In early April, a powerful typhoon formed over the northwestern Pacific Ocean, as it swirled toward the Mariana Islands, a 15-island archipelago east of the Philippines. By the time it on April 14, the wind was gusting 130 miles per hour, rain fell in sheets and huge waves pounded the shores.

This super typhoon, called Typhoon Sinlaku, was among the strongest early-season storms recorded in the past 75 years. It caused widespread damage on the islands — home to approximately 50,000 people — leaving most without power, tearing roofs off homes and destroying vital infrastructure.

The U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, includes 14 of the islands in the archipelago and the remaining island, Guam, is a U.S. territory. The residents, a mix of Indigenous Chamorro people and settlers, are American citizens and U.S. institutions and agencies are well represented on the islands.

On Rota, ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝ researchers have been working to stabilize the population of the endangered Mariana crow for decades after research signaled rapid decline. , a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences, and , a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences, oversee several projects on Tinian, a small forested island roughly 12 miles long and 6 miles wide.

The first project, launched in 2021, focused on a small, formerly endangered songbird called the . It has since expanded into broader study of native birds and plant restoration.

UW News spoke with Gardner, , a research scientist in Gardner’s lab, and , a graduate student in Bakker’s lab, about the impacts of the typhoon and how they plan to resume their work on the islands.

What first brought you to Tinian? What makes the island unique?

Beth Gardner: We were initially approached by a consulting firm with a contract to study the Tinian monarch, which led us to form a relationship with the U.S. Navy based on the island. They were impressed by our work and efforts to integrate into the community and funded our group to continue developing research on Tinian.

Kaeli Swift: Tinian’s unique ecological character reflects its complicated history. The island is about 60% forested but the forests are primarily composed of a mix of introduced species. Centuries of colonization — by the Spanish, Germans, Japanese and now U.S. — has resulted in immense habitat destruction. Tinian was heavily bombed during World War II and then became the U.S. point for the atomic bomb.

Fletcher Moore: By the end of the war, over 95% of the forest had been cleared, obviously to the extreme detriment of all the native plants and animals. Now, over two-thirds of the island is controlled in a lease agreement by the U.S. military. That land is largely undeveloped, but the U.S. military plans to invest in major new projects on Tinian in the next decade.

What does your work involve?

KS: We have been doing on Tinian for five years. We’re trying to understand threats to native birds by studying offspring survival and predator populations — primarily rats and cats. Our recent work involves acoustic monitoring, specifically looking at how birds are impacted by human-related noise associated with development on the island.

FM: We are working on a long-term native forest restoration project based on the observation that the lack of native plants was limiting wildlife populations on Tinian. We are supporting development of a native plant nursery by partnering with local entities to enhance the space, hire full time staff, and collect and propagate plants. We had about 2,000 native trees representing 20 different species in the nursery, and planted about 300 of those trees in the past six months.

How will it be impacted by Typhoon Sinlaku?

FM: The site where we planted the young trees is on an isolated corner of the island that is difficult to get to in the best of times. Right now, the road is totally inaccessible. We’re not sure when we will be able to get out there to assess the damage and resume regular restoration work, like controlling invasive species and planting other species. The nursery also suffered a lot of damage; almost half of its plants were destroyed. So it’s going to require a pretty big reset.

KS: Our work involves venturing into the jungle to set up cameras and acoustic recording devices for monitoring birds. Our access to those sites will be limited until the roads are cleared and even then, the nature of the vegetative landscape will have changed. We can’t really compare data on birds from one year to the next when there have been major changes to vegetation on the island.

BG: That little songbird we study has probably gone quiet for now. As we’ve seen in the past, their populations will likely suffer from this type of devastation. The typhoon sat on top of Tinian and Saipan for somewhere around 50 hours. We don’t know the full extent of the damage yet, but I think things will be completely different when we get back out there.

What happens now?

FM: It is difficult to access resources on the Marianas and especially hard on Tinian. We had to transport everything we needed for these projects from elsewhere. Shipping can take weeks or months and building materials are often twice as expensive as they would be on the mainland U.S.

When it comes to our work, it’s really difficult to see the nursery destroyed and to see the materials we spent months and a lot of money gathering torn apart. But, it’s going to be especially hard for the people who live on the island and don’t have grants funding their rebuilding efforts. So there are just a lot of practical challenges to recovery out there that even folks affected by disasters in the mainland U.S. might not face to the same degree.

The Ecological Society of America on Wednesday awards. , a ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝ assistant professor of environmental and forest science, was named an Early Career Fellow, which recognizes scientists for contributions to advancing and applying ecological knowledge within eight years of completing a doctorate.

Willing studies how microbes respond, and help plants cope with, environmental change. focuses on fungi and other microbes living near plant roots. Much like the gut microbiome, these communities play a critical role in plant nutrition, immune function and overall forest health.

Willing’s lab focuses on understanding these communities and how they are shifting with climate change. Her research integrates methods from various scientific disciplines to gain insight into the ecosystem-wide impact of fungi.

“I work across pretty diverse fields, from fungal ecology to plant and forest ecology,” Willing said. “Integrating everything together is challenging, but I think it’s a critical intersection to study right now and this award is a nice acknowledgement of that.”

As a Faculty Fellow, Willing also collaborates with federal, state and tribal agencies to incorporate fungi into climate adaptation planning.

Many of her lab’s projects examine responses to climate change. For example, one of Willing’s current grad students is studying fungi in post-fire ecosystems.

