Transcript

Robbins Church
My name is Robbins Church. I am an environmental research scientist with the Western Ecology Division of the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development.

David Noakes
My name is David Noakes. I am a professor of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University and a senior scientist at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center.

Robbins Church
We are working at analyzing the mucus of coho salmon and steelhead trout for the purpose of understanding how they may switch their diets in the wild. This work has previously been done using muscle tissue of fish for the purpose of studying the influence of returning salmon spawning runs and the dead salmon on the ecology and health of the fish that are still in the stream. When using muscle tissue there is a long lag time involved waiting for the muscle tissue to change in its isotopic composition. This lag is so long that it really gives us a difficult time in making the determination of whether the in-stream fish are using the salmon carcasses.

So we started research to investigate the use of a tissue that might change faster than muscle tissue in order that we could understand the influence of these returning salmon and their carcasses on the fresh water stream ecology. The search for a faster responding tissue led us to consider the use of mucus, the slime that occurs on the outside of fish that they use to protect themselves from various parasites and diseases and also to aid in their swimming. Isotopic analysis of fish mucus has never been done before, and we were the first to do it.

We originally did our work at looking at changes in the isotopic composition of fish mucus in the West Fork of the Smith River in the Oregon Coast Range. In order to understand the dynamics of that situation, however, we had to do controlled experimental work. This work needed to be done with diets of different isotopic composition, and this lead us to work with the Oregon Hatchery Research Center.

David Noakes
At the Oregon Hatchery Research Center, we have an experimental laboratory in a natural environment. One of the main parts of our mission is to look at differences that might exist between hatchery fish and wild fish. We can hold fish and rear fish and study fish under a variety of conditions. This study is particularly important for us, because it helps us to understand the basis for the feeding ecology of these animals, whether they come from a hatchery origin or a wild origin, to help us better understand the relationships of animals in nature.

It’s particularly important because there is a lot of concern, as people well know, about the production or lack of production of salmon and steelhead from freshwater systems. It is believed that diets, early diets and change in diets can be quite critical for these fish, and so this collaboration, which involves different agencies (the EPA, OSU, the OHRC and in fact people in different states) is what the OHRC does best. It brings people together, allows us each of us to contribute our particular expertise to solve a much bigger problem that any one of us could not deal with individually.

The way we conduct our part of the study in collaboration with Robbins and his people is that we hold the fish in very carefully controlled conditions. These are animals that we rear from hatching, and so we know their history. We rear them on controlled diets at controlled feeding rates. We then sample the fish at specific times, basically by washing the fish. It’s a remarkably simple procedure. We wash the fish, take the mucus from them and capture that mucus in the sealed plastic bags that then go through the procedures at the EPA laboratory.

So for us, it is part of a much bigger study that we are involved in looking at early life history and development of salmon and trout. Understanding what it is they feed on and how they feed and then how we can use that information to better manage populations of wild and hatchery fish.

Robbins Church
Once we receive the samples of mucus in plastic bags from the Oregon Hatchery Research Center, that mucus is frozen in the plastic bags and brought to the laboratory. It is then washed out of the plastic bags with just distilled water. That water is then filtered to remove debris and extraneous materials. The sample is refrozen until the time when it can be freeze-dried in the freeze-dryer, which is behind me operating right now. The water is removed from the sample by freeze-drying procedure, which takes two days.  The resulting material is just a biologic material – just dried mucus. That mucus is then weighed out in very tiny amounts and then analyzed in the mass spectrometer. The mass spectrometer provides us with the data that we need to do our analyses and to write research papers reporting our results.

We have just published our first research paper on the results of experiments at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center, and this work has now, in January 2009, been published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. This paper was published as a rapid communications paper of high interest to the journal, and its publication is featured prominently on the journal’s Web pages.

There are additional benefits of our research, mainly that we can take samples non-lethally from threatened and endangered fish species. This research is part of our laboratory work in support of the Clean Water Act.
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Video produced by Craig Anderson, OSU Media Services

On Mustard Seed Farms in the northern Willamette Valley, farmer Dave Brown switched over to organic methods after making a personal commitment to healthier eating. (Photo by Jan Sonnenmair)

“The organic movement has evolved from a fringe element associated with a lost generation to a core business strategy of the world’s largest corporations.”

