Humans look to nature for sustenance and nourishment — food, water, energy, transportation, culture, tradition, adventure and so on. With the population of the United States now exceeding 340 million, humans are demanding more of the natural world than ever before. To understand the consequences, researchers set an ambitious goal: a wellness check on nature.

Nature is a sweeping category that includes everything from massive mountains to tiny urban gardens. Its health can’t be summarized in just a few words. In fact, it took researchers 868 pages, split into 13 chapters, to report the condition of lands, waters, wildlife, and biodiversity and describe links to human health and safety, culture, economy, and national security.

The new report, , is available for public comment and scientific review until May 30.

“The Nature Record tells an honest story,”  said , director of The Nature Record and interim executive director of the UW’s EarthLab. “It does not shy away from the scale of change we are seeing in nature — but it also shows that our choices matter, and that there are real, tangible ways to restore and sustain the systems we depend on.”

The preliminary findings are a mixed bag. On one hand, the report details a long history of resource extraction and habitat loss that will be difficult to reverse. At the same time, it shows how restoration and Indigenous stewardship approaches can help turn things around.

For example, the report states that approximately 50% of U.S. land is used for agriculture. This means farmers and ranchers must be involved in efforts to protect ecosystems and preserve biodiversity, Levin said.

The U.S. has millions of miles of rivers, which are fragmented by tens of thousands of large dams and as many as 2 million small dams and culverts.

Damming rivers disrupts fish migration and degrades ecosystem health. Ecological concerns have spurred hundreds of dam removals in the past decade, after which rivers quickly rebounded. In some places, fish have returned to spawning grounds that were inaccessible for generations.

“The assessment documents many examples where ecosystems and communities are recovering together,” Levin said. “These success stories show that change is possible when science, policy and communities align.”

The project began in 2022 following an executive order calling for an assessment of nature. Levin, selected to lead the effort, assembled a national team of experts to work on what was then called the National Nature Assessment.

Then, in January 2025, just weeks before the team was due to deliver a first draft, the effort came to a screeching halt when the federal government canceled the effort.

Undeterred, the team, including more than 170 scientists and experts, decided to continue working independently. They published a draft of The Nature Record in March.

“We built this to be useful,” Levin said. “And the only way it becomes truly useful is if people engage with it — question it, add to it, and help shape what comes next.”

He encourages people of all backgrounds to engage with the report and share feedback on the clarity, relevance and thoroughness, including representation of diverse perspectives.

In addition to documenting how humans are changing nature, the record provides important insights into how nature influences quality of life. Access to nature varies widely across the U.S. — the benefits of nature are not equally shared, nor is the burden of going without. Social and historical factors often determine whether communities enjoy greenspaces and clean drinking water, among other essentials.

“This assessment reflects not just the state of nature, but the relationships people have with it,” said deputy director , principal research scientist at the UW’s EarthLab. “We want people to see themselves in this work — whether through their communities, their values, or the places they care about — and to help shape how it evolves.”

For more information, contact Levin at pslevin@uw.edu.

The Biden-Harris Administration on April 3 the appointment of , professor of practice in environmental and forest sciences at the 91̽�� and lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy in Washington state, as director for the first-ever U.S. .

The NNA will take an interdisciplinary approach to better understand the role of nature in the lives of people across the country, integrating science with traditional ways of knowing and the needs of communities. The assessment intends to take stock of what nature provides people through its inherent value, human well-being, economic value and more, and look ahead to understand how these benefits might change under future climate conditions. The assessment is expected to be released in 2026.

“Successful conservation, especially in the face of an uncertain climate, is built on the knowledge and collaboration of tribes, stakeholders, scientists, natural resource managers and local leaders. We all have a stake in — and can contribute to — a sustainable future,” Levin said. “This collaboration will be key to the success of the National Nature Assessment, enabling us to develop a holistic understanding of nature in the United States.”

With decades of experience bridging scientific knowledge and on-the-ground action through an interdisciplinary lens, Levin will guide the initiative as it creates a holistic picture of America’s lands, waters, wildlife and ecosystems — and the benefits they provide to both people and nature.

