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The powerful solar storm driving the aurora borealis over global skies last weekend was also triggering the movement of compasses deep in the ocean, as revealed in new scientific findings shared today by Ocean Networks Canada (ONC), a University of Victoria initiative.
Read more: Solar storm detected in deep sea observatories
The University of Victoria’s Climate Disaster Project has been named the winner of a Special Recognition Citation at the 2023 National Newspaper Awards—Canada’s top journalism awards.
Read more: Climate Disaster Project wins national award
UVic has become one of only 14 post-secondary institutions in the world to reach a STARS Platinum sustainability rating. The ranking celebrates UVic’s holistic approach to sustainability and how it’s integrated in everything we do.
Read more: UVic reaches STARS Platinum sustainability rating
As ocean temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, marine plankton may be the newest candidate to act as an oceanic early alert system. According to a new Nature paper from UVic micropaleontologist Andy Fraass, and a team of international collaborators at the University of Bristol and Harvard University, an analysis of the fossil record shows that changes to community structure take place long before mass extinction occurs.
Read more: Marine fossil record reveals climate change insights
Critically acclaimed Canadian opera singer and national CBC Radio host Marion Newman is returning to the University of Victoria to join the award-winning teaching faculty at the School of Music. Newman—whose traditional name is Nege’ga—is of Kwagiulth and Stó:lō First Nations descent with English, Irish and Scottish heritage. The 2022 UVic Distinguished Alumni Award recipient will officially join the School of Music as an assistant professor on July 1, 2024.
Read more: Opera star Marion Newman joins UVic Music
The POLIS Project on Ecological Governance is hosting a film screening and conversation at the University of Victoria to showcase the importance of freshwater management and governance in celebration of World Water Day.
Read more: World Water Day film screening
Open any astronomy textbook to the section on white dwarf stars and you’ll likely learn that they are “dead stars” that continuously cool down over time. New research published in Nature is challenging this theory, with the University of Victoria (UVic) and its partners using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite to reveal why a population of white dwarf stars stopped cooling for more than eight billion years.
Read more: Discovery tests theory on cooling of white dwarf stars
Located on Lək̓ʷəŋən (Songhees and Esquimalt) territory, the National Centre for Indigenous Laws (NCIL) at UVic is still under construction but its architectural design is already winning awards.
Read more: UVic’s National Centre for Indigenous Laws wins prestigious design award
Canadian and European experts in polar observation are joining forces in a new partnership that will see Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) operating a subsea observatory at the Spanish Antarctic Station, providing year-round, near real-time data on ocean conditions there—the first time that ONC will extend its ocean monitoring outside Canadian waters.
Read more: Canada and Spain scientists establish new Antarctic Ocean observatory
Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) expands the reach of Pacific Ocean monitoring with new deep-sea Argo floats that collect vital ocean data while traveling up and down through the water column, the space between the sea surface and the seafloor.
Read more: Droids of the deep expand climate tracking in the northeast Pacific Ocean
Xuebin Zhang has been named director, president and chief executive officer of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), bringing more than a decade of experience collaborating on PCIC projects and 25 years of experience as a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada where he led the assessment on changes in temperature and precipitation for Canada’s Changing Climate Report.
Read more: New director joins Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium
Globally renowned Indigenous art historian and curator Dr. Heather Igloliorte joins the University of Victoria as the inaugural Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices. The $8-million research chair will advance reconciliation through the transformative power of art and innovative exhibition practices and support a new generation of students, researchers, educators, curators and artists to drive change through artistic practice.
Read more: UVic awarded $8M Canada Excellence Research Chair