–Reuters News Service, September 2008

When California-based Amy’s Kitchen opened a plant in Southern Oregon in 2006, the Oregon Department of Agriculture called it “a large feather in Oregon’s organic cap.” The nation’s largest producer of organic frozen foods, from complete meals to pizza, now employs about 700 full-time workers in White City. Its success is a sign that, over the last decade, organics have morphed from counterculture to mainstream.

Whether you’ve tossed a box of Amy’s enchiladas into your shopping cart, picked up salad greens from Gathering Together Farms at the local farmers market or purchased organic milk in the Fred Meyer natural foods aisle, you’re part of this fastest growing segment of American agriculture. For many Americans, anxiety about pesticide residues in their meals and contaminants in their environment prompts them to pay more at the checkout to protect their family and their planet. Until the recent economic slump, consumer sales were galloping ahead at 20 percent a year, according to the Organic Trade Association, reaching nearly $17 billion in 2006.

In Oregon, organics have taken off even faster. Between 2007 and 2008, certified organic acreage across the state shot up nearly 40 percent (from 83,000 to 115,000 acres), according to Oregon Tilth. Although that’s a fraction of the state’s 16.4 million agricultural acres, Oregon ranks eighth nationwide for number of certified organic farms. And the impact of the new ethic doesn’t stop there. Many conventional growers, too, are adopting sustainable practices to meet regulatory standards or to appeal to niche consumer markets.

True to its land grant roots, Oregon State University has a history of bringing advanced science and technologies to agriculture. Now, to help growers compete in the organic and natural foods industries, scientists are working hand-in-hand with farmers and ranchers — cranberry growers on the Pacific coast, cattle ranchers on the Zumwalt Prairie, vineyard managers near Portland, wheat farmers in the Klamath Basin — to boost yields, bolster nutrition and compound profits while eliminating chemicals that can disrupt ecosystems and threaten human health. OSU’s organic agriculture program includes 29 researchers developing methods in fruit, vegetable, dairy and livestock production.

Organic growers range from small farm to corporate. Terra takes you to a vegetable acreage in the northern Willamette Valley and a pear orchard in Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley to meet researchers working with what some are calling the “ecological farmer.” On Dave Brown’s Mustard Seed Farms and Harry & David’s Bear Creek Orchards, crops are being raised where nature intersects science.

Pheromone-scented traps help entomologist Richard Hilton and pear-orchard managers monitor how many codling moths are in the neighborhood. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

Color of Earth

Dave Brown’s fields burst with color 10 months a year. From the cool greens of spring lettuce through the warm golds of winter squash, his organic farm sprouts a rainbow of nutrients. He owes the brilliance of his royal-purple broccoli and flame-orange cauliflower to the russet soils of his farm in St. Paul just north of Salem. If he can enhance the life-giving properties of that rich Willamette Valley earth, his vegetables will be bigger and brighter — and so will his business.

That’s why he’s part of an ongoing OSU study to investigate a key building block of plant growth: nitrogen.

“These studies are giving me concrete data I can work with,” says Brown, sitting at the kitchen table of 80-acre Mustard Seed Farms one drizzly day in April. “I know what’s going on in my soils.”

Framed and Bagged

West of the farmhouse a battered pickup bumps along a dirt road, jostling OSU Extension agent Nick Andrews and his assistant, Kristin Pool, en route to a study site funded by the USDA and Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. The muck-booted pair piles out and grabs armloads of gear: four-foot-square metal frames, brown paper bags, harvest knives and the obligatory rainwear. Now into their fourth year studying nitrogen in the valley, Andrews and Pool have become fixtures on Brown’s acreage.

Andrews waves his arm toward a field dotted with little red flags. “In this plot we’re growing common vetch,” he says. “Over here is a mixture of vetch and cereal rye, and over there is still more vetch, this time mixed with phacelia.” The experimental plots are “cover crops” — soil-building plants typically grown over the winter and tilled into the earth come spring. They contribute to bigger pumpkins, tastier squash, more bountiful broccoli and more nutritious cauliflower by boosting soil fertility and structure.