Some fungal groups are fire-adapted, meaning that they can withstand wildfire better than others. After wildfire, the soil often becomes hydrophobic, which causes water to run off the surface instead of soaking in. This increases the risk of erosion, among other consequences. Fungi help seedlings to establish and stabilize the soil by helping it retain water.

Early findings from her lab indicate that prolonged fire suppression, a stewardship strategy intended to minimize wildfire impacts, can limit microorganisms fire tolerance, which then exacerbates the damage caused by a fire.

“There are lots of different nuances that we’re really just starting to understand,” Willing said.

She hopes this work can help inform future forest management practices. Although there are many mushroom enthusiasts in the Pacific Northwest, Willing is one of few scientists in the region studying how these organisms fold into broader ecosystems.

Most of the data on microbial communities was collected within the past 20 years or so, which makes it difficult to gauge how these organisms are responding to climate change. Another project in Willing’s lab involves conducting genetic analyses on preserved plant specimens to establish a baseline for fungal health.

“Our understanding of what fungal and bacterial communities were like before the onset of rapid warming is really limited,” Willing said.

Building this baseline will help researchers see how microbial communities are evolving and reveal management opportunities.

Without fungi, life on Earth couldn’t exist as we know it. Dead logs and fallen leaves would simply accumulate, with nothing to break them down and return their nutrients to the soil.

“Fungi are involved in everything,” Willing said. “In the cycle of life, they are at the beginning, helping plants to take root across every ecosystem on Earth, and at the end, helping to create lush soils for future life to flourish.”

ESA will acknowledge and celebrate fellows during a ceremony on July 27 at the annual meeting in Salt Lake City. Early Career Fellows are elected for five years.

For more information about her work, contact Willing at willingc@uw.edu.

New evidence suggests that a disease-causing tapeworm that has been spreading across the United States and Canada has arrived in the Pacific Northwest. The tapeworm, called Echinococcus multilocularis, lives as a parasite in coyotes, foxes and other canid species and can cause severe disease if passed to domestic dogs or humans.

E. multilocularis has long been recognized as a public health threat in parts of the Northern hemisphere, including Europe and Asia, but was considered extremely rare in North America until approximately 15 years ago, when cases in humans and dogs began cropping up in Canada and the midwestern U.S., indicating that the parasite was spreading.

This study, led by ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝ researchers, is the first to detect E. multilocularis in a wild host on the west coast of the contiguous U.S. Researchers surveyed 100 coyotes in the Puget Sound region, and found E. multilocularis in 37 of them. The results were .

“This parasite is concerning because it has been spreading across North America. There have been numerous cases of dogs getting sick, and a handful of people have also picked up the tapeworm,” said lead author , who recently graduated from the UW with a doctorate in environmental and forest science. “The fact that we found it here in one-third of our coyotes was surprising, because it wasn’t found anywhere in the Pacific Northwest until earlier this year.”

When E. multilocularis infects an animal or person, it causes cancer-like cysts to form in the liver and sometimes other organs. If untreated, infection can be fatal.

However, not all carriers become sick. E. multilocularis has a complex life cycle that involves multiple hosts. Canids, which host adult parasites, can support thousands of worms in their intestines without becoming sick. The worms shed eggs that are then passed in their feces.

Rodents — another host — become infected by eating food contaminated with coyote feces. Once consumed, the parasite eggs migrate to the liver and form cysts, ultimately weakening or killing the rodents. The parasite’s life cycle begins again when coyotes prey upon infected rodents.

Humans and domestic dogs are categorized as accidental hosts. Humans may pick up the parasite by consuming tapeworm eggs — in food that is contaminated with coyote or dog feces, for example — and can develop a disease called , characterized by slow-growing metastatic cysts. Symptoms may not appear for five to 15 years after exposure, which complicates diagnosis and treatment.

Alveolar echinococcosis is considered the third most important food-borne illness globally, and one of the top 20 neglected tropical diseases by the World Health Organization. Many countries have developed robust protocols for tracking it.

Domestic dogs that are exposed to E. multilocularis may or may not become sick, depending on where the parasite is in its life cycle at exposure. It is more common for dogs to carry the parasite and shed eggs without developing disease, but dogs that are exposed to parasite eggs may develop the same cancer-like cysts as other infected animals.

“To minimize the risk of dogs getting infected with E. multilocularis, owners should not let them prey on rodents or scavenge their carcasses,” said co-author , an associate professor and director of the Parasitology Diagnostic Laboratory at the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Owners can also give dogs preventative medication for worms and ticks and ensure routine veterinary care, which should include diagnostic tests for parasites, Verocai said.

Although the researchers found E. multilocularis in more than one-third of local coyotes tested, there is little evidence of the infection spreading to other hosts. One study in Washington, Oregon and Idaho since 2023, five of which were in Washington. Few human cases have been reported in the U.S., and none on the West Coast.

“The reason that it’s so high in coyotes is because they are regularly eating raw rodents, and that is the primary way for them to get infected. Most domestic dogs are not eating the raw livers of wild rodents,” Hentati said.

Before the uptick in the 2010s, there were several reports of E. multilocularis on remote islands in northwestern Alaska. Those cases were caused by a parasite with different origins than the current outbreak. Genetic analysis pins the earlier cases to a tundra variant while these recent cases are driven by a more infectious variant with European origins. The coyotes in this study carried the newer variant, now thought to be the predominant variant in the U.S. and Canada.

Neither Canada nor the U.S. require dogs to undergo deworming upon arrival, which may explain the spread. Previous studies also proposed that E. multilocularis could have come over in red foxes imported for hunting 100 years ago, but no one knows for sure.