During this appointment, he will continue to advise 91̽��graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and step away from his position at TNC, returning to the 91̽��when his appointment is finished. Mike Stevens, state director for TNC Washington, recognized the contributions Levin has made over the past six years through his dual appointment at TNC and the UW.

“Through his commitment to collaborative research and support of students, Phil has transformed how TNC conducts science. He’s helped shape the next generation of scientists, brought together experts across disciplines, and worked to better integrate equity and social sciences into our conservation efforts. We’re proud to see him recognized at the national level and are confident that his enthusiasm for conservation benefiting people and nature will be echoed in the NNA, as it has through his work here in Washington.”

Much of Levin’s recent work addresses environmental justice issues, documenting and identifying ways to overcome the disproportionate impacts of floods, fires and heat waves on different communities, including through direct community engagement. He previously served as senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and as the scientific lead of NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment efforts along the U.S. West Coast.

For more information, contact Levin at pslevin@uw.edu. See a from TNC Washington.

Fisheries managers typically strive to strike a delicate balance between two, often competing, types of needs: the needs for fishermen’s profits and the needs for the planet. But in 1994, entrepreneur John Elkington posited that true sustainability requires consideration of a third “P” — the needs of the people. In making this argument, he coined the term “.”

In a , an interdisciplinary group of researchers used Pacific herring in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, as a case study for modeling the implicit tradeoffs within the triple bottom line that result from various fisheries management decisions. They found that considering spatial dynamics is a key component of this modeling process — for example, considering the geographic areas of the fish populations, the areas that are important to the various communities of people, and the areas that are impacted by management decisions.

Published Sept. 30 in the journal Fish and Fisheries, the study is one of the outcomes of the , a collaboration between the 91̽�� and The Nature Conservancy that aims to use models to provide insights on how to best address complex ocean issues.

Pacific herring provided a relevant and timely prototype for modeling the economic, ecological and socio-cultural tradeoffs within a fishery. Herring is in high commercial demand, is a vital part of the food web, and has been central to the social, cultural and economic life of Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest for millennia. Herring fisheries have also borne out steep management consequences: the collective North American herring fishery collapsed in 1993, and has required careful management to recover.

“There are so many people who rely on fishing as part of their way of life,” said , assistant professor of biological science at Florida State University who led the modeling component of the study. “Everyone wants their piece of the pie. But we need a better way of making decisions regarding fisheries.”

While most herring fisheries remain closed or severely limited, some British Columbia stocks have rebuilt to a level at which managers are considering reopening the fishery. However, several critical factors that would determine the success of reopening these fisheries are still missing, the researchers said, including a social-ecological framework to address issues of equity in decision making by integrating traditional knowledge and ecosystem services into management. This study demonstrates a new and concrete way to fill this void.

These social and cultural considerations are notoriously difficult to quantify in such a way that they can be measured against the economic and ecological ones.

“We started from qualitative ethnographic information, including local and traditional knowledge, to identify indicators linked to various benefits and values of herring,” explained co-author , a social scientist at Washington Sea Grant based at the 91̽��. “We then surveyed different user groups to generate quantitative scores for select indicators to determine outcomes for various fishing sectors, abundances of herring and places of harvest.”

The social benefits of the herring fishery included in the study were the ability for the commercial fishing fleet to practice harvest, the ability for Indigenous Haida to practice harvest, and community and social relationships within the Indigenous Haida community.

The researchers incorporated these social-ecological indicators along with economic and ecological metrics into a model to analyze their relative tradeoffs under different management scenarios. These management scenarios included four target harvest rates of the total herring population, ranging from 10% to 37.5%; three upper-limit harvest thresholds, ranging from 25% to 70%; and two spatial closures, in which a traditional roe, or egg, harvest area is closed to commercial fishing.

“As expected, many management options result in sharp tradeoffs in the triple bottom line,” said co-author , managing director of the Ocean Modeling Forum and lead ecosystem ecologist with the Puget Sound Institute at 91̽��Tacoma. “For example, higher commercial catches reduce ecological and social benefits — this could have been predicted. What’s interesting is where we found more balance among the multiple benefits.”