Wading into the dewy, knee-deep vetch, Andrews and Pool place a metal frame over a patch of plants and then, kneeling under a pewter sky, begin carefully cutting away all stalks, leaves and flowers growing inside the square. Four samples from each plot will go back to the lab at OSU’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora for analysis.

Benefits of Cover Crops

Farmers use grasses and broadleaf plants as cover crops, but legumes are of keen interest because of their

An OSU study to help farmers estimate nitrogen contributions from cover crops will boost yields of organic vegetables. (Photo: Jan Sonnenmair)

special ability, in tandem with root-dwelling microbes, to take gaseous nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into a plant-available form. Scientists call this process nitrogen “fixing.” When tilled into the soil before spring planting, these nitrogen-rich crops boost productivity naturally, letting farmers save money on nitrogen fertilizers and reduce groundwater contamination. The emerald canopies, flowers of yellow, lavender and indigo, and bacteria-nurturing root nodules offer other plusses, too: pollen and nectar for bees and butterflies; habitat for ground beetles, spiders and other beneficial insects; nutrients for earthworms and microbes; suppression of weeds and control of erosion.

But just how much nitrogen vetch and other legumes (members of the pea and bean families) contribute to the soils has long been a question for farmers. “Nitrogen contributions from cover crops vary widely,” Andrews explains. “Last year, one 26-inch tall cover crop of oats and vetch supplied only 10 pounds of plant-available nitrogen per acre, but a nearby 20-inch crop with more vetch supplied 60 pounds of available nitrogen. That’s a huge difference. Growers need a simple science-based method to account for this nitrogen supply.”

That’s what the OSU study aims to do: give growers new tools for estimating nitrogen availability from cover crops. In all, the researchers are monitoring 32 plots at each of five northern Willamette Valley farms to see how well various legumes perform in diverse soil types and farming methods. Soil cores taken early-on were frozen and their nitrogen content analyzed for baseline data. Then cover crops in 20-foot by 80-foot plots were planted. After fixing nitrogen all winter, the live plants were sampled and shipped off to the lab. Then a tractor blended the remaining nitrogen-loaded plants back into the earth to become “green manure.”

Nitrate levels and vegetable crop yields will be compared against those of untreated control plots, and cumulative effects will be measured over time. Meanwhile, in OSU’s Department of Crop and Soil Science, Associate Professor Dan Sullivan and graduate student RonJon Datta are measuring the amount and timing of plant-available nitrogen released from cover crops. They are identifying “reliable predictors of plant-available nitrogen in the field.”

“Our goal,” says Andrews, “is to be able to quantify the plant-available nitrogen so farmers can, with confidence, reduce nitrogen fertilizer based on the value of the cover crop.”

After last year’s findings suggested cutting back on chicken manure for certain low-nitrogen crops, Brown got eye-popping results. “I had the most beautiful winter squash I’ve ever had,” he reports. “Big plants, big fruit.”

Andrews explains the phenomenon this way: “Some crops will suck up a lot more nitrogen than others. Sweet corn, broccoli and cauliflower are very heavy feeders. Squash, on the other hand, is a modest feeder so it doesn’t need all that manure. Too much nitrogen has actually been shown to decrease squash yield. That’s because over-fertilized plants will keep growing leaves and stems rather than fruit.”

Faith of the Seed

For Dave Brown, going organic was the culmination of a personal journey. As a longtime conventional grower who relied on chemicals to enrich soils, control weeds and kill bugs, he got interested in nutrition in the late-1980s. Synthetic insecticides, herbicides and fertilizers started to seem jarringly out of sync with his new health-conscious lifestyle. “My wife Nancy and I decided that if we lived that way personally, we should grow our crops that way, too,” he says.

So he switched to fish fertilizer. Next he junked the chemicals. Organic certification followed three years later.

Taking something small — a tiny seed, a type of vegetable, an acre of land — and maximizing its potential is what Brown is all about. He pushes the envelope on everything.

“I’m not satisfied with white cauliflower — I have to grow purple and orange and green, also,” he says. “I don’t just do red beets, I do Chioggia and gold, too. A lot of people will grow acorn squash and butternut, maybe some Kabocha and a little Delicata. But I grow 19 or 20 kinds of squash.

“If you’re gonna grow ‘em, grow ‘em all — as long as you have a market.”

Finding a market for his organic produce hasn’t cost him one sleepless night. Business is brisk. Brown sells most of his produce to Organically Grown Company, the Northwest’s largest organic wholesaler. From his modest farm on Portland’s urban fringe, his vegetables might wind up at a big chain (Whole Foods, New Seasons, Fred Meyer, Albertson’s) or they might land in a community co-op, a mom-and-pop grocery, an elegant restaurant or a funky cafe. Surpluses go to the food bank.

A deeply spiritual man (he named his farm after the Biblical parable of the mustard seed), Brown sees no contradiction in his embrace of science. To him, enhancing God’s handiwork through hard data and agricultural research just makes sense.

“I’m a numbers person,” he says. “I like to analyze things.”

Southern Oregon owes its thriving pear industry to a 100-year partnership among growers and OSU scientists. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

Moth Squad

In Southern Oregon, the name Harry & David evokes a down-home setting. The company’s famous pears do originate in the bucolic reaches of Oregon’s Rogue Valley. But their trademark, Royal Riviera, tells a truer story. These regal fruits, gentled in jiggle-proof boxes, travel everywhere in the U.S. and Canada by jet and semi. Once-humble Harry & David, headquartered in Medford, is a $400 million corporation owned by the Wasserstein Group of New York City.

In this mountainous country, pears are very big business.

At Bear Creek Orchards, a Harry & David subsidiary, tens of thousands of trees in postcard-perfect symmetry grace acre upon acre of prime orchard land in Jackson County, producing not only gourmet Comice but also Bosc, Bartlett and D’Anjou for a handful of large growers and a dozen or so smaller ones. The region’s $30 million annual crop supplies one-tenth of the pears that wind up in America’s lunchboxes and salad bowls.

Rogue Valley pears, unblemished by bugs or blight, owe their perfection to a century-long partnership among growers and OSU researchers. Together, they have worked to outwit insects, fend off fungi and foil diseases that can decimate crops and destroy livelihoods. Science and technology have become indispensable allies for an industry driven by the vagaries of weather and other exigencies of nature.

New threats can emerge, quite literally, overnight.

Chief among the threats is the codling moth — a small, drab-winged pest that seems harmless until you see the ugly wormhole bored by its larva. In the old days, growers fought the moth with lead arsenate, a stomach poison. Then came the broad-spectrum pesticides — first DDT, followed by other neurotoxins such as the organophosphates, carbamates and pyrethroids — which killed everything that crawled and flew, the good bugs along with the bad. As a result, ecosystems tipped off-kilter. New pests popped up. The cycle of eradication began again.

OSU helped growers get off the overkill treadmill by introducing “integrated pest management” — using a mixture of nature-friendly tactics to keep insects in check. Thanks to research at OSU, other land grant universities and the Agricultural Research Service, Rogue Valley growers now spray host-specific viruses that target only the codling moth. And they rely heavily on pheromones — sex scents — that confuse male moths and disrupt reproduction. Exploiting nature’s own processes not only makes a lighter footprint on the Earth, it benefits the bottom line.

“You want it to be sustainable, but also profitable,” says lead entomologist Richard Hilton. “Growers are saving $100 to $150 an acre by going to a soft system. It’s significant.”

Rumors of Mites

Codling moths, along with other bugs in the “pear pest complex” — spider mites, pear psylla, San Jose scale, pear rust mites — provide regular fodder for the bimonthly brown-bags hosted by the Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center in Central Point. One noon-hour in May, OSU scientists are sitting around a long table with a spirited cross-section of industry folks: Mega-orchard managers with clipboards and briefcases from Bear Creek, Naumes (one of the nation’s largest pear growers), Associated Fruit, and the Church of Latter-Day Saints. A small landowner in red suspenders. A couple of “field men” (chemical company consultants). A packinghouse rep. A visiting entomologist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Two horticulturists — one from Harry & David and the other from Suterra, a Bend-based manufacturer of pheromone monitoring and control systems — round out the group.

OSU’s 10-decade legacy of industry cooperation shows in the easy synergy among these sun-burnished men and women. Hilton, raising his voice to cut through the chatter, displays a graph pinpointing peak egg-laying and larvae-hatch days. Quickly, the banter segues to shop talk. The group parries over “bio-fix” dates derived from two competing weather models. They trade info on the latest trap designs and bio-lures. They debate labeling on sprays with formidable names (Intrepid, Assail, Centaur). They weigh in on mite management. They invoke a litany of lesser pests (blister mites, stink bugs, Oriental fruit moths, leaf rollers). An innovative transparent trap that lures moths with acetic acid and pear ester — two natural chemical compounds given off naturally by ripening fruit — gets a lot of interest. That’s because these volatile compounds lure the female moths as well as the males. A USDA patent on the design is pending.

Data fly around the room like mate-seeking moths.

As the meeting breaks up, a mysterious green worm is passed to Hilton in a test tube. “We found this in the Dugan orchard when we were scouting for OBLR (oblique-banded leaf roller),” says Kathleen McNamara, pest control adviser for Harry & David’s 28 orchards. “Can you identify it for us?” The orchardists cluster around to peer at this potential new pest.

One more worry to take back to work.

Between brown-bags, the group stays in touch over the Net instead of, as in days gone by, over the fence. E-mail lists and OSU’s interactive “pest-alert page” give growers and researchers a place to post time-sensitive messages and data to maintain their competitive edge. The mystery worm, for instance, turned out to be a pyramidal fruitworm, a “fairly minor pest,” Hilton assured the growers in a posting shortly after the brown-bag.

A Cartridge in a Pear Tree

Southern Oregon owes its thriving pear industry to a 100-year partnership among growers and OSU scientists. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

If you walk the rows of Bear Creek’s organic orchard east of Central Point, plump pears destined for gourmet gift boxes and grocery store bins aren’t the only objects hanging in the cool boughs. Look closely, and you’ll see the fruits of science and technology, as well.

Matt Borman walks beneath a bower of boughs so green they seem like something out of a touched-up photo. Stopping at Row CFI-100, the Bear Creek hort technology manager reaches into the branches and takes down an orange plastic trap shaped like a tiny pup-tent. One moth and a soldier beetle are stuck on the sticky base.

“We hang one every seven acres to lure moths with pheromones and pear ester,” Borman explains. “Our scouts check the traps once a week, and enter the numbers in a database. Along with GIS mapping and microclimate weather monitoring, we can keep tabs on moth populations and decide whether and when to spray.” As one of a mere smattering of certified organic orchards in the valley, this 34-acre plot is sprayed with a biologically based insecticide, the granulovirus pathogen (CpVG), a natural enemy of the codling moth, and with a natural clay-based product called Surround, which drives other pests from the orchard.

“We’re learning things in our organic blocks that are bleeding into our conventional blocks,” says Borman. “We’re always trying to match the site with the most sustainable and soft system we can. We’re looking for that perfect balance between effectiveness and environmental friendliness.”

Borman then points high into the tree to reveal the most dazzling of novel moth technologies — the Suterra “puffer.” When a researcher at the University of California created the first puffer from a bathroom deodorizer dispenser in the 1980s, he couldn’t have imagined where his invention would lead. The device has evolved with the revolution in electronics. In the guts of today’s battery-operated model — which looks like a nesting house for birds — a miniature computer runs software designed to trigger bursts of pheromones from an aerosol cartridge, precisely timed with biological cycles.

Here’s how it works: As moths start to emerge, but before they mate, the puffers — placed in one tree per acre — begin burping out female pheromones every 15 minutes at night when the insects are active. The male moth picks up the scent and flutters off to find the faux female. He gets confused. He flies here, he flies there. He wastes time. Meanwhile, the window for fertilization is closing. If the phony seduction can fool the male for three or four days, the females’ odds of laying fertile eggs drop steeply.

Nature Bats Last

In the Rogue Valley’s pear orchards, new science constantly drives innovation. Solutions shift as knowledge grows and as nature adapts. European growers, for instance, are scrambling to fight a new strain of codling moth