“The main takeaway is that Echinococcus multilocularis is here, it’s pretty prevalent in the local coyote population and people should be aware of potential risks,” Hentati said.

Co-authors include , lab manager at UW; , UW doctoral graduate in environmental and forest science; , a UW professor of environmental and forest science; , a UW associate professor of aquatic and fishery science; of the College of William and Mary; Erika Miller of Sound Data Management; of DePaul University; and of UC Berkeley. This study was funded by The National Science Foundation and the ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝ Hall Conservation Genetics Fund.

For more information, contact Hentati at yhentati26@gmail.com.

Stark black against an open sky, common ravens are often spotted soaring above wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Researchers assumed that the notorious scavengers were following the wolves to get their scraps, but new research reveals a twist: Ravens don’t follow wolves, they remember common hunting grounds and regularly check back for fresh meat.

When food is easy to find, animals save energy by memorizing the path to retrieving it. Because scavengers rely on other animals to eat, their meals are less predictable. Some scavengers contend with this insecurity by tailing predators, but as this study shows, ravens don’t. Researchers tracked 69 ravens and 20 wolves across Yellowstone National Park for two and a half years and found that the ravens knew where to go without cues from the wolves.

“Scavengers are not quite as glorious as predators, and have traditionally been understudied by comparison. Getting a better understanding from the scavengers’ viewpoint might give us insight into sensory abilities, underappreciated environmental cues and spatial and temporal memory,” said , a ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝ professor emeritus of environmental and forest sciences and the study’s senior author.

March 12 in Science.

Ravens and wolves pick at the scraps of a wolf kill in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Bob Landis

The mutualistic relationship between ravens and wolves has fascinated humans for centuries. According to Norse mythology, the god Odin created two ravens — — to travel the world gathering intelligence for him. Odin sent his two wolves, , with the ravens to ensure they remained fed.

“This tight coevolutionary relationship between predator and scavenger has persisted in human thought for millennia,” Marzluff said.

Modern scientific research documents a similar relationship between the two species. Ravens have been known to follow wolf tracks through the snow and respond to howls. After wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, ravens were a wolf than anywhere else in the park. The odds of seeing a raven further increase when wolves are hunting.

Marzluff, who is well known for studying crows and ravens, teamed up with lead author , an assistant professor at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna then the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, to study how ravens track wolves so well.

The wolves in Yellowstone are already closely monitored, but the researchers needed data on the ravens to compare. Over a few months, Marzluff and Loretto trapped 69 ravens and outfitted them with small GPS trackers. For two and a half years, the researchers monitored where the ravens and wolves went, which routes they took and when their paths crossed.

They only documented one instance of a raven following a wolf for an extended period, yet overall, ravens still managed to arrive promptly after the wolves made a kill. Ravens were spotted at nearly half the observed wolf kills within seven days and some flew more than 150 kilometers to reach a kill. Their flight patterns also suggested that the ravens were making a beeline instead of conducting a sweep.

Ravens were also far more likely to visit areas where wolf kills were more frequent, per the researchers’ “carcass abundance map,” which split the territory into nine square kilometer parcels and plotted kill sites.

The authors propose that ravens rely on spatial memory — the brain’s ability to follow directions — to monitor the wolves’ favorite hunting grounds. Their hypothesis is further supported by data showing that ravens fly over common kill sites en route to other food sources, including areas where humans hunt wild game.

“We already knew that ravens can remember stable food sources, like landfills,” Loretto said. “What surprised us is that they also seem to learn in which areas wolf kills are more common. A single kill is unpredictable, but over time some parts of the landscape are more productive than others — and ravens appear to use that pattern to their advantage.”

Additional co-authors include and from the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre; , and Lauren Walker from National Park Service and and from ​​Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.

This study was funded by the European Union, the National Geographic Society, the German Research Foundation, the James W. Ridgeway endowment to the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝ and Yellowstone Forever.

For more information, contact Marzluff at corvid@uw.edu or Loretto atĚý matthias.loretto@vetmeduni.ac.at.

This story was adapted from by Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior.

[April 6] UPDATE: Flower petals are falling on the Quad as the trees lose their blossoms. The waning bloom is still quite a site but it’ll be a while before the trees are back on full display.

[March 23] UPDATE: The cherry trees are officially in peak bloom! Visit campus anytime in the next week or so to see the blossoms in all their glory.

[March 18] UPDATE: Recent temperature swings have slowed bud development for the Quad cherries. About half of the trees are still in peduncle elongation stage while half have moved on to the “puffy white” stage that precedes full bloom. Cool temperatures in the coming days may delay peak bloom as trees gradually blossom. Warm weather could produce a sudden transition. Check the live cams for updates.

[March 13] UPDATE: It’s snowing but the blossoms are still growing! The Quad cherries are now in the “peduncle elongation” stage, where the flower-bearing stalk extends from the bud. Some have also begun to flower.

Each spring, large crowds gather on the ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝ Quad to admire 29 puffy pink cherry trees making their seasonal debut. The trees begin to wake up as the weather warms, and this year, estimates suggest that they will reach “peak bloom” on March 20.

The UW’s iconic cherry trees achieve peak bloom when 70% of the blossoms have opened, but the week before and after still offer visitors an optimal viewing experience.

The cherry blossom visitors’ website provides updates on bloom status as well as details on transportation, activities and amenities. The cherry blossoms also have live video feeds for virtual viewing and their own social media accounts on and .

