USDA to OSU: Know your farmer (KVAL) The U.S. Department of Agriculture deputy secretary is visiting university campuses in Portland and Corvallis to talk about nutrition and a federal initiative called “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food.” Poplar leaves may hold the key to biodegradable plastic (East Oregonian) Hybrid poplar tree leaves might contain the [...]

Corvallis researchers use harmonic radar to track butterflies (The Republic) Victoria Bennett is a post-doctoratorate researcher at Oregon State University, based in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, with Matthew Betts, a landscape ecologist specializing in hummingbirds, and Winston Smith, a USDA Forest Service wildlife ecologist famous for his work on flying squirrels, as [...]

Professors offer strategy for logging BLM forests (Register-Guard) Researchers Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin — 68 and 75 years old, respectively — have been working on forestry issues for decades. Johnson, a professor of forestry resources at Oregon State University, and Franklin, a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Washington, were part of [...]

Climate change takes toll on lodgepole pines (New York Times) “For skeptics of climate change, it’s worth noting that the increase in vulnerability of lodgepole pine we’ve seen in recent decades is made from comparisons with real climatic data and is backed up with satellite observations showing major changes on the ground,” Richard Waring, an [...]

Monday marks 10 years since big Nisqually quake (Seattle Times) Even a decade ago, scientists knew the Northwest was vulnerable to much nastier shakes than the magnitude 6.8 that rattled Seattle 10 years ago Monday. But what they’ve learned in the past 10 years really has some researchers spooked. “It used to be, I never [...]