Spatial closures often resulted in win-win-wins: they allow for commercial harvest at open locations while also protecting cultural benefits and reducing the risk of collapse in protected areas. That said, the location of these closures must be carefully considered, accounting for both ecological productivity and the implications to different user groups. For example, while commercial fishermen are relatively mobile, Indigenous harvesters are often constrained to fishing in traditional areas. This shows the need for fishery management models that allow for evaluation at a spatial scale that is culturally relevant.

No one management strategy within the study’s model optimized the benefits to all of the people, planet and profit factors. However, having a framework to understand the relative tradeoffs to each of these factors is the first step toward responsibly balancing them, the researchers said. The model developed in this case study could be used not only to evaluate management strategies for Pacific herring fisheries as managers consider reopening them, but also for other fisheries that face similar dilemmas across the globe.

“This work has the potential to be game changing,” said co-author , 91̽��professor of practice and lead scientist at the Nature Conservancy. “For years researchers have talked about the triple bottom line but lacked the ability to really assess it. By directly linking quantitative fisheries models for social and cultural outcomes, we now have the ability to truly evaluate the full impacts of alternative management strategies.”

Similar to how children learn, often unconsciously, to mimic the adults around them, a small, silvery ocean fish employs this tactic when teaching the next generation to find a suitable place to reproduce.

Scientists have named the strategy “go with the older fish,” and it describes a key part of the Pacific herring lifecycle that has been recognized for years by indigenous peoples, but hasn’t factored into management of the species.

As juveniles, herring join large schools offshore to mingle, eat and grow until it’s time to reproduce. Then, younger, smaller herring follow the older, more experienced fish back to specific beaches to spawn. It appears none of the fish are aware of this learning process; rather, the memory of where to go is imprinted unconsciously into their brains.

Herring migration isn’t random, and this could also explain why herring have been missing for years from some beaches, even in the few cases where the overall population numbers are adequate. If older fish that spawned at a specific beach are wiped out, there are no fish to lead the next generation to use that particular site.

This realization could entirely change how these fish are managed, and aid in restoring some of the spawning populations now absent from many of the beaches along the west coast of British Columbia and Alaska.

“The herring are very important to our people,” said Harvey Kitka, an elder and former tribal council member with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. “Spawning was a huge event each spring, and probably for thousands of years herring spawned in the same area in Sitka Sound.”

This shift in thinking happened because a diverse group of people, including tribal leaders such as Kitka, ecologists, biologists, anthropologists, fishery managers and commercial fishers, met to talk about how to save Pacific herring, a fishery that is vital to native communities and the commercial fishing industry. Facilitated by the — a collaborative group led by the 91̽�� — they tackled difficult management questions, and ultimately produced a number of released this winter that will help guide the recovery and management of herring going forward.

“During our conversations, it became very clear that herring and humans are really tightly coupled, and that’s true whether you’re a commercial fisherman, a vessel owner or a traditional harvester,” said Tessa Francis, managing director of the Ocean Modeling Forum and lead ecosystem ecologist with the at 91̽��Tacoma. “This was an opportunity for us to think about different forms of knowledge and alternative models in a situation related to fishery management.”

The Ocean Modeling Forum in June 2015 with a summit in British Columbia, with the goal of hearing from a number of stakeholders, tribes and First Nations about the role herring plays socially and ecologically, and to begin to develop a for how different approaches and knowledge — including traditional ecological knowledge — can be used in fisheries management practices.

The meeting came at a time when the Pacific herring fishery was fraught with disagreements about fishing practices, including along the archipelago of Haida Gwaii off British Columbia’s west coast. There, First Nations leaders have argued that the herring population, which holds deep cultural significance, hasn’t yet recovered to a healthy level capable of sustaining a fishery. This is true particularly at individual spawning beaches that are significant for First Nations communities, where some fish have never returned to their previous numbers.

Meanwhile, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has considered opening the fishery to commercial fishing in recent years. They find the overall population in some areas to be strong, but managers aren’t considering the finer-scale patterns of sub-populations that spawn at individual beaches.