The cherry trees are both beautiful and ecologically significant. Tracking when the buds burst each year helps researchers predict peak bloom and determine how climate warming is impacting the trees, which were planted in the Washington Park Arboretum in 1936 and then relocated to UW in 1962.

This year, many plants began to emerge early as a mild winter gave way to spring. Recent UW research described how plants rely on both temperature and light cues to time their flowering. Temperature is particularly important to cherry trees, which estimate the arrival of spring based on how cold it has been. They accrue “chilling units” as winter progresses and “heating units” as it yields to spring.

“The buds need to accumulate a specific amount of chilling units before they can start accumulating the heating units. When it is not as cold, the chilling units accumulate much slower, so it takes them longer to wake up from dormancy, which is very counterintuitive,” said , a UW doctoral student of environmental and forest sciences.

Theil is now overseeing data collection on campus, with the help of approximately 20 undergraduate students. The researchers make observations as the trees begin to wake up and feed the data into a computer model that incorporates weather forecasts to predict peak bloom.

Historically, the onset of peak bloom has fallen between March 12 and April 3, with an average date of March 23. While the weather impacts peak bloom year to year, climate change drives longer term trends over multiple decades.

Research shows that bloom time has shifted approximately two days earlier each decade since the 1960s. Researchers began monitoring the trees in 2012 and referenced newspaper archives to estimate peak bloom dates for the preceding years.

“With the climate warming more rapidly in the spring, I expected to see the flowers blooming earlier,” said lead author , a recent doctoral graduate from the UW school of environmental and forest sciences. “But as we dove into the literature and examined the data, we saw a delay in bloom, as a result of winter warming in Seattle.”

The study focused on the Somei-yoshino, or Yoshino, cherry tree cultivar. These trees, sometimes called the Japanese flowering cherry, are found throughout Japan. They also line the National Mall in Washington D.C. and paint many Seattle neighborhoods pink in the springtime.

The bloom delay Maust observed applies only to Yoshino cherry trees in Seattle. In colder climates, such as Washington D.C., the trees have ample time to accrue chilling units. Still, the two populations are quite similar, genetically.

Propagation, or breeding more trees, occurs by grafting one tree onto another. This process limits genetic variability in favor of consistency. Because all Yoshino cherry trees are sterile clones of one another, they do not produce fruits or seeds, but they do reliably bloom in beautiful pink hues each spring.

For more information on bloom time, contact Theil at mtheil@uw.edu or Maust atĚý amaust@uw.edu. For information about the Yoshino Genome Project, contact Steinbrenner at astein10@uw.edu.

The ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝ was awarded $2.5 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to fund 16 postdoctoral fellows in a number of fields across the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Engineering and the College of the Environment.

The UW is one of 30 U.S. research universities to receive the funding. The grants support work in a range of natural science disciplines supported by the foundation, including disciplines of astronomy, biology, chemistry, Earth and planetary sciences, ecology materials science, physics and quantum information. Post doctoral fellows will receive between $90,000 and $200,000 for work lasting nine to 24 months.Ěý

Gordon and Betty Moore established the Moore Foundation in 2000 to create positive outcomes for future generations. In pursuit of that vision, the Foundation advances scientific discovery and environmental conservation. It is one of the nation’s leading philanthropies with an endowment of approximately $12 billion and annual grantmaking exceeding $500 million.

In awarding the funds, officials with the Moore Foundation noted the “critical role postdoctoral fellows play in advancing scientific discovery and the importance of maintaining the talent pipeline for science.”

The UW is well known for training future researchers and scientific leaders across disciplines. Many of the post-doctoral fellows in this cohort say they plan to pursue faculty positions, to inspire another generation of scientists.

“The work these postdoctoral researchers are doing will increase our understanding of the planet and the universe, helping to create a better future for all,” said Cecilia Giachelli, associate vice provost for research and a professor of bioengineering. “We are deeply grateful to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for their generous support.”

UW News asked the cohort of Moore Foundation postdoctoral fellows to share their research goals. Here’s what they told us:

Arachaporn Anutaliya, Applied Physics Laboratory:

“I’m excited to receive this fellowship because it allows me to study large-scale equatorial waves that move heat through the ocean and shape global climate patterns. Understanding how these waves redistribute heat is essential for improving our understanding of climate variability and global warming. This fellowship supports my goal of building a career in ocean and climate science that connects fundamental research to broader climate understanding.”

Arpit Arora, Department of Astronomy:Ěý

“I am thrilled to receive this fellowship, as it lets me collaborate with the UW experts leading the Rubin Observatory to study dark matter — the invisible substance making up 85% of all matter in the universe. I use computer simulations to model ‘stellar streams,’ which are long trails of stars being torn apart by our galaxy’s gravity. By comparing these simulations with new telescope data, I can use the motion of these stars to map out the hidden influence of dark matter and finally understand how it shapes our universe.”

George Brencher, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering:

“My research uses satellite data and machine learning to improve measurements of snow and ice that are needed for managing water resources and natural hazards. Rapid advances in Earth observation and machine learning are transforming the field, allowing us to push the limits of what we can observe on Earth from space. This fellowship will allow me to develop new approaches that translate these advances into meaningful, real-world impact.”

Leo Brody, Department of Chemical Engineering:Ěý

“Receiving this fellowship gives me the flexibility to explore a new class of materials that could dramatically lower the cost of turning waste plastics and biomass into useful fuels and chemicals. I am especially excited about replacing rare, expensive catalysts with materials made from Earth-abundant elements like iron, aluminum and carbon. This support will help me prioritize making energy and chemical production cleaner, cheaper and more sustainable.”

