Robotic boats track radio-tagged common carp in area lakes
As a stiff breeze sweeps across Staring Lake in suburban Minneapolis, a five-foot, antenna-sporting robotic boat plies the water in a back-and-forth pattern.
On the shore, Volkan Isler follows the action as two graduate research assistants launch a second boat.
Today Isler, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Minnesota, and graduate students Pratap Tokekar and Josh Vander Hook have come to the lake to test the newer of the boats. Their mission: developing a new technology to track invasive fish.(more…)
It’s been a decade since a swarm of relatively mild earthquakes shook up parts of Spokane. Now, armed with the right tools, scientists want to find out what was at fault.
“It was always something not as well understood as we thought it should be,” said Douglas Gibbons, a University of Washington researcher in Earth and space sciences, who is guiding installation of strong-motion sensors as part of a project called NetQuakes.
NetQuakes will install a half-dozen seismometers in the Spokane area by the end of June, mostly in volunteers’ homes, to help improve understanding of what lies beneath the city. (more…)
UA Professor Alison Hawthorne Deming is a highly regarded poet and essayist who, at most every turn, works to translate matters of science and nature into poetry and prose.
Consider your tactile and sensory reality.
For some, the sound of birds stirring awake with the dawn of day, the plop fish make when hitting water, the strong scent of sagebrush and moist pine or the feel of soft soil underfoot are all foreign.
Given the tremendous rate of scientific and technological advancements at a time when people are increasing moving to urban areas, the bond between humans and the natural world seems, at times – and is, indeed, for some – strained.
PASADENA, Calif. – The space-based technology that lets GPS-equipped motorists constantly update their precise location will undergo a major test of its ability to rapidly pinpoint the location and magnitude of strong earthquakes across the western United States. Results from the new Real-time Earthquake Analysis for Disaster (READI) Mitigation Network soon could be used to assist prompt disaster response and more accurate tsunami warnings.
The new research network builds on decades of technology development supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The network uses real-time GPS measurements from nearly 500 stations throughout California, Oregon and Washington. When a large earthquake is detected, GPS data are used to automatically calculate its vital characteristics, including location, magnitude and details about the fault rupture.(more…)
*Increase in ocean acidification led to collapse of oyster seed production at Oregon hatchery*
Marine researchers have definitively linked the collapse of oyster seed production at a commercial oyster hatchery in Oregon to an increase in ocean acidification.
Larval growth at the hatchery declined to a level considered by the owners to be “non-economically viable.”
A study by the scientists found that increased seawater carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, resulting in more corrosive ocean water, inhibited the larval oysters from developing their shells and growing at a pace that would make commercial production cost-effective. (more…)
A new online portal and smartphone app lets Washington and Oregon residents enter the addresses of their homes, schools, workplaces or kids’ day care centers to check if they’re in harm’s way should a tsunami hit.
Materials available via the tool or phone application can be used to map out evacuation routes for you, your family, employees or students so everyone is ready when danger arises. There’s a way to create a free account so users can map and save multiple locations and evacuation routes in one place. (more…)
Sunday marks the one-year anniversary of the great Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan, killing more than 16,000 people and causing billions of dollars in damage.
University of Washington scientists say the event has some important lessons for the Pacific Northwest – most notably, not that a similar event can happen here but that it WILL happen here, and that this region is still much less prepared than Japan was a year ago. (more…)
Climate change has had a significant effect on mountain vegetation at low elevations in the past 60 years, according to a study done by the University of California at Davis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and U.S. Geological Survey.
This information may guide future conservation efforts in helping decision makers develop regional landscape predictions about biological responses to climate changes. (more…)
