas like national forests or parks, they often wind up on a landscape that is very fragmented in terms of natural boundaries and human ones. To help create more corridors for wildlife […]
White-lipped peccaries of Central America have declined by as much as 90% from their historical range, signaling a population collapse of a key species in the region, according to a study by WSU researchers and colleagues published recently in the journal Biological Conservation. “White-lipped peccary populations are in more of a critical condition than previously […]
Our moon is one of the brightest objects in the night sky. But unlike a lamp or our sun, the moon doesn’t produce its own light. Light can travel in lots of different ways. Moonlight is actually sunlight that shines on the moon and bounces off. The light reflects off old volcanoes, craters, and lava […]
A Washington State University researcher has completed the most thorough analysis yet of The Great Drought — the most devastating known drought of the past 800 years — and how it led to the Global Famine, an unprecedented disaster that took 50 million lives. She warns that the Earth’s current warming climate could make a similar drought […]
Reducing synthetic fertilizer use, pollution, farming costs, while freeing up nitrogen, mark possible benefits of a research project by Sarah Roley, assistant professor with the School of the Environment, Washington State University Tri-Cities. Roley, and her two colleagues, recently landed a $483,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation, to pursue a more detailed understanding […]
Stephen Bollens, professor of aquatic ecology at WSU Vancouver, has been named director of the newly designated Meyer’s Point Environmental Field Station. Located just north of Olympia in a rapidly urbanizing area, Meyer’s Point is a 95-acre parcel of undeveloped land with 2,100 feet of Puget Sound shoreline and extensive terrestrial, wetland and aquatic habitats. […]