Jamie Cochran, Department of Biology:

“I will study the physiology of the freshwater crustacean Hyalella azteca, which is used to understand the impact of aquatic stressors — such as metals or pesticides — on freshwater environments. Just like humans require a specific ratio of salt to water for survival, these shrimp-like crustaceans must regulate their internal balance of ions to water. My project involves trying to determine the mechanisms behind this balance, which could also help us understand other sensitive freshwater creatures. I am grateful to this fellowship for the opportunity to investigate this ecologically significant species.”

Debarati Das, Department of Chemistry:

“As a biochemist, I am keen on pursuing a career in industry or the government sector addressing questions at the interface of chemistry and biology. I find microorganisms particularly fascinating because they are able to live in diverse habitats, from the deep sea to the human body. With the support of the Moore Foundation, I will be able to develop new skills to study how microbes use unique chemistry to adapt to different environmental conditions. This work will help us to understand the critical roles of microorganisms in every ecosystem on our planet.”

Mateo Lopez Espejo, Department of Psychology:

“When we hear a sound, we turn our heads to focus our vision and hearing on the source. This is a process called active sensing. I am excited to investigate the mechanisms behind this process using the fruit fly as a model so that I can take advantage of its genetic tools and fully mapped brain connectivity. The support of this fellowship will be fundamental to help me establish this research plan during my postdoc, and to cement my future career.”

Cassandra Henderson, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering:Ěý

“I am pleased to accept the Moore Foundation fellowship to support my essential research in preparing Washington communities for climate change. With this assistance, I will be able to continue work on the , which enables long term flood planning that addresses sea level rise.”

Sophia Jannetty, Department of Biology:Ěý

“I use computer simulations to explore how the behavior of individual cells affects the health of our tissues and organs. I am honored to receive the Moore Foundation fellowship, which will allow me to apply this approach to better understand how aging cells and inflammation interact to influence disease. I hope my work can inform more thoughtful strategies for promoting healthy aging.”

Atsushi Matsuda, Department of Biology:

“Electron microscopy reveals extraordinary details inside living cells, but turning these images into accurate three-dimensional reconstructions remains a major challenge. My research aims to overcome this by combining physics-informed machine learning with computer vision to create tools that are broadly usable by biological researchers. I am excited to receive this fellowship because it gives me the freedom to pursue this highly interdisciplinary work at the intersection of biology, computational mechanics and artificial intelligence.”

Hikari Murayama, Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science:Ěý

“Quantifying greenhouse gas emissions was a core pillar of my doctoral work, and this fellowship provides an opportunity to build off of that. We’ll be focusing on historical data: Tracking past methane emissions from oil and gas facilities can give us insight into how emission patterns fluctuate over time. I’m excited to continue developing as an interdisciplinary scholar while also forming my identity as a researcher as I pursue faculty positions.”

Dongmin Shi, Department of Materials Science & Engineering:Ěý

“I am honored to receive support from the Moore Foundation fellowship, which will enable me to pursue innovative, foundational ideas with long-term impact in biomedical engineering. My research focuses on developing wearable biosensors that help monitor and better understand human health. In the future, I aim to become a faculty member who helps translate fundamental scientific discoveries into technologies that improve health care.”

Marta Ulaski, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences:

“Healthy rivers are the backbone of thriving salmon and trout populations but we don’t yet know if the places we protect are the ones most at risk from a warming climate. I’m looking forward to combining climate, policy and habitat information in a new way to better understand how river protections support salmon and trout. Ultimately I hope this work will help close the gap between research and conservation practice and provide evidence to guide future policy.”

Corinne Vietorisz, School of Environmental & Forest Sciences:Ěý

“I am very excited to receive the Moore Fellowship, which will allow me to join the Willing Lab at the UW to study how fire-adapted microbes can aid in forest recovery following wildfire. I am continuously amazed by the enormous impacts microorganisms have on our world. My long-term goal is to study how soil microbes — including fungi and bacteria — can improve ecosystem restoration and land management outcomes.”

Samuel Wong, Department of Physics:Ěý

“I am interested in proposing novel ways to test theories beyond the current understanding of fundamental physics, such as searching for new particles and forces. Specifically, my work involves finding ways to use precision measurement techniques to search for these tiny signals of new physics. The UW is a leading center for precision measurement, and the support from the Moore Foundation postdoctoral fellowship will allow me to do this work alongside , UW assistant professor of physics.”

Weiwang Zeng, Department of Chemistry:Ěý

“I am excited to receive this fellowship because it gives me the freedom to take big scientific risks at a crucial stage in my career. I use ultrafast bursts of light in a special range of the electromagnetic spectrum to reveal and control new behaviors in atomically thin quantum materials. With this support, I can build toward an independent research program.”

The , adopted in 1994, helped quell mounting tensions between timber companies and environmentalists. It protected large swaths of old-growth forest in Washington, Oregon and California to preserve habitat for endangered species, including the and .

While the plan is largely considered a success, researchers and land managers have begun to question whether it adequately protects forests threatened by climate change. Wildfires of increasing strength and severity sweep through Northwest forests every year, both on the east side of the mountains where conditions are drier and in wet mossy western forests.

, researchers looked at more than 2,200 fires over several decades to evaluate how wildfire is impacting Northwest Forest Plan lands. They observed a steady uptick in area burned and severity of wildfire in both dry and moist protected forests during the study period.

