Birds, babies and baobab trees are what inspire and move us. (Photo: Toa55)

It was late Friday afternoon at Dearborn Hall. Professors Michael Nelson and Kathleen Dean Moore stood before an audience packed with scientists. Mixed in were students, community members and a few stray poets, attentive and expectant for a presentation titled “Five Tools of Moral Reasoning for Climate Scientists” and sponsored by Oregon State’s Environmental Humanities Initiative.

Nelson began by quoting Darwin on the necessity of emotional detachment in the lab and the field. Science requires cold objectivity to preserve the purity of data, the clarity of analysis and the accuracy of conclusions.

In truth, though, scientists are rarely unmoved by the work they do. In fact, by dint of their profession, they understand Earth’s precariousness even more deeply than most of us. When a researcher sterilizes her glassware and hangs up her safety goggles for the day, she carries with her the burden of her findings. Nelson regards that burden with compassion. “It’s hard to be a scientist in the age of climate change,” he told the crowd. “The data are so heartbreaking.”

As a thinking community, we face a conundrum: Scientists uncover some of the empirical knowledge we need to save our planet and ourselves. Yet their devotion to neutrality — an unquestioned necessity in the lab — impedes their voices in the wider world. “Scientists feel disempowered to weight in,” noted Nelson, lead principal investigator of the H.J. Andrews Long-Term Ecological Research Program at Oregon State. “They feel that ‘advocacy’ immediately ruins their credibility. So ironically, the people who know the most get to say the least.”

Adds Moore: “When we silence ourselves, we grant a great gift to those who do harm.”

So how to act upon one’s wrenching discoveries when shackled solely to facts? How to tell the story of a planet tipping toward calamity with graphs and charts when it’s birds and babies and baobab trees that move and inspire us? In a world of collapsing ecosystems, stone hearts would be excellent buffers to anguish. But even the most disciplined investigator struggles with the truths he uncovers.

What Nelson and Moore, OSU’s nationally renowned conservation philosopher, came to Dearborn Hall to say is that beating hearts and electron microscopes are not incompatible. The “perceived dualism” of science and humanities can be — must be — overcome, argued the two philosophers, co-editors of the recent book Moral Ground, a collection of writings on climate and values.

Science, values and policy are a kind of holy trinity for acting on climate change, Moore asserted. By joining forces with philosophers, clergy and skilled communicators to tell the stories of their studies, scientists can connect the cold, hard data to the warm, human values that drive social change. Because we know that merely bludgeoning people with facts only gives them a sore head.

“In the American tradition, ethics are a great force for change — building pressure through a growing affirmation of great moral principles of human decency,” she said.

Added Nelson: “We need to couple the facts with the morality.”

The Pringle Falls Experimental Forest

The summer is warm and sunny in Corvallis, but my travels draw me east. Over and past the Cascades is an open land where the cold sparkling waters of a river flow north, and the sweet smell of Ponderosa pine blends with the fresh scent of lodgepole — the Deschutes National Forest. My one-person tent is packed in the back of a white state-owned pick-up truck with the essentials: a sleeping bag, a GPS unit, a camera, some protein bars, lots of buffalo jerky, a “Rite in the Rain” notebook and a pencil, a brown backpack, a bright orange hard hat and a soil corer.

In the late afternoon, I arrive at the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest and set up camp. The Forest Service cabins are nestled next to the gurgling and gushing Deschutes, whose French name means “River of the Falls.” The sounds of the rapids downstream bring a sense of calmness to my spirit. At the campsite, the ground is laden with pinecones, and the pine drops (Pterospera andromedea) expose themselves above the dead needles, branches and other forest litter. I unpack my gear and prepare for an early start out to the field sites the next day.

Mixed stands of Ponderosa and lodgepole pine dominate the Pringle Falls forest.

As you might guess, this isn’t the typical camping trip. I am embarking on an expedition. As a graduate student in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, I am exploring something that lurks in the soils of Central Oregon — a fuzzy microscopic fungus that colonizes tree roots and might predict the future of the forest.

But why is the future of the forest at stake, and why dig underground when we are concerned about trees? The answer lies in the effects that organisms have on one another in a forest ecosystem. Like intricate underground machinery, fungi connect life-giving nutrients in the soil to roots that transport water and food to tree trunk, branch and leaf. Trees connect to climate and wildlife in an environment that evolves over time.

In the near future, scientists expect that climate will change and our forests will adapt. Tree zones will shift and a valuable tree species in the Deschutes National Forest — lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) — is predicted to decline. This change will affect people as well. Native Americans used the long, straight and lightweight poles to build teepees. Today we commercially harvest lodgepole for telephone poles and fences. Big-game animals, such as deer and elk, use lodgepole as habitat.

Pine drops

Researchers at Oregon State University suggest that, as the climate warms, lodgepole pine will decline in the Pacific Northwest by the end of the 21^st century. As a result, Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) may be able to migrate into lodgepole zones. But this migration is dependent on the distribution or co-migration of mycorrhizae (fungi that live on tree roots), which are largely unexplored in Central and Eastern Oregon. The question is: Will this migration will be successful?

To answer that question, it helps to know a little about an ancient relationship. Scientists think that mycorrhizae, the fungus colonizing tree roots, evolved with land plants. Fungi and plants have been together since the Devonian period, which began more than 400 million years ago. External root fungi, otherwise known as ectomycorrhizae, form a sheath on the exterior of tree roots. These artful fungi form symbiotic, or beneficial, relationships with their host. Once colonization is complete, they send out filaments, which mine the soil for water and essential nutrients such as nitrogen.

Ultimately, it comes down to a trade that the tree host must submit to: The tree provides carbon, in the form of sugars, to the fungus in exchange for nutrients. The relationship is essential for the host and fungus to have the highest degree of success in the ecosystem — in this case, an ecosystem that I have the privilege to explore.

Getting to the core

The author takes a soil core.

The morning sun is bright in Central Oregon, but the air is cold and crisp. On my drive to the field sites, I can see the white peaks of Three Sisters in the distance. I pull the truck into the first site, take out my maps and venture out into the forest.  My leather boots softly crunch on the dried pine needles covering the soil. I pound my soil corer into the ground making sure to take a sample of the top 15 centimeters  (about six inches) of soil. I take in the smell of fresh earth, as I unscrew the metal corer to reveal a rich brown cylindrical soil core made up of pumice, fine roots and the mycorrhizae, too small to be seen with the naked eye. I dump the dirt, fine roots and all, into a Ziploc bag and place it in my backpack for analysis.