Tribes and First Nations people harvest herring eggs on kelp or tree branches, traditionally at specific beaches using small boats, and make considerable efforts not to disturb the spawning fish. This approach is in stark contrast to commercial fishing vessels that target schools of fish and can move around to where they are any given year. As a result, the current management approaches are tailored to commercial fishing, as long as there are fish to catch.

Against this backdrop, the Ocean Modeling Forum wanted to offer a different approach: One that put local beaches back at the center of the conversation, and joins traditional knowledge with science.

“Our working group was born on the idea that where the fish are is just as important as how many fish there are. Herring used to be the life force of the indigenous villages in the spring,” said , co-director of the initiative who also holds a joint role as a 91̽��professor of practice and lead scientist with the Nature Conservancy of Washington. “For herring management to be successful, it must address problems at the scale that impacts the well-being of the people who depend on the fish.”

After the initial herring summit drew 150 people, a smaller group of about two dozen set to work on addressing the main priorities raised in the summit. The outcome of this working group is a set of released this winter that agencies can use to incorporate local-scale dynamics, traditional knowledge and human dimensions, such as the cultural significance of fishing, into Pacific herring management.

Notably, one of the main results was the “go with the older fish” interpretation of herring biology, explained in a recent , which will likely impact how these fish are managed. This idea has been used in European herring fisheries, but this is the first time it’s been applied in ways that could recover and sustainably manage herring in North America.

“I hope we can get managers to look at this and at least give it a try,” Kitka said. “It’s so important to us. From the time they’re an egg to when they disintegrate, herring are food for something.”

The origins of this paper are representative of the overall goal of the Ocean Modeling Forum: By bringing together experts from many backgrounds, the idea was hatched while Kitka, a long-time fisherman and tribal elder, traded stories one morning with Alec MacCall, a long-time scientist and fisheries researcher. They realized that patterns they had both seen over the years overlapped to illuminate key aspects of herring biology.

“Progress in science can be much less certain than is the popular understanding of how it works. When a new approach or theory seems to answer questions beyond those that were initially posed, it feels like we may be on the right track,” said MacCall of the Farallon Institute for Advanced Ecosystem Research in California. “The path to healthy herring stocks is neither easy nor clear, but we may be getting a better sense of its direction.”

The Ocean Modeling Forum has been asked to participate in a new herring rebuilding strategy process for Haida Gwaii, which just launched among Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Haida Nation and Parks Canada. At the group’s first meeting this winter, accounting for the differences between where traditional and commercial harvest practices occur and the “go with the older fish” idea were central to their conversation, which is a positive sign that the thinking around herring management already is changing, Francis said.

“It’s hard to underestimate the value of showing respect for traditional knowledge and incorporating it into management practices,” Francis said. “One major impact the Ocean Modeling Forum has is to influence the decision-making process by changing people’s minds and developing tools that can be directly used.”

The Ocean Modeling Forum’s is looking at ways to use scientific tools and modeling approaches to reduce the number of marine mammals accidentally caught during commercial fishing.

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For more information, contact Francis at tessa@uw.edu or 206-427-7124 and Levin at pslevin@uw.edu or 425-777-6656.

Environmental disasters in the U.S. often hit minority groups the hardest.

When Hurricane Katrina slammed New Orleans in 2005, the city’s black residents were disproportionately affected. Their neighborhoods were located in the low-lying, less-protected areas of the city, and many people lacked the resources to evacuate safely. Similar patterns have played out during hurricanes and tropical storms ever since.

Massive wildfires, which may be getting more intense due to climate change and a long history of fire-suppression policies, also have strikingly unequal effects on minority communities, a new study shows.

Researchers at the 91̽�� and The Nature Conservancy used census data to develop a “vulnerability index” to assess wildfire risk in communities across the U.S. Their , appearing Nov. 2 in the journal PLOS ONE, show that racial and ethnic minorities face greater vulnerability to wildfires compared with primarily white communities. In particular, Native Americans are six times more likely than other groups to live in areas most prone to wildfires.

“A general perception is that communities most affected by wildfires are affluent people living in rural and suburban communities near forested areas,” said lead author Ian Davies, a graduate student in the 91̽��School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. “But there are actually millions of people who live in areas that have a high wildfire potential and are very poor, or don’t have access to vehicles or other resources, which makes it difficult to adapt or recover from a wildfire disaster.”