Federal and state representatives have been in conversation about for several years now. A new iteration of the Northwest Forest Plan could lean on more active management, including intentional burning and Indigenous cultural burning, which involves strategically introducing fire to maintain ecosystem health.

UW News asked the study’s lead author, , a UW senior research scientist of environmental and forest sciences, what the new research means for the plan.

Why did you do this study?

Gina Cova: For several years now, people have talked about revisiting the Northwest Forest Plan to incorporate amendments that account for the effects of recent wildfires and climate change. Some of these conversations were inspired by executive orders emphasizing the importance of old-growth forest protections. Others followed new research documenting the effects of climate change across the region.

We’ve seen more fire within the Northwest Forest Plan area, both in dry, fire-prone forests, but also in moist forests that we consider less likely to burn. Those events included a few really high-profile fires, such as the that burned close to 175,000 acres in western Oregon and raised questions about land management strategies in this era of climate change. We started to think about evaluating these past fires to inform plan amendments aimed at management strategies to sustain old forests across the region.

What were some of the key takeaways from the study?

GC: ĚýA broad theme is that these are dynamic landscapes and they need to be managed as such. We looked at the environmental factors driving burn severity for 2,200 different wildfires and studied the forest patterns resulting from those events. The effects of wildfire in some areas were surprising. For example, we found that high severity fire affected around 60% of pine-oak woodlands in federally protected reserves throughout the eastern Cascades and Klamath regions. These forests are adapted to frequent, low intensity fires. We know that they need fire, but the severity of these fires reflects a long history of fire exclusion — or lack of fire — across the landscape.

What do you mean by a lack of fire? Aren’t we supposed to stop wildfires?

GC: Because enacting changes to management strategies has been difficult to do in practice, parts of the Northwest Forest Plan inadvertently reinforced the idea of preserving a static forest condition. This approach is analogous to drawing a boundary around a forest to prevent disturbance. It is rooted in conservation ideas from the early and mid-20th century, but we know that disturbances —Ěýespecially fire — are important for forests. So, you get this kind of fire paradox where many of these forests need fire, but the longer they go without it the more devastating it ultimately becomes.

These frequent-fire forests — like pine-oak woodlands and dry mixed conifer forests — can ultimately fare better in a warmer climate, so it is really alarming to see how much dry forest cover we are losing to fire under current management strategies.

What about other forests? How can one plan account for both dry and moist forests?

GC: It’s going to require a bit of creativity, combined with place-based, local approaches. The past three and a half decades have been relatively quiet in terms of fire activity in moist forests west of the Cascade Mountains. However, over the past 10 years, we observed an increase in area burned and area burned at high severity, indicating more loss of forest cover. This trend reflects some of these big fire years that have occurred in the last decade.

It can be harder to predict future wildfire activity in moist forests. When fires do occur, our study documented several occasions where high severity fires affected entire forest reserves. This creates gaps in this network of old forest habitat the plan was designed to create. If recent wildfires have compromised that original goal, how might future management strategies need to adapt? This could look like adjusting the boundaries of existing forest reserves, implementing protections for forests outside of reserves or building flexibility into pre-and post-fire management strategies to protect forests.

How can we keep the plan current when conditions are changing so quickly?

GC: When you manage land with a focus on a single issue, or a limited set of issues, you’re going to run into problems. The plan accounted for the effects of wildfire as it was in 1994, but did not anticipate how wildfire would shift with climate change. We don’t necessarily need to know exactly what the landscape will look like in the future, but we need policies and management strategies that will allow us to adapt to changing and novel conditions.

We have pretty strong evidence that the next century will be warmer and bring more fire. Can we create a plan that incorporates adaptive management to anticipate some of these changes instead of just responding to them as they occur.

Co-authors include , a UW research scientist and , a UW research associate professor, both of environmental and forest sciences; Harold Zald of the USDA Forest Service, and of the Washington Conservation Science Institute.

This research was partially funded by the USDA Forest Service.

For more information, contact Cova at cova@uw.edu.

Bee experts wouldn’t have previously expected to find the likes of Osmia cyaneonitens, Dufourea dilatipes and Stelis heronae in Washington. But this year, researchers added eight new bee species to a list of the state’s native pollinators.Ěý

While collecting pollinators in Chelan County to study how climate and wildfires affect native bee populations, , a ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝ research scientist of biology, discovered never recorded in Washington and 100 species that had not previously been documented in Chelan County. Expert taxonomists from Utah to British Columbia helped her identify the bees, which were photographed in high resolution for her research.Ěý

 â€ŔáłŮ’s a really exciting moment. Sitting with an expert taxonomist to determine the identity of an undocumented bee filled me with awe,” said Maust, who completed this research as a UW doctoral student of of environmental and forest sciences. “They cited subtle characteristics that I would not have even known to examine. The findings also have important implications for biodiversity. It’s difficult to conserve a species when we don’t know its name or native range.”

Taxonomists refer to detailed sets of characteristics to differentiate bees by family, genera and species. The morphological qualities of bees are incredibly diverse, and individual species can vary in small but significant ways.  Bees can be distinguished from each other by the shape and structure of wing veins, hair color on the ‘terga’ — plates forming the bee’s abdomen — and the location of ‘scopa,’ or pollen carrying hairs.

If you are interested in bees, Maust said, the trains volunteers to find, collect and identify native bees. Individuals can also share bee photos and observations on sites like where the data is made available to researchers.Ěý

Depicted below are a few of the new-to-Washington bees Maust observed and the characteristics scientists focused on for classification. Click the image to see the full resolution photo.