In the lab in Corvallis, I use molecular technology, such as DNA tests, to identify the root fungi of Ponderosa and lodgepole pine. I extract DNA, compare it to mushroom DNA in a database and identify the suspects. Like a detective, I name the species and unearth the world that had lain unexamined beneath the soil. And suddenly, this underground community is less of a mystery.

Russula

Cortinarius

My analysis reveals a diversity of species: Cenococcum, a black crusty fungus that doesn’t form mushrooms; Rhizopogon, which often forms subterranean truffles; and typical mushroom producers Cortinarius, Russula and Inocybe. It also reveals that the fungal community connected to Ponderosa pine and lodgepole overlap. That means that, when it comes to soil biology at least, Ponderosa will have a high chance of survival if it migrates into a lodgepole zone.

As the climate warms and the tree zones shift, the forest where we recreate and connect with nature may not be as we remember it. The warming climate might diminish one valuable member of the community, but forests know how to persist. By looking at underground fungi, we can determine whether trees have the potential to migrate into new zones and succeed. In the future, the smell of lodgepole pine might be absent from the breeze and the long skinny poles will be no more. Instead, the presence of underground fungi suggests that we might become immersed in the rich mahogany bark and sweet scent of Ponderosa.

___________________

Editor’s note: Maria Garcia is a master’s student working with Jane E. Smith, research botanist in the USDA Forest Service. Garcia’s research is supported by the Forest Service and by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation.

The journey from idea to innovation turns, twists and hits the occasional roadblock. Follow the progress of an Oregon State idea that is making the wood-products industry more sustainable. Research by wood-science professor Kaichang Li has enabled Columbia Forest Products, North America’s largest manufacturer of hardwood plywood, to switch from adhesives made with formaldehyde to a safer alternative.

Illustration by Heather Miller

Sillett holds the Kenneth L. Fisher Chair in Redwood Forest Ecology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif. His research has been featured in National Geographic six times since 1997. He last appeared in the December 2012 issue, in which he discusses climbing the world’s second-largest tree in the Sierra Nevada. Recently, Sillett answered some of our questions about his research and what it’s like to climb into trees more than 3,000 years old.

Read the interview on Powered by Orange.

Illustration: Teresa Hall

I get to call myself a scientist because I’ve got a Ph.D. in oceanography, but is that a prerequisite? No. Before there were “scientists,” even “ordinary people” did science. They learned to grow crops and domesticate animals. They associated the heavens with the seasons and events on Earth. Keen insight into plant properties, animal behavior and weather patterns is what gave early Homo sapiens the evolutionary edge in a dangerous world. Today, we call this native environmental acuity “traditional ecological knowledge.” It’s citizen science at its most fundamental.

In Oregon and across the continent, citizens contribute immeasurably to the scientific process. Bird watchers document changes in the abundance and range of bird species through the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count. Amateur astronomers working from their backyards discover comets and supernovae. School children analyze streams, lakes and coastal waters, learning fundamental scientific principles as they provide valuable data to their communities.

Strength in Numbers

Oregon State University master naturalist volunteers Anne Marie Farell-Matthews and Philip Matthews cut open sacks of native Olympia oysters and spread them on a muddy flat during low tide at Oregon's South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve near Charleston. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

Nevertheless, a vast pool of data gatherers can be a boon to researchers doing large-scale studies. Increasingly, scientists and research organizations are enlisting and training regular folks. Citizens are measuring rainfall, counting insects and monitoring the annual life-cycles of plants. For these kinds of studies, there’s no way that scientists can collect the mountains of data that tens of thousands of binocular-wielding volunteers can capture in a single day.

Oregon State’s newly launched Oregon Master Naturalist program (see “Corps of Discovery“) represents another type of citizen science, one that centers on education and outreach. People with a bent for exploration and a love of their local environment are meeting in person with scientists, usually university researchers, to learn about their own ecoregions. After 80-plus hours of training that takes place online, in the classroom and outdoors, these Master Naturalists are ready to extend their knowledge to the broader public as volunteers with local nonprofits and state agencies. Oregon’s is one of about 40 similar programs nationwide.

Mary Crow leads a hike at Rimrock Ranch for the Deschutes Land Trust. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

Also, to the non-scientific observer, research often verges on the edge of being esoteric, so the citizen scientist can be an important link between the specialist in the field and the public. The urgent scientific challenges of our day require not only informed decision-makers but also a mobilized citizenry. Scientists use rigorous methods to conduct experiments, but their findings alone will not solve problems or shape policy. State and national agencies, city planners, county commissioners, lawmakers at every level of government and, ultimately, voters will decide whether and how to act upon the science.

That may be the most powerful promise of citizen science. A citizenry that is not only scientifically sophisticated but also personally committed is our best hope for collective action on behalf of a healthy planet.

Robert T. Lackey retired in 2008 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Corvallis national research laboratory where he worked for 27 years as a senior scientist and deputy director. (Photo: Jeff Basinger)

Scientific information is important in many policy debates in the Pacific Northwest (salmon; wildfire severity; human activities and climate; genetically modified organisms; water scarcity). Science is essential in such policy debates, but I am concerned that policy-biased science is increasingly common.

Science should be objective and based on the best information available. Too often, however, scientific information presented to the public and decision-makers is infused with hidden policy preferences. Such science is termed normative, and it is a corruption of the practice of good science. Normative science is defined as “information that is developed, presented or interpreted based on an assumed, usually unstated, preference for a particular policy choice.”

Using normative science in policy deliberations is stealth advocacy. I use “stealth” because the average person reading or listening to such scientific statements is likely to be unaware of the underlying advocacy. Normative science is a corruption of science and should not be tolerated in the scientific community — without exception.

Let me illustrate with a current policy issue: “Should certain dams be removed to restore salmon runs?” Scientists can assess with some degree of confidence the likely effects of removing or maintaining a particular dam. Scientific information alone, however, is an insufficient justification for deciding to keep or remove a dam. There are biological consequences of dam removal (and maintenance), and those consequences may be substantial from a salmon perspective, but ecological consequences are but one of many elements that the public and decision-makers must weigh when making a policy choice.

Policymakers, not scientists, decide whether preserving salmon runs should trump flood protection, irrigated agriculture or electricity generation. As the public and decision-makers balance policy alternatives, what they need from scientists are facts and probabilities. What they do not need from scientists are their or their employer’s values and policy preferences masked within scientific information disguised as being policy neutral.

There are other common examples. In working with scientists, I often encounter value-laden terms like “degradation,” “improvement,” “good,” “poor,” “impact,” or “alien invasive.” Scientists should avoid these types of normative words in conveying scientific information. Such words imply a preferred ecological state, a desired condition, an accepted benchmark or a favored class of policy options. This is not science; it is a form of policy advocacy — subtle, sometimes unintentional, but it is patently stealth policy advocacy.