This study is one of the first to integrate both the physical risk of wildfire with the social and economic resilience of communities to see which areas across the country are most vulnerable to large wildfires. The approach takes 13 socioeconomic measures from the U.S. census — including income, housing type, English fluency and health — for more than 71,000 census tracts across the country and overlays them with wildfire potential based on weather, historical fire activity and burnable fuels on the landscape.

The map on the right shows wildfire potential across the entire country, as determined by the U.S. Forest Service. Red areas are most likely to burn. The map on the left adds the human dimension, incorporating socioeconomic factors in determining how likely an area is to adapt and recover from a wildfire. Red areas highlight places where human communities are most vulnerable. ()

There aren’t many studies looking at the societal impacts of massive wildfires, so the researchers relied on existing literature that examined other environmental disasters, mainly hurricanes, to identify socioeconomic factors that contributed to whether a person recovered from a disaster. Some of these factors include whether a person is above or below the poverty line, has a disability, is elderly, has a vehicle, and owns or rents their home.

All of these factors and additional data went into creating a vulnerability index that the research team used in combination with U.S. Forest Service assessments of wildfire potential to determine the vulnerability of 71,901 census tracts across the country.

“The argument that we and other scientists have made is natural disasters aren’t completely natural — they are products of both an environmental impact and the social, political and economic context in which the impact occurs,” Davies said.

Overall, more than 29 million Americans — many of whom are white and economically secure — live with significant potential for extreme wildfires. However, within that segment, about 12 million people are considered “socially vulnerable” to wildfires based on the socioeconomic factors assessed in this study — and for whom a wildfire could be devastating.

Additionally, they found that wildfire vulnerability is spread unequally across race and ethnicity. Communities that are mostly black, Hispanic or Native American experience 50 percent greater vulnerability to wildfires compared with other communities.

In the case of Native Americans, historical forced relocation onto reservations — mostly rural, remote areas that are more prone to wildfires — combined with greater levels of vulnerability due to socioeconomic barriers make it especially hard for these communities to recover after a large wildfire.

“Our findings help dispel some myths surrounding wildfires — in particular, that avoiding disaster is simply a matter of eliminating fuels and reducing fire hazards, or that wildfire risk is constrained to rural, white communities,” said senior author , a 91̽��professor in environmental and forest sciences and lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy in Washington. “We can see that the impacts of recent fires were exacerbated for low-income residents facing a shortage of affordable housing, for example, and for Hispanic residents for whom English is not their first language.”

As the researchers dug into their results, they corroborated their findings with news reports from specific wildfire events. For example, they found that in the 2017 wildfire season, emergency agencies in cities throughout California struggled to release timely and correct bilingual information. During the 2014 wildfires in eastern and central Washington, language barriers also prevented Hispanic farm workers from receiving evacuation alerts from authorities, and the only Spanish-language radio station in the area reportedly never received the emergency notification.

The researchers hope these broad, nationwide results will spawn more detailed studies focused on individual communities and their wildfire risk. But equally important, they say, is for organizations and municipalities to take these socioeconomic factors into account when helping their communities prepare for wildfires. Offering cost-share programs for residents to prepare their homes for wildfires, distributing evacuation notices in multiple languages and creating jobs focused on thinning local forests or clearing out flammable brush are all ways in which communities can reduce their vulnerability to wildfires, they said.

“I think the question is, how do we take these sorts of activities that are ultimately about building community and make it so they are attractive and useful for people who are busy and would much rather use what spare time they have to spend with their families?” Levin said. “I think ultimately it’s about connections, building relationships and breaking down cultural barriers that will bring us to a better outcome.”

Other co-authors are Ryan Haugo and James Robertson of The Nature Conservancy.

This study was funded by The Nature Conservancy.

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For more information, contact Davies at ipdavies@uw.edu and Levin at pslevin@uw.edu.

That finding is surprising to scientists who study eelgrass, which sprouts in the brackish waters close to shore and provides shelter and breeding habitat for fish and invertebrates. Along many beaches in Puget Sound, eelgrass has disappeared or drastically declined due to factors such as warmer, cloudy water, shoreline armoring and structures like piers and docks that block sunlight.

The , published online in November in the Journal of Ecology, draw on a unique 41-year dataset to show that across the Puget Sound basin, the eelgrass population is doing well. That means eelgrass die-offs at individual beaches are not pervasive enough to affect the overall population across the region.

“Our human population has exploded, we have all kinds of increasing impacts on Puget Sound, and yet eelgrass is resilient,” said co-author , a 91̽�� professor of practice and lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy. “It gives us hope about the ability to restore eelgrass. It tells us that what we do at the neighborhood scale matters, and we can have a positive impact.”

The study’s authors were able to analyze trends in eelgrass population over 41 years — the longest period ever recorded for this species in Puget Sound — by making use of shelved data that recorded more than 160,000 eelgrass observations dating back to the early 1970s.

The data were collected for another purpose altogether: monitoring herring populations in Puget Sound. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has surveyed Pacific herring spawning sites across the Sound since the 1970s, returning each year to rake the seafloor, then record all of the plant and animal species present. Since herring lay their eggs on eelgrass, these plants were also recorded in surveys along with the number of eggs and other species present.

“One of the interesting things with this study is we have this dataset collected for something totally different being used in a new way,” said lead author , a research scientist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center. “The value of the data is not in the most recent five or 10 years — it’s being able to go back to 1975 and make a comment about eelgrass status at that time.”

Student interns with the at 91̽��Tacoma manually digitized notebooks full of data, which then made the information accessible for complex modeling. The end result was a 41-year dataset of eelgrass observations covering more than 300 miles (500 km) of Puget Sound coastline. That’s about 15 percent of the region’s total shoreline.

The analysis also confirmed what researchers, local residents and fishermen have observed for years — eelgrass declines happen in localized areas, and one beach might be depleted while another shoreline close by is teeming with healthy eelgrass. Herring populations also show localized trends.

“I think this study is one more piece of evidence that when we are looking at Puget Sound recovery, we have to use multiple lenses,” said co-author , a 91̽��ecologist at the Puget Sound Institute. “We have to look at what’s happening broadly, and we also have to look at what is happening on individual pieces of the shoreline. What an individual person or jurisdiction does really matters for what is living near that shoreline.”

The most obvious impacts on eelgrass are human disturbances such as placing moorings in the water, running a motorboat in shallow water or pulling up eelgrass. But other causes of eelgrass decline in Puget Sound are unknown. Scientists suspect many factors are at play, and those mechanisms are further complicated as the climate and ocean continue to warm.

“We are facing changing conditions, and eelgrass is found in a very sensitive fringe of Puget Sound that is going to change dramatically,” Francis said.

This analysis could be useful to pair with local knowledge about what may have caused eelgrass to decline at a particular beach, the researchers said.

Other co-authors are Blake Feist of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center; Gregory Williams of Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission; and Adam Lindquist of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

This research was funded by the Puget Sound Institute and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

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For more information, contact Shelton at ole.shelton@noaa.gov or 206-860-3209; Francis at tessa@uw.edu or 253-254-7030 ext. 8013; and Levin at pslevin@uw.edu.

, a 91̽��professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, and , a 91̽��professor of practice and lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy, head a convened by the to guide managers on implementing ecosystem-based fisheries management. After two years of regional workshops, meetings and literature reviews, the group just released its recommendations .

Essington and Levin will take part in related briefings Nov. 16 on Capitol Hill and to the White House’s Council for Environmental Quality.

“This report is a blueprint for a ‘next generation’ of fisheries ecosystem plans,” said Essington, who chairs the group. “The taskforce envisioned a more action-oriented version of an existing mechanism in the U.S. system.”

U.S. fisheries management is organized around fishery management plans, traditionally focused on a single species or a group of related species. The ecosystem approach builds on single-species management by accounting for the relationships among all players — marine organisms, humans and the environment — in a holistic, integrated way.

Some regional fishery councils have adopted these plans, but they differ substantially, and there is no common standard for what they should contain. The report includes a flexible, five-step process to help councils and other management bodies formulate strong ecosystem-based plans.