The scopa on the abdomen of this female bee and its heavily pitted ‘terga’ with inflated edges helped Maust to identify it as Dianthidium singulare.

This fierce-looking female Osmia cyaneonitens has huge mandibles (teeth) and flashy blue coloring. Osmia, in the mason bee family, use their large mandibles to move mud or cut leaves or petals to build nests. Their bodies are often metallic blue and green.

This Dufourea dilatipes Maust collected belongs to a rare group of the Halictidae family, commonly called ‘sweat bees’ because they are attracted to the salt and moisture in the sweat of mammals. All members of this family have a strongly arched basal vein on the forewing. Dufourea dilatipes exclusively forages on Calochortus flowers for pollen and nectar. 

Black and brown coloration on the head, abdomen and thorax is one trait of Melissodes nigracauda. This one was caught in a soap/water trap, which Maust said can result in a spiky hairdo sometimes smoothed by “relaxing” the bee and giving it  a blow dry before pinning.Ěý

Stelis heronae, at 4 to 5 millimeters long, is so small it was hard for Maust to pin. It wasn’t described by any taxonomists until 2024, which made it tricky to identify. Stelis heronae is distinguished from other species by the maculations, or colored markings, on its terga. It is a cuckoo, or parasitic, bee that lays its eggs in the nests of other bees. Maust pointed out that female Stelis lack scopal hairs under their abdomens because, like other parasitic bees, they do not gather pollen but instead rely on the pollen stores of their hosts.

For more information, contact Maust at amaust@uw.edu.Ěý

Think of your last memorable moment in nature. Did you spot a bird you’ve never seen before? Dip your toes in a river? Maybe climb a tree?

New research from the ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝, recently published in the , examined whether children’s interactions with nature that are embodied, rather than just visual, are associated with being in the moment and feeling connected to something beyond the self.

Researchers coded responses from 127 Girl Scouts, ages 8-11, about a recent meaningful nature experience. A questionnaire then assessed the degree to which participants experienced presence in nature, the study’s term for being in the moment. Exploratory analyses found that participants who had embodied interactions reported a greater sense of presence in nature than those who reported only visual interactions.Ěý

, co-author of the study and doctoral student of psychology at the UW, talked with UW News about the study.

Can you explain the difference between embodied and visual interactions with nature?

Carly Gray: We think of embodied nature interactions as engaging senses other than just vision. One’s whole body is often involved. Whether you’re moving or being still, you’re experiencing nature through more than just your eyes. A visual nature interaction is one that just uses the sense of vision — maybe watching a bird through a window or looking at the textures in a leaf.

To identify visual and embodied interactions in the study, we applied what we call an interaction pattern approach, which is a way of characterizing the how humans interact with nature. A relatively abstract interaction pattern could be something like “listening to animals.” That interaction pattern could encompass more specific interactions ranging from “hearing your neighbor’s dog bark” to “hearing birdsong in a forest.”

That leads us to the idea of presence. How do you use that term in the context of this study, and how does it tie in with the other ideas you were discussing?Ěý

CG: We think of presence as a meaningful experience with optimal awareness and some sense of connection beyond the self — whether that’s the natural environment that one is in, some higher power, other people you’re with, or something else. It’s frankly difficult to put into words, which I think speaks to some of the power of what these experiences can feel like. In this study, we were looking specifically at presence in nature.

How did you then quantify this information?

CG: We developed questions based on existing measures and created some questions of our own. We used these questions to ask the Girl Scouts about their experience of presence in nature during the experiences they had just written about.

We asked the Girl Scouts to write about a meaningful nature experience and tell us where they were, what they were doing and why the experience was meaningful. We combed through these written narratives to identify interaction patterns and developed a coding manual to describe how to do this in a standardized way. After reading through half of these nature experiences, we looked at the interaction patterns and noticed that a lot of them were relying on vision. Primarily, we noticed a lot of verbs like seeing, watching, looking, staring. For example, a visual nature interaction would be “looking at a tall tree.”

We wanted to know what might be different between the Girl Scouts who reported solely visual experiences versus more embodied nature experiences. The Girl Scouts who engaged in nature using more action-oriented verbs — talking, listening, smelling, feeling — engaged in embodied nature interactions. For example, “building a snowman” and “hiking on a trail” came up in a few participants’ narratives. We considered these embodied nature interactions. Some of my other favorite examples were “talking to chickens,” “jumping in puddles,” and “throwing snowballs.”

Based on their interaction patterns, some Girl Scouts were categorized as having only had visual experiences. If a Girl Scout wrote about at least one interaction that used a non-visual verb, they were categorized as having had an embodied experience. We compared these two groups, embodied and only visual, based on their numeric scores on our measure of presence in nature and found that the Girl Scouts who reported embodied nature interactions also reported a stronger sense of presence in nature.

What are some potential practical implications of this research?

CG: I think this is a promising first step into understanding what it might mean to have a meaningful experience in nature, especially among young children. In this paper, we wrote specifically about applications to environmental education. For example, children can be encouraged to smell nature by finding nature items that smell good to them, like pinecones or flowers, and bringing those back to the classroom for an age-appropriate ecology lesson. A writing lesson could begin with students listening to nature with their eyes closed and then writing a creative short story about what they imagined they heard. We expect these embodied educational activities might foster a greater connection to nature and a sense of meaning through experiences of presence in nature.