Consider the widespread use of concepts such as “ecosystem health.” It is normative science! “Ecosystem health” is a value-driven policy construct, but it is often passed off as science to unsuspecting policy-makers and the public. Think what the average person actually hears when scientific data or assessments are packaged or presented under the rubric of “ecosystem health.” Healthy is good. Any other state of the ecosystem must be unhealthy, hence, undesirable.

Scientific information must remain a cornerstone of public policy decisions, but I offer cautionary guidance to scientists: Get involved in policy deliberations, but play the appropriate role. Provide facts, probabilities and analysis, but avoid normative science. Scientists have much to offer the public and decision-makers but also have much to lose when they practice stealth policy advocacy.

Braelei Hardt (far right) explores Oregon's high desert with Honors College classmates Arthur To, Anantnoor Kaur, Lindsey Almarode. (Photo: Lindsey Almarode)

Parts of the Oregon outback are a poetic juxtaposition of passionate color scattered among charred, stalagmitic trees piercing the sky above like mighty javelins. In autumn, the understory blazes in hues of red, orange and yellow — colors that light the burnt forest as if it were once again on fire.

This scene in Central Oregon near the town of Sisters, where the Black Butte II fire of 2009 torched 630 acres of timber, may seem upsetting. But is fire only a force of terror?

John Buckhouse of the Institute of Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University says, avidly, “No!”

As a hydrologist, Buckhouse may seem like the wrong kind of expert to comment on the affairs of fire. He has, however, been studying the interconnecting effects of fire, water, and vegetation on Oregon’s rangeland ecology for years.

Buckhouse says fire is a critical element in retaining a healthy outback — and for a good reason, too. Fire has been part of Oregon’s natural cycle for thousands of years, and the land in turn has evolved to accommodate and even depend on fire. It used to ravage the area every seven to 15 years, keeping large trees like Ponderosa pines in check and burning off dead matter that would otherwise steal life-giving sun from the active plants underneath it. Lodgepole pines actually depend on fire to reproduce, for their cones only release seeds in the heat of flame.

Since the development of effective firefighting techniques, concerned citizens looking to “save” the environment have disrupted this cycle and thrown the natural order of things out of balance, according to Buckhouse. The wildly adverse effects of this intervention are just recently coming to light, he says. The worst of these involve the western juniper tree.

Buckhouse’s longtime friend and colleague Hugh Barrett has been assessing juniper in Oregon’s high desert for eight years. He explains that before firefighting, fires would keep the juniper in balance with other desert-dwelling plants. Now, without the natural fire cycle, the trees have overtaken the land.

Most desert plants conserve energy by going into dormancy during the winter. All processes, including water use, come to a halt. This allows water from winter downpours and snowstorms to seep into the ground, where it is stored until spring when the land once again returns to life.

Juniper, however, does not go dormant. This creates a huge problem when there are too many juniper trees in one area. “Usually, you would see maybe four or five old junipers in an open expanse,” Barrett explains. “Now there are maybe 20. These large trees pump 25 to 30 pounds of water out of the soil per day.” This quickly depletes the desert’s winter water reserves, leaving smaller bunchgrasses to literally die of thirst. This is extremely evident when standing next to an old juniper, for there are no shrubs at all in a 30-foot radius around the tree.

The water-sucking junipers also cause even more advanced ecological problems. The increase in tall trees provides more perches for birds of prey. With more birds of prey, there are fewer ground mammals to disperse seeds, further diminishing the brush population.

Barrett notes that in areas without junipers, bitterbrush (named for its bitter taste) grows waist high in approximately nine months. In the land’s current state, it takes five years.

Braelei Hardt atop a rock formation in the high desert. (Photo:Caity Clark)

Why are these shrubs and grasses so important? The answer comes down to water retention. For a system’s watershed to be healthy, Barrett says, it must preserve three aspects: capture, hold, and safe release. The brush in Oregon’s outback contributes to the first aspect. “It’s like arm hair,” Buckhouse explains quirkily. “The arm is the land, and the hair is the brush. If you run water over a shaved arm, like a swimmer’s arm, the water rolls off quickly. But if you have hair, the water will trickle down, curving around the obstacles, and will have more time to soak in.” More time to soak in means greater water retention and a larger storage. Without sagebrush, bitterbrush, and bunchgrasses, the water simply rolls off the land and cannot be captured.

Buckhouse and Barrett are working on a plan to reintroduce flame into the desert in the form of controlled burns, which will burn off the parasitic junipers and restore these critical shrubs. This is how fire will save water — and how the high desert may return to its former glory.

Controlled burns would not only revive the environment but also yield economic gain, Buckhouse and Barrett stress. The Ponderosa pines and juniper trees have grown so large that many of them would need to be topped for the burn to work effectively. The remains could be chipped or sold to paper companies.

Barrett, like a docile bear, lumbers toward a massive juniper and rests his hand upon it. “We shouldn’t see the world as it is,” he says, “but as it can be.”

OSU pharmacy student Tabitha Purice gives a flu shot in Pioneer Courthouse Square. (Photo: Angie Mettie)

PORTLAND – It was a nippy November day in Pioneer Courthouse Square. The city’s annual Christmas tree was going up — a giant evergreen to mark the holiday season. But that wasn’t the only super-sized object with a seasonal message. A couple of strides from the mega-tree stood a monstrous nose, a reminder that the season of good cheer is also the season of colds and flu.

People walking by stopped and stared. The daring and the curious pushed the red button next to the nose, triggering a loud “Ah-choo!” followed by a spray of water from the mega-nostrils and a disembodied voice giving health-care tips.

“Gross!” one woman proclaimed as she wandered by wearing a blue stocking cap and carrying a Dallas Cowboys lunchbox. “That’s disgusting!”

Another passerby, a teacher with the Portland School District, declared, “The nose is awesome!” She promptly buttonholed one of the organizers to ask if the nose would be available for her school’s health fair in the spring. “This would be really, really cool.”

Whether you think it’s disgusting, awesome or just funny, it did capture the attention of local media. Morning and evening news teams from KGW covered the event, as did OPB radio. After all, the nose’s message is a serious one: you can help prevent illness by washing your hands, covering your mouth when you sneeze and getting a flu shot — but if you do catch a virus such as the flu, pneumonia or a sinus infection, don’t take antibiotics. That’s because the drugs are designed to work only on bacterial infections. Taking them unnecessarily means they won’t work as well when you really need them.

“Antibiotics can be important, sometimes lifesaving, medications when we really need them,” explained Jessina McGregor, assistant professor in Oregon State University’s College of Pharmacy. “But all too often, they’re taken unnecessarily or improperly.”

More than 1,000 Portlanders stopped by Pioneer Courthouse Square to learn about antibiotics. (Photo: Angie Mettie)

The outreach event was part of national Get Smart About Antibiotics week. In partnership with the Oregon Adult Immunization Coalition, third- and fourth-year OSU pharmacy students vaccinated 70 people who are uninsured or have barriers to accessing vaccines. Students were looking up patients’ health records on a laptop via the Oregon Alert System, a statewide immunization registry maintained by the Oregon Health Authority.

And they talked to people — lots of them — about proper antibiotic use.

“Our students provided education about proper antibiotic use to nearly 1,000 people,” said McGregor, who partners with Oregon AWARE (Oregon Alliance Working for Antibiotic Resistance Education), which is based at the Health Authority and funded by the Centers for Disease Control. “They also surveyed more than 360 individuals to assess general knowledge about antibiotic use.”

Braelei Hardt with her red-tailed hawk Inanna

It was a chill December day in Eugene. I was with my falconry sponsor, Christian Fox, who was there in the park with me to observe a training session. I had been training Inanna, my 3-pound red-tailed hawk for about three weeks. Chris was evaluating whether she was ready to come off the creance (a fancy term for a training leash) and fly free. Once the bird is off the creance, there is no way to retrieve her if she should refuse to come to my call.

Our bond, essentially, would be the only tether between us.

The initial test was a disappointment. She came to my whistle with extreme latency when she should have come instantly. I felt ashamed — like a failure. Chris, however, saw potential where I had not. Without notice, he unhooked Inanna from the creance, grabbed her by the ankles, and flung her into the sky.

My heart leapt into my throat. I watched her, baffled, as she faltered in the air then soared to the top of a 50-foot tree. I began to panic. It was as if Chris had taken the training wheels off my bike before I could ride. Alarming thoughts raced through my head. What if she didn’t come back? What if she flew off, never to be seen again? All of my work, all of my devotion, would be wasted.

“Give it a try,” Chris encouraged, a sly grin plastered across his lips. Tentatively, I lifted my gloved fist and swallowed hard. I blew the whistle.

The park was instantly filled with the sound of tinkling bells (secured to her ankles as a type of locator) as Inanna took wing and then dropped like a stone toward me, pulling up at the last second and landing gently, as if she were no heavier than a hummingbird.

She plucked her reward — a bit of rabbit meat — from between my fingers and swallowed it whole. Then she sat. She just sat, perfectly content.

I stared on, the whistle still hanging between my lips. Here was this beautiful, powerful creature, a wild hunter no more than three weeks ago, coming on command. She could have just as easily left me standing there, dumbfounded, and returned to the wild.

The bond forged that day was of a rare breed. One, I would say, that could only be formed between a falconer and her bird. One that can rarely be found between two people, or even two animals. A partnership. Mutually beneficial and boiling over with respect.

Braelei Hardt is a freshman in the University Honors College majoring in zoology.

Madelaine Katz catches a perfect day at Oceanside

Ever since I was very small, I’ve been enraptured by the animal kingdom. And I was very lucky: My mom fueled this fire by taking me to as many zoos, aquariums, wildlife centers and nature parks as possible on our family travels. It was a big part of my upbringing. Now, as a semi-autonomous and somewhat-functioning adult, I still manage to find ways to go to these places as much as humanly possible.

The most recent of these visits was to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

After the exhausting whirlwind that was my START orientation at Oregon State this summer, I was feeling a little bit panicked about the whole moving-across-the-continent-for-college ordeal. Being a native East Coaster from North Carolina, the move to Oregon was going to be quite a shift for me. I was excited, yes, but a heavy dose of nerves was definitely there too. And what was the one thing that could make me feel myself?

“Dad, can we drive out to Newport? There’s an aquarium there!”

And so we did. It was mostly empty on that sleepy Wednesday afternoon, and I happily roamed around the exhibits, lost and immersed in my own underwater world.

Rounding the corner from some dozing sea otters, I approached my favorite animal, the Great Pacific Octopus. As I walked toward the tank, however, a disgruntled family was heading in the opposite direction, expressing frustration. “Why didn’t it come out?” they were complaining. “Why was it hiding in a hole like that?”

As they made their way noisy way out, I slowly walked up to the glass window of the octopus’ tank. It would appear completely devoid of life if it were not for the single, telltale tentacle spilling out from a small dark crevice in the corner.

Even though I couldn’t see more than this lone tentacle, a flood of simple respect washed over me for this incredible creature. The intelligence of these mollusks is legendary among biologists. I’ve heard many a story of their cunning and wit, whether it be outsmarting predatory sharks three times their size, or figuring out how to make a coconut shell a useful tool for shelter. I closed my eyes and placed my hand on the glass, and smiled to myself. I was, and still am, in love with the fact that these animals exist in the world.

I sighed, and opened my eyes. And splayed out on the bottom of the tank, big and bold and totally orange, was the octopus, come out from hiding in its watery cave. And I swear it was looking at me.

Some part of me will always doubt it, but the larger and more playful side of me believes that the animal felt what I was feeling and came out to say hello, or at least to investigate. A volunteer told me later that the nocturnal octopus rarely comes out during the day, and that I was lucky to be able to witness it.

Lucky, yes.  I felt wonderfully lucky to be able to share that moment with that phenomenal cephalopod. But was it happenstance? Who knows, but that creature sure had a wonderful effect on me, and maybe, just maybe, I had a similar effect on him.

Madelaine Katz is a freshman in the University Honors College majoring in zoology.

Desert terrain north of Bishop, California (Photo: Bureau of Land Management)

I remember my first day at what’s called “baby field camp” in the Oregon State geology program. Outside Bishop, California, we mapped the area around a cinder cone, long since dead. I quickly learned that the hot sun is a never-ending force of nature, not to be underestimated. I drank at least a gallon of water every day. Professor Andrew Meigs gave me and two-dozen other students our task: Use the tools provided (field notebook, Brunton compass, rock hammer, hand lens and a contour map) to understand what happened to this brick-red hill in the middle of the desert.

Stepping over cacti (sit at your peril!) and even shards of obsidian from long-ago residents, I began training my eyes to notice important clues: the downward dip of cinder layers on the hill, the change in sediment and bedrock colors over distance. I used to overlook these subtle signs, but as I worked, they became critical. The rock hammer clanking on my belt and the hand lens hanging around my neck got me closer to small details, while my legs carried me around the landscape to understand the big picture. Above all, every observation from sediment color, rock composition and how far a layer inclined from horizontal had to be recorded in the orange field book and marked on the contour map.

The maps we created became the key to unraveling the cinder cone’s story. They enabled us to see a cross-section of the Earth under our feet, as though we had sliced down with an enormous knife and peeled the crust back to reveal its ancient face. We started to understand the Earth in three dimensions. We began to appreciate maps for what they are, our connection to the world beyond what we can experience directly through our five senses.

Those ten days in the Southern California desert opened my eyes. I learned how to challenge assumptions and drop expectations before coming to a conclusion about the history of a landscape, all through mapping. Above all, I learned that maps allow us to step back and gain perspective, illuminating patterns that we couldn’t see otherwise. The connections we make with maps produce solutions to some of our most pressing issues and even inspire discoveries. In more ways than one, maps provide a path through the unfamiliar, a priceless tool in such a dynamic world.

This love of maps shouldn’t be surprising for a budding geologist like me. Geology owes much of its existence to maps. In fact, the first geological map was created by a scientist who was intrigued by the coal seams of southeastern England. William Smith, a forefather of modern geology, developed the first geological map. He traveled on horseback, weighed down carriages with rock samples, meticulously wrote and re-wrote and deduced an explanation for the location, orientation and relative age of coal seams and strange figured stones (fossils) that no one understood.

Google Earth provided satellite images on which these axial data reveal the N-S alignment in three ruminant species: (A) Cattle. (B) Roe deer. (C) Red deer. Each pair of dots (located on opposite sites within the unit circle) represents the direction of the axial mean vector of the animals' body position at one locality. (From Begall, et al, 2008, PNAS, Magnetic alignment in grazing and resting cattle and deer)

With his map, Smith brought a deeper understanding to the beautiful countryside so often admired in British culture. He showed that it has a history, a story different than that of biblical origin, the prevailing explanation for the landscape at the time. His studies directly created the science of stratigraphy, the study of rock layers, and with it the rest of geology. Above all, he demonstrated the amazing power of connection and the power of perspective that maps provide.

Today, old maps seem almost quaint. We have Google Earth, which led to one of my favorite discoveries, one involving cows. Researchers used satellite images from Google Earth to survey the orientation of cows and roe deer as they bedded down in locations around the world. The scientists found that, when these animals graze or rest, they tend to line up with magnetic north. This was unknown before the study. Map technology demonstrated an unseen biological property: the behavior of some animals correlates with the lines of force in the Earth’s magnetic field. This connection opens up myriad questions about familiar animals that I thought I understood. It also raises questions about what the Earth’s magnetic field does to the human species. Can it influence our biology? If so, how?

Map of Late Cretaceous coastline (85Ma). (Image from Paleogeography and Geologic Evolution of North America)

Maps even shed light on social and cultural head-scratchers. In the southern United States, there’s a peculiar ribbon of counties across Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina that tend to vote Democratic in presidential elections. Prior to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, this pattern didn’t exist. Most black people did not vote. When researchers overlaid a geological map on the 2000, 2004 and 2008 county-by-county voting census, an intriguing picture came to light. During the Cretaceous Period (145-65 million years ago), the area to become Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina occupied the coastline of a tropical sea. Warm, shallow waters rich in organic material lapped the shore. The life and death of unfathomable numbers of plankton and other marine organisms produced vast deposits of chalk, which formed the basis for the cotton industry that boomed in America 65 million years later. After the end of voter discrimination nearly 50 years ago, the Democratic leanings of the black voters in this belt became apparent. Who knew that 100-million-year-old geologic history could affect voting patterns today?

Blue counties voted Democratic in the 2008 presidential election (Map: New York Times)

At the “baby field camp” in Southern California, we spent our last five days in a section called Poleta, high in the White Mountains. Trying to understand the gnarled, folded and faulted landscape beyond the first deceptive rise brought many of us to tears. I traced contacts (the boundaries between different rock types) over and over, drawing them where I thought they laid on the map. Eventually, it was necessary to hike out away from the folded hills to hypothesize what might have happened. I remember walking over the last hill, having a rough idea of my conclusions, only to find another fault that changed my thinking.

The sheer frustration of the exercise demonstrated another important point: Maps are hard. They force us to look with a different perspective, to ask tough questions and seek unexpected answers. But what else can we expect from a tool designed to both show and push boundaries?

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Amanda Enbysk is a senior in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.

Kathryn Higley

As concern about climate change has grown, nuclear energy — long a polarizing subject — has gained increasing favorability. Its low carbon footprint, reliable power supply and strong safety record convinced many critics that nuclear power should be a bigger part of our energy mix.

That newfound favorability suffered a setback on March 11, 2011, when an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan. The resulting tsunami damaged the backup systems essential to the safe shutdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station. Over the next several weeks, as the Japanese people struggled to limit the extent of the damage, a slow-motion accident unfolded. While the world watched, radioactive cesium, iodine and other nuclides were released to the air and surrounding ocean.

Suddenly, the nuclear power renaissance seemed very much in doubt.

For more than 50 years, Oregon State’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics (NERHP) has been engaged in nuclear power plant design and safety research. Lately, our department has been in the spotlight because of our focus on creating safer and simpler nuclear technology, such as the NuScale small modular reactor. But Fukushima brought attention to a lesser-known competence at OSU: radioecology.

Oregon State is one of the last U.S. academic institutions actively doing research in this unique, interdisciplinary field, which focuses on the movement of radioactive nuclides and their impact on humans and the environment. We travel to places like Johnston Atoll in the Pacific to evaluate radiological risk and find strategies to clean up Cold War-era contamination. We study radionuclide uptake by plants and animals — findings that have been incorporated into environmental protection standards for the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as guidance by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

After Fukushima, we answered hundreds of calls from the public and media. In June 2011, we participated in a Woods Hole Institution expedition to the Fukushima coast on the research vessel Ka’imikai-O-Kanaloa with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the National Science Foundation. We designed and built a radiological sampling system for seawater and helped collect and analyze marine organisms for contamination. We studied mechanisms of radiological contamination of tea plants in Japan. With Corvallis-based Earthfort, we tested the company’s proprietary compound for reducing the movement of radiocesium in soils in hopes that it might be used in Japan. And we joined the OSU Marine Council Action Coordination Team dealing with marine debris arriving on our coastline.

Our research has helped put Fukushima in perspective. The tragic accident caused a slowdown in nuclear power development worldwide. But today, scientists are reasonably confident that the radiation will have no measurable public health effects. And the best reasons for pursuing this energy technology remain: reliable power with minimal carbon emissions.

We will remain on the frontlines of reactor safety, radioecology and environmental protection. We will continue to advocate for more research and public education in radiation sciences so that as a society we can make informed choices about our energy mix.

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Editor’s note: Higley’s expertise has been highly sought by news media covering the consequences of the Fukushima disaster. See her comments on the burial of radioactive wastes in the Nov. 5, 2012 Christian Science Monitor.

This video produced by Facebook, Degrees of Separation, shows how they did it.

In 2011, the researchers netted a dazzling array of fish from the Cuyuni River in Guyana, some never before seen by scientists. The challenge: how to make sense of the bounty. The answer: reach out to colleagues through the Internet.

Sidlauskas and his graduate student, Whitcomb Bronaugh, took photos of the fish and posted them to Facebook. Within 24 hours, they had identifications from dozens of colleagues around the world.

Juyun Lim, assistant professor of food science at Oregon State University

Did you ever wonder why so many people are attracted to junk food? Why ice cream, french fries and soda pop so often win out over brown rice and broccoli?

It’s not actually a conspiracy by fast-food companies to bewitch people into eating things that aren’t good for them. Well, not completely. It’s largely due to an evolutionary instinct that was useful when people wondered around in the woods searching for food, 100,000 years ago.

In the distant past, we heavily depended on our senses to make a decision of what to eat and what not to eat. In nature, foods that were sweet were almost always safe to eat and were good for us; they made our hunger go away. Foods that smelled odd or tasted bitter or sour usually meant they were potentially toxic or spoiled — and less safe to eat. That was pretty useful information for a person who lived in a hunting and gathering era and wanted to avoid starving or getting poisoned.

In the modern environment where we buy food in supermarkets or restaurants, those same survival instincts are serving only to make us obese and chronically ill.

We have a routine choice of what to eat and how much to eat, and with depressing consistency, we often choose the wrong ones, the ones that carry lots of macronutrients like carbohydrates, sodium and fats. Because foods that are high in sugars, sodium and fats are readily palatable to us, we eat them too much!

Tomomi Fujimaru, a student at Oregon State University, tastes green vegetable juice while wearing a nose clip in research on the role of blocked retronasal olfaction.

The science of flavor – how we taste and smell it, why we like or don’t like it – is still in its infancy. In a series of recent publications in Chemical Senses, we learned that the “congruency” of the different components of flavor is a key to how we perceive the overall flavor of foods. Flavor components that seem to “go” together, like vanillin and sugar, are perceived as a unified sensation that seems to come from the mouth. And barely detectable vanillin becomes so much stronger when sugar is added to vanilla-flavored drink or custard, making it even more palatable.

Actually, that’s our brain playing a trick on us. Vanillin, the primary component of the vanilla bean, has no sweet taste at all, it’s only a smell. And the pleasant sensation is coming not from your mouth but from the nose, through the passageway between the back of the mouth and the back of the nose.

Then, the final decision about what something tastes like is made in neither the mouth nor nose. It’s in your brain, where sensory signals are processed and “bind” as a unified, harmonious perception, like “vanilla custard.” That data gets relayed back to your mouth where you believe the sensations are coming from.

There’s just a lot we don’t know about exactly how people perceive flavor and how it plays a role in food choice and selection. When we learn more about these processes, it might be possible to more effectively teach our palates to like what is good for us. In other words, to really enjoy eating broccoli just as much as eating an ice cream sundae.

The science of flavor is complicated. Some of the players include taste such as sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory, which is detected solely on the tongue; smell such as vanilla and basil, which is exclusively detected in the nose; and somesthesis, which includes things like touch (the texture of Crème brûlée), temperature (the warmth of soup), and irritation (the burn of hot peppers). All of these sensations provide data to the brain, and it makes the final call.

If you really think you can “taste” everything in your mouth, take a sip of your favorite drink while pinching your nose, and see what it tastes like. Don’t recognize it? Open your nose, and the familiar taste will reveal itself.

The perception of flavor is partly instinct but also a learned behavior. And because it can be learned, there are probably ways that we can teach it. Hardly anyone really likes the bitter taste of coffee the first time they drink it. Since the caffeine in coffee makes them feel energized, however, they learn to like its flavor.

We may never completely lose our desire for ice cream, and we don’t have to. But science may help us find a way to deal a little better with our foods and our dietary choices.

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Juyun Lim is an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology at Oregon State University. She’s an expert on human sensory perception of food, and sensory and consumer testing methodology. This article appeared in the Huffington Post on June 12, 2012.

Don Pettit prepared for departure from the ISS on July 1. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

When he’s on Earth, Don Pettit dreams about space. But when he’s in space, he dreams about walking on Earth.  “Dreams may have something to do with humans never being satisfied, which is why we go exploring in the first place,” he says.

If there’s a gene for the urge to explore new worlds, Pettit has it. The Oregon State University alum (chemical engineering, ’78) has launched into orbit three times. He’s logged 370 days in space, placing him fourth among NASA astronauts.

Pettit has conducted experiments, spent more than 13 hours in a spacesuit outside the ISS and created a series of science videos to show how water, static electricity and other things we take for granted on Earth behave in a weightless environment.

After six months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the native of Silverton, Ore., returned to Earth on July 1. He’d go back, as he says, in a nanosecond. Moreover, he’d gladly load up his family to colonize the moon or Mars — as long as they could return home safely.

In previous trips to the International Space Station, Pettit rode aboard the space shuttle, shown here when it was docked with the ISS. (Photo: Don Pettit)

He knows all too well that getting back can be harrowing. During his latest trip, Pettit landed in the Kazakhstan desert in what he calls “a series of explosions followed by a car crash.” After that, it took several weeks to adjust to living in Earth’s gravity again.

On July 20, he talked with reporters about the commercialization of space flight, why space flight is important and why he decided to grow a zucchini in the corner.

In case you were wondering, he says a space station smells like a cross between a machine shop and a science lab, although the odors of roast beef may drift in at dinner time. See the video above on the right or click here.

Voracious red-ranger chickens cleaned out the bugs from this leaf litter, says Betsey Miller (Photo: Julia Rosen)

“Aw, no bugs!” exclaims Betsey Miller after meticulously pouring over a wheelbarrow’s worth of decomposing leaf litter and manure. “The chickens are doing a great job, but it’s still fun for us entomologists to find insects once in a while!”

A pen of praiseworthy red-ranger chickens peck away at the grass a few yards away, devouring beetles, larvae and weeds with single-minded perseverance. Their fiery plumage stands out against an emerald backdrop of spring foliage, like a premonition of rosy fruit to come.

Miller and her colleagues at Oregon State University (Extension and Department of Horticulture) brought the pest-seeking fowl to La Mancha’s Brooklane Organic Apple Orchard in Corvallis to conduct a pilot study on the use of free-range poultry for biodynamic pest control. Here, the birds move through the leafy rows of apple trees inside open-air enclosures known as “chicken tractors,” mowing down unwanted vegetation with the efficiency of weed whackers, hunting every apple maggot out of its earthen den and growing into succulent, free-range broilers in the process.

Poultry vs pests

The agricultural mentality of the central Willamette Valley, with its patchwork of small organic farms, vineyards and burgeoning local meat scene, makes it an ideal place to test out such an unconventional approach. While commercial apple growers rely heavily on the application of pesticides and herbicides to control orchard conditions, organic growers have limited options. Says Miller, “we are trying to find a way to manage insects that is more affordable and less labor intensive for these farmers.” To achieve this goal, they designed the first experiment in the state to use outdoor chickens, putting them to use in a synergistic approach to small-scale agriculture. Asked how this unusual project got off the ground in the first place, Miller says, “people here want to see agriculture go in a different direction.”

Scorched Earth, chicken style. (Photo: Julia Rosen)

The collaboration between a small poultry operation and an apple grower is a case in point. Travis Witmer of TnT Farms in Philomath handles the 150 birds at Brooklane. He explains, “I could never raise this many birds on my small plot of land. I do have to drive out here every day, but other than that, the workload and the costs are the same.” Miller and Witmer hope that this pilot study may serve as inspiration for other local chicken farmers to rent out their birds to orchards with pest problems — the same way a plumber offers his services to fix a clogged drain. So far, the results look promising.

As with most agricultural endeavors, the key to success lies in perfect timing. “To comply with organic standards,” explains Miller, “Brooklane cannot apply manure within 90 days of harvest.” Since chickens are veritable fertilizer factories, this means they have to be off the premises — and hitting the farmer’s market — by June. Witmer put the chicks out in mid-March, the perfect time to start raising broilers before the summer heat sets in, and one of the most critical times for apple pest control. Overwintering maggots start to stir in the soil as the winter chill retreats. This year, however, they will awake to a much more hostile orchard than the one their progenitors knew the previous fall.

But how does Miller know if the birds can hold up their end of the bargain? Miller plans to conduct vegetation surveys before and after the birds pass through an area to quantify their ability to control weeds. However, all you need to see their success is a pair of eyes. The spots where the tractors stood for a day or two have literally been grazed down to bare soil and remain that way for weeks. Weeds harbor harmful insects and compete with fruit trees for nutrients, but suppressing their growth requires labor-intensive mowing or the application of herbicides. Or, as it turns out, a dozen roving bands of ravenous red rangers.

No ordinary chickens

To determine how well the chickens manage insect populations, Miller and colleagues have come up with a clever plan. They add several hundred benign pest lookalikes to a heaping pile of leaf litter and put it inside the chickens’ pen. Only 24 hours later, they sift through the remains and count the survivors. In control studies where the litter sits out overnight but never sees the voracious fowl, they recover 99% of the decoys they plant. However today, after a night inside the pen marked by a blaze of orange polka dot ribbon, the researchers can’t find a single bug in this heap of fragrant humus.

Red rangers mean business (Photo: Julia Rosen)

The staggering efficiency of these birds stems from the fact that they are no ordinary Cornish Crosses, the most common breed of broiler chickens. “You could leave a Cornish Cross out here for a week and it would just wait by its trough for you to bring more feed,” laughs Witmer. Red rangers, on the other hand, were bred to hunt. Descendents of the original foraging bird, the aptly-named freedom ranger, red rangers leave no leaf unturned during the 12 weeks it takes them to mature. Plus, boasts Witmer, the rangers recently won an informal blind taste test among pastured poultry farmers in the Willamette Valley by a unanimous vote. Not bad for a working bird!

However, many questions remain. Will the birds eat beneficial insects too? Will researchers be able to detect decreases in deleterious coddling moth populations? And will the laying hens they put out in the autumn help further drive down pest problems?

It’s too early to say, but Miller is hopeful. “Our goal for this year is to work out the kinks so that we can do bigger projects in the future.” This might include splitting the orchard in half, with chickens working a wide swath of trees instead of the few rows they tackled this year. Or monitoring apple yields and the percent of damaged fruit from year to year now that the chickens are on the prowl. With more solid data under their belts, Miller and Witmer hope to share their findings with farmers through Extension, at small-farm conferences and with apple growers’ groups.

In any case, they plan to keep at it. “What motivates me,” explains Miller, as she looks up from a sieve full of decomposing detritus, “is to find elegant solutions that persist through time.” As the birds dive into a new batch of bug-filled compost, they demonstrate the point she makes next: “We just have to set this machine in motion and stand back.”

The future of organic apple production? (Photo: Julia Rosen)

Rick Spinrad, Vice President for Research, Oregon State University

When land grant universities were created 150 years ago, science was already an international activity. Well before the signing of the Morrill Act in 1862, American scientists aboard six U.S. Navy vessels had circumnavigated the globe, collected thousands of plant and animal specimens and mapped parts of the Pacific Ocean from the Columbia River to Antarctica. In 1859, Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution partly on the basis of a worldwide voyage aboard the HMS Beagle. The world’s first international scientific conference was held in 1860, two years before President Abraham Lincoln set the land grant research and education engine in motion.

These universities — the people’s colleges as they were called then — are a singular American innovation. They put a college education and the world’s collected knowledge within the reach of everyday people and focused their energies on such practical endeavors as agriculture and engineering. And they have made global impacts (think the Green Revolution or the computer). They have also made global opportunities available to the sons and daughters of every state, regardless of income or social class.

My own career as a scientist, begun through connections made at Oregon State, has taken me to South America, Africa, the Mediterranean and more than a few unlikely places, such as a cattle-hauling freighter in the Congo River. By its very nature, oceanography is an international endeavor. Ocean currents and ecosystems have no respect for political boundaries.

In one of the Earth's most active fault zones, OSU geoscientist John Nabelek and colleagues are defining the forces that created Mt. Everest and threaten millions of people. (Photo courtesy of John Nabelek)

While we are committed to this state — its people, governments and businesses — international collaborations are also crucial to our mission. Our researchers, faculty members and students alike, work on transdisciplinary projects on every continent. In Terra, you can read about students studying wildlife management in Africa, deep-sea methane near South Korea and sea urchins in Ireland. Our anthropologists and agronomists are at work in India and China. Our geologists are studying the Himalayas and the Andes. Our chemists work with colleagues in Scandinavia, Germany and France. Water resources scientists advise the United Nations and national governments. Public health researchers work in Africa, Mexico and Taiwan.

In the OSU Research Office, we regularly review proposals from faculty members who are being recruited for international projects, but their work pays off for Oregon. It gives them a rich perspective on the world and enables them to train our students with the latest knowledge. And our graduates help Oregon businesses (farmers, equipment manufacturers, apparel design companies) compete in the global marketplace.

There are still important challenges to address in managing this far-flung enterprise. The volatility of the global economy means that three-month-old financial agreements might need to be renegotiated. Concerns about protecting national commercial interests raise regulatory compliance issues, which dictate careful, sometimes complicated considerations about access to equipment and materials. And, despite translation apps and cultural competency training, the Tower of Babel is still standing (How do you say “earned value management principles” in Farsi?).

Just as technology links the world economy and events echo within minutes across the globe, researchers collaborate across international boundaries in ways unimaginable only a generation ago.

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For more information about education abroad opportunities for OSU students, contact the International Degree & Education Abroad (IDEA) office at 541-737-3006.

Rick Spinrad (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

For me, the meeting stimulated important thoughts about scientific inquiry. If researchers save lives, are they “heroes”? One common concept of heroism refers to putting one’s life at risk for the safety of others. We think of a firefighter rescuing a child from a burning building or a soldier risking death to save a comrade. While scientists do not always take chances with life and limb in field and lab work, their efforts often save lives.

Remember polio? By the early 1950s, the epidemic had killed thousands and left many more paralyzed. Most victims were children. As a boy, I watched a neighbor move slowly, awkwardly, with great effort, using metal braces and crutches. I remember standing in line with my classmates to receive a revolutionary dose of precaution. Vaccines developed by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin eliminated new cases of polio from not only my community but from most countries and dramatically reduced its worldwide incidence. I name Salk and Sabin among my champions.

Design for Maximum Benefit

At Oregon State, I think of work by our Construction Engineering faculty, who focus on the safety of homes, buildings, roads, freeways and bridges. Rescuing someone from underneath rubble takes heroism, yet preventing disasters by thoughtful design and construction can also be heroic, with far-reaching benefits.

Illustration by Teresa Hall

Take our students in Engineers Without Borders. They have brought clean drinking water to communities in Central America and are working today in Africa to reduce the death rate from waterborne diseases and to improve quality of life.

Oregon State’s contributions to the understanding of tsunamis and earthquakes are widely heralded, yet between “events,” many of us don’t think about related issues: preservation of critical lifelines, such as key roads, airports and utility networks; seismic upgrades to buildings; and strategies to protect public safety during an event and to help a shattered region rebuild.

Maintaining public health is no less of a challenge. Researchers in our College of Pharmacy are developing new ways to prevent and treat infectious diseases. In the College of Public Health and Human Sciences, researchers address obesity, diabetes and cancer with sound science and with personal care.

Of the more than a quarter-billion dollars’ worth of research conducted at OSU, a large percentage aims to protect human life. In my book, that makes our researchers a band of heroes. So I add my humble definition to Joseph Campbell’s quote above: A hero is someone who dedicates his or her life to creating knowledge for a safer world.

Phil Mote directs the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

It’s important to ask the right questions about data used to reach a conclusion. Are there gaps, either geographically or through time? Were robust statistical methods used to determine if a specific event was indeed unusual? Peer-reviewed research has shown that short periods of cooling can easily be embedded in longer-term warming trends; it’s simply a statistical fact in a time series with a positive trend and a variable system.

Recent cool weather notwithstanding, Oregon has undergone a substantial warming trend over the last 50 to 60 years. What are now considered exceptionally cool seasons were normal 75 to 100 years ago, and seasons now considered normal were exceptionally warm in the same period. If one arbitrarily selects the climatically insignificant period of 5 to 10 years, one can incorrectly conclude that there is no evidence of warming. But further research also shows reasons for the slight decline in global (and Oregon’s) temperatures: A combination of La Niña (when eastern equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures are 3 degrees to 5 degrees Celsius cooler than normal) and solar minimum (a low point in solar activity) temporarily overcame the gradually increasing effects of greenhouse gases.

Globally, 2011 was the warmest La Niña year ever. Research clearly points to a resumption of the warming as the recent spate of La Niñas wanes and as the solar cycle moves toward maximum. In short, rigorous research tells us so much more than the comparison of averages over arbitrary lengths of time.

The larger point that concerns me is how easily many people dismiss rigorous research in preference for subjective observation. Both are valid ways of adding to the sum of human knowledge, but sometimes the results of research can be counterintuitive and can even contradict what we see with our own eyes.

Take, for example, the patient whose doctor tells him he has a treatable form of cancer. If he feels fine, should he rely only on his subjective feelings? Would he be wise to conclude that his doctor is in “the cancer camp” and wait for clear physical evidence before doing anything?

Or what about the roofer who tells a homeowner that her roof is badly worn and could start leaking in the next storm. Would she be wise to dismiss him as part of the “leaky-roof camp” and ignore him until she actually sees the water trickling through her dining room ceiling?

Why do some of us so flippantly dismiss scientists studying the health of our only planet? Why argue against taking prudent steps now?

Some people may wish that global warming is nonsense. So do I. But I have to accept the evidence provided by thousands of honest, hard-working scientists, meticulously documented during the past 120 years, that says otherwise.

— Phil Mote is the director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute

(Photo: Video, Following the Plastic Trail)

Bear with me; here’s the problem. Plastic mulch — those shiny sheets spread across row upon row of veggies, strawberries and other crops — enables farmers to produce more types and greater quantities of food. It makes farming more profitable, preserves soil moisture, reduces weeds and saves on labor costs. But this type of mulch lasts for only a single growing season. After that, it gets dumped in landfills or is torched in the field — right here in the Willamette Valley and as far away as China.

Mark Ingman and a team of fellow Oregon State students are looking for alternatives to plastic mulch. At a national competition for sustainable technologies sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, they impressed the judges enough to walk away with a promise of a $90,000 grant to develop a cost-effective, biodegradable option made out of flax straw and low-grade wool.

They are now exploring a collaboration with a Canadian company, Naturally Advanced Technologies Inc., which is conducting flax trials in the Willamette Valley in cooperation with Oregon State scientists.

Other students engaged in the project are Kara DiFrancesco, Alison Doniger, Tucker Selko, Dustin DeGeorge, Courtney Holley, Isaiah Miller, Michelle Andersen, Randi Ponce, Veronica Nelson and Caity Clark. Faculty advisers  are Mary Santelmann in Oregon State’s Water Resources Graduate program, Hsiou-Lien Chen and Brigitte Cluver in Design and Human Environment, and James Cassidy in Crop and Soil Science.