The 12 additional taskforce members are social and natural scientists from universities across the country. The Lenfest Ocean Program began in 2004 and is managed by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

, a former economist at NOAA’s and a 91̽�� economics graduate who died in 2014, exemplified the traits of a skilled interdisciplinarian. As a tribute to his life and career, Plummer’s former colleagues and collaborators — including several 91̽��researchers and many alums — have contributed articles published this week in a of the environmental science journal Coastal Management.

“Mark Plummer challenged conventional wisdom and sought practical solutions appropriate to the realities of our ever-changing world and diverse stakeholder values,” said , a professor of practice at the 91̽��and lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy who worked for years with Plummer at the fisheries agency. “He is an example of an interdisciplinary person — a translator and the glue who can connect people from different disciplines.”

Levin served as co-editor and contributed to several articles in the special edition, including two on the , particularly in academics where subject-matter silos still exist. Levin argues that “while our disciplinary homes may provide us with a sense of place, the fences that separate us are an artifact of the past that must be breached.”

The special issue’s other co-editor is , Plummer’s former colleague at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

All of the articles in the special edition spawned from Plummer’s existing projects or were inspired by his research and influence.

“The theme issue is a reflection of Mark Plummer’s remarkable career,” said , editor-in-chief of Coastal Management and a 91̽��professor of marine and environmental affairs.

“He worked to improve our understanding of marine and coastal policies, with a particular eye for how the integration of social sciences could improve science and policy. The papers, written by individuals inspired by Mark and his life’s work, cover topics and methods that represent Mark’s vision.”

Plummer’s expertise was on the integration of economics and other social sciences into natural resource management, but he is also recognized for his interdisciplinary research, including in the areas of fisheries management, conservation, ecosystem services and social-ecological systems.

“Mark Plummer was really a vanguard for social sciences in Puget Sound. He pushed for space in thinking about socioeconomics as an important contribution for restoration,” said , an environmental anthropologist at the UW-based and a contributor to the journal. “This special edition is a really instrumental focus on what integrated social-ecological science can look like.”

Poe is the lead author on an that examines connections between sense of place and human well-being in the context of shellfish harvesting in Puget Sound. Through analysis and interviews of tribal and nontribal shellfish harvesters, the researchers found that for Washingtonians who started digging for clams and oysters as children, the activity became a significant part of their identity as adults.

Similarly, other types of shoreline-based activities like beach-walking and kayaking helped forge strong place attachments among residents, the researchers found. People who were tied to a place were also more likely to support restoration and stewardship activities.

These findings helped inform the Puget Sound Partnership’s recently updated , or targets, for human well-being. Plummer, who served on the agency’s social science advisory committee, provided critical insight and constructive feedback on this sense of place research, Poe said.

“This is a topic that resonates with people,” she said. “We can find lots of gloomy, difficult conservation failures. Sense of place orients us to where people’s direct engagement with the environment has motivated them to steward the ecosystem and healthy communities.”

Each of the special edition’s 12 articles originated from a symposium last year in which Plummer’s colleagues presented their research that was inspired by or in collaboration with the economist. Other articles look at the benefits of green infrastructure on coastal areas, capturing energy from the ocean’s motion and income diversity of West Coast fishermen, to list a few.

with the UW’s Center for Creative Conservation is another university co-author, and many alums across disciplines — fisheries, economics, psychology, biology and marine affairs — are contributing authors.

Marine ecologist Phil Levin will be the first to say his new job move is a little unusual. A former senior scientist at NOAA Fisheries, Levin recently began a joint role at the 91̽�� and The Nature Conservancy. He is one of only two “professors of practice” at the 91̽��and will also tackle a new lead science role at the Conservancy.

For Levin, who for 17 years was a marine fish guy at NOAA, rubbing shoulders with forestry professors and students — and participating in large-scale environmental initiatives far from the sea — these are perhaps surprising next steps, but they so perfectly align with Levin’s vision for the future of conservation.

91̽��Today sat down with Levin to find out why he took this job and what he hopes to accomplish.

This is a new joint role with 91̽��and the Conservancy. What are you tackling first?