We conducted this study with 8-to-11-year-old Girl Scouts, but I think it could have implications for educating young people of all ages. In my teaching, I’m a big fan of getting whole bodies involved in the learning process. So, I think this idea of embodied versus visual interactions with nature could be applied all the way from preschoolers to through college students.

Embodied nature interactions don’t need to be limited to educational settings, either. This idea of embodied versus visual nature interactions can be a helpful framework for parents and families to think about meaningful ways to spend time interacting with nature with their children. This Earth Day, consider how you can go beyond looking at spring flowers to engage with nature in more fully embodied ways.

Other co-authors were , UW professor of psychology and of environmental and forest sciences; , UW professor of environmental and forest sciences; , associate professor of pediatrics in the UW School of Medicine; , UW associate professor of environmental and forest sciences; , lead public health research scientist at ICF, who earned her doctorate in environmental and forest sciences at the UW; and of the Girl Scouts of Western Washington.

The study was funded by the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

For more information, contact Carly Gray at cgray19@uw.edu.

Five ĚěĂŔÓ°ĘÓ´ŤĂ˝ researchers have been named AAAS Fellows, according to a . They are among 471 newly elected fellows from around the world, who are recognized for their “scientifically and socially distinguished achievements” in science and engineering. A tradition dating back to 1874, election as an AAAS Fellow is a lifetime honor. All fellows are expected to meet the commonly held standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity.

This year’s UW AAAS fellows are:

, professor of genome sciences in UW Medicine, was recognized for her distinguished contributions to the field of the evolution of tissue development by signaling pathways and to the training of junior scientists. She studies developmental biology, and her work focuses on the patterns and shapes that appear as an organism forms into a living creature composed of a variety of cell types and organs. Her laboratory models are fruit flies, and her investigations begin in the egg chamber and the laid egg. Among her research interests are cell signals and cell migration critical to development, and the evolution of these processes. In addition, new genomic technologies are enabling her research team to manipulate the timing and location of gene activity within developing fly cells. Berg and her team also have designed a system to obtain live imaging of some of the developmental events that take place. Among Berg’s overarching goals is to better understand the genetic and molecular dysfunctions that lead to prenatal malformations and other disorders. The hope, Berg says, is that basic research, over the long term, might lead to clinical diagnostics for risk factors and to evaluation of potential treatments. Berg’s course topics are wide-ranging, and include introductory biology, biomedical ethics and forensic genetics at crime scenes.

, the David R. M. Scott Endowed Professor in Forest Resources and professor of plant microbiology in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, was recognized for distinguished contributions to unraveling mechanisms by which microbes colonize plants, increase plant growth and yields in nutrient-limited conditions, increase water use efficiency and drought tolerance, and improve plant health. Her research is on the importance of the plant microbiome as a resource for nature-based solutions to environmental challenges including pollution, climate change and colonizing the moon. A UW faculty member since 2003, she has received several awards and honors including the Lockwood Endowed Professorship (2013-2021), Director’s Faculty Award for “exemplary contributions to student mentoring” and the Faculty Member of the Year award (2014). She serves on the executive teams of the International Poplar Commission (Co-Vice Chair, Environmental and Ecosystem Services) and the International Symbiosis Society (VP, Education). She holds an adjunct faculty appointment in the Department of Microbiology.

, professor of microbiology in UW Medicine, was recognized for his distinguished contributions to the field of microbial interactions, particularly with regard to unraveling mechanisms responsible for the formation of surface-attached communities called biofilms. Parsek explores the social biology of bacterial communities. One of his areas of investigation is quorum-sensing — how bacteria use signaling molecules to sense the presence of others of the same species. This communication system allows them to coordinate their behavior as a group. Another of his related fields of interest is biofilms. These are bacteria that produce an extracellular matrix to bind themselves together. The matrix protects the community and plays a role, for example, in resistance to antimicrobials and antibiotics and in the persistence of chronic infection. Parsek’s lab studies the composition of this matrix and how it is assembled. They are especially interested in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which lives in several different environmental niches, but is notorious for infecting the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients and for colonizing burn wounds and growing on implanted biomaterials. In recent work his lab looked at how these bacteria can sense surfaces. A UW faculty member since 2011, Parsek is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology and was named a Kavli fellow by the National Academy of Sciences.

, the Lloyd and Kay Chapman Endowed Chair for Oral Health in the UW School of Dentistry, was recognized for translating knowledge from the behavioral and social sciences to address the causes of children’s oral health inequities. In recent years Chi has studied why some parents reject fluoride for their children and worked with Yup’ik communities to improve the oral health of Alaska Native children. In 2018 he was named Pediatric Dentist of the Year by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, and in 2025 he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Joe Biden. A member of the UW faculty since 2010, Chi is also the associate dean for research in the School of Dentistry and a professor of health systems and population health in the UW School of Public Health. He is editor-in-chief the International Journal of Paediatric Dentistry and treats patients at the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in Seattle.

, the Larry R. Dalton Endowed Chair in Chemistry and associate dean for research in the College of Arts & Sciences, is honored for his contributions to the development and application of time-dependent quantum theory and relativistic electronic structure theory, and for advancing educational pathways and diversity in STEM. Li conducts research at the intersection of physics, chemistry, materials science, mathematics and scientific computing, and he has developed widely used computational software. A UW faculty member since 2005, Li’s honors include a Sloan Research Fellowship, the NSF CAREER Award, the American Chemical Society Jack Simons Award in Theoretical Physical Chemistry and the UW Distinguished Teaching Award. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), a Lab Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and an elected member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences.