It was ten years ago this summer that the Puget Sound Partnership first established what it called Puget Sound’s ‘Vital Signs,’ 25 indicators of Puget Sound health ranging from levels of toxic chemicals in fish to the abundance of Chinook salmon and southern resident orcas. Those indicators have now been revised and expanded, setting off […]
April 30, 2020
Kolodziej wins UWT’s 2020 Distinguished Research Award
Puget Sound Institute collaborator Ed Kolodziej is the recipient of this year’s University of Washington Tacoma Distinguished Research Award for his work to identify toxic contaminants in the Puget Sound watershed. The annual award “recognizes a faculty member who has achieved a record of notable scholarship or creative activity, who has generated new knowledge or […]
April 28, 2020
Voices Unbound podcast series
What do people really mean when they talk about the environment? A new podcast from the University of Washington Tacoma asks regular citizens a simple, but charged question: “What are the environmental challenges that are most important to you?” The answers to that question drive this engaging podcast in sometimes unexpected directions, from the environmental […]
April 17, 2020
Research in the time of the coronavirus
As the state’s stay-at-home order drags on, much of the work to recover Puget Sound has shifted online. Funding schedules for the state and federal Strategic Initiatives remain on track and events like the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference are going virtual next week with presentations by video conference. But researchers face an entirely different situation […]
April 14, 2020
The coronavirus has been found in Tacoma sewage. It could help scientists track the pandemic
Researchers at a non-profit biotech startup in Tacoma have found traces of the novel coronavirus in the city’s sewage, opening up new possibilities for tracking and monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic. The testing is being led by Center for Urban Waters collaborator David Hirschberg who directs the RAIN biotech incubator in Tacoma, along with RAIN’s principal […]
April 7, 2020
‘Water 100 Project’ seeks to enlist region’s tech industry
Few cities in the world can rival Seattle’s combination of money and brain power. It’s a town where the world’s two richest men live within walking distance. Amazon and Microsoft and hundreds of other leading tech companies call this region home, driving the economy and influencing the way we live. Could this same corporate culture […]
March 23, 2020
Social scientists analyze public reactions to orca crisis
Social scientists at Oregon State University have been analyzing a trove of more than 17,000 public comments sent to the Washington state governor’s southern resident orca recovery task force. The researchers have added the comments to a keyword database to look at public emotions and perceptions around the issue of orca declines. The orca task […]
March 5, 2020
Warming ocean conditions fuel viruses among species in the Salish Sea
As officials struggle to track and contain the outbreak of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19, ecologists say widespread impacts from viruses and other pathogens are also a growing threat to the species of the Salish Sea ecosystem. “We’re all especially impressed with how rapidly [COVID-19] emerged, the pace of its spread and how massively […]
January 7, 2020
PSI launches “Our Water Ways” blog
We are pleased to announce that we are launching a new blog from veteran environmental journalist Christopher Dunagan. Chris has been a senior writer at the Puget Sound Institute since 2015 and has written dozens of in-depth stories for our science magazine Salish Sea Currents. That signature reporting will continue, but now Chris will be […]
December 18, 2019
Remembering Bill Ruckelshaus
It was a turning point in the history of environmental policy. In 1972, the first head of the EPA, William Ruckelshaus, faced “a preponderance of the evidence” showing the effects of the pesticide DDT on birds and other wildlife. By then, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring had become a classic, clearly laying out the adverse […]