PL: Right now I’m just getting up to speed with both organizations. I’m thinking about the ways we can connect the rich capabilities at the 91̽��with the Conservancy’s needs. I’m also trying to figure out which of the Conservancy’s priorities 91̽��can best come in quickly and make a difference. It’s really about building connections, collaboration and leveraging all of the wonderful work that’s happening at the university, toward the goal of conservation for nature and people.

Where do you sit?

PL: Half of the time I’ll be at the , and the other half will be in my office and lab in .

What does “professor of practice” mean to you?

PL: I think the “practice” part of the role informs conservation and improves the status of nature and people. The “professor” part is interesting, because when you think of a professor — besides having a tweed jacket with elbow patches — it’s someone who is educating, mentoring, inspiring, and someone who is working with undergraduates and graduate students doing research.

And what about your lead scientist role at the Conservancy?

PL: I hope to be a voice of science, to highlight where science can provide answers to our most pressing conservation issues and to act as a scientific adviser. I envision providing a synthetic overview across different teams — land, water, ocean, cities and climate. And, I’d like to be able to connect the dots across all the programs to yield better conservation outcomes.

Why are you excited about this joint role?

PL: Being an applied scientist in the real world means you have to answer the questions that resource managers or policymakers ask of you. I also believe that can make you only reactive. The nice thing with the 91̽��component is we can begin to answer the questions that have not yet been asked. That makes scientists proactive leaders rather than followers. The trick is to balance the current needs — the questions being asked — with also doing new science so that we can come up with innovative solutions to emerging problems while also solving the problems of today. I’m excited to bring my practical perspective to the undergraduate and graduate educational experience, but also to use this as a training ground for the next generation of conservation scientists.

Why did you decide to leave NOAA?

PL: I felt very comfortable and happy where I was, so therefore I left. I thought, you know what, I think there’s an opportunity to be creative and innovative, and it just seemed time for a change. And that’s why the made sense. It’s so different from my background and I’m so different from the other faculty that it’s an opportunity to be super creative and productive in ways I can do best when I’m a fish out of water.

What are you taking from your work at NOAA?

PL: My time at NOAA profoundly impacted me. First, when I started at NOAA, I really had a lot to learn, and I quickly learned that you learn more by listening than by talking. Also, the culture, particularly in our program, was highly interactive and highly collaborative — at a senior level. Being at NOAA was like the best part of being a graduate student: You’re constantly riffing with people, trying to work together, experiencing the cool, creative energy that happens in graduate school. The only difference is people leave earlier than when I was in grad school because they have to pick up their kids. I also began to understand what applied science really means, rather than what I said it meant before I was a NOAA scientist. In other words, I began to understand how science could actually make a difference.

You already have quite a few projects underway with 91̽��faculty and students. Will those continue?

PL: Everything with the university I hope will just grow. The biggest ongoing project right now that is still in the growth phase is the . To me, there are a lot of different ways the mission of Ocean Modeling Forum and the Conservancy overlap and can help each other.

Can you give some examples of the kinds of projects you’ll work on?

PL: The Conservancy has a project called , a reference to the coastal rainforests that go from Southeast Alaska to the Olympic Peninsula. A lot of my work lately has been up in British Columbia in Haida Gwaii archipelago. I know I’ll get involved with that project in some way, shape or form. I’ll also continue to work with Melissa Poe at , looking at the potential impacts of ocean acidification on culture, particularly tribes that are deeply dependent culturally and historically on shellfish. I imagine myself continuing to work at the boundary of the natural and social sciences — understanding the importance of nature to people and trying to develop ways we can save nature, both for its intrinsic value but also for people who depend on it.

You’ve been on campus for a little while now. What do you like about it?

PL: Along Rainier Vista, there’s something so inspiring to me about looking at the university up that stretch. In a way, that particular spot is so perfect for this job. On one hand, I look at the university and everything that it symbolizes, and get inspired by that. And then if I turn around and I look at Mount Rainier, I see the majesty of nature. Both are right there. It’s perfect for this job.

(Editor’s note: In case you were wondering, Levin did purchase a tweed jacket after he accepted this position — just in case he needs it).

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Contact Levin at pslevin@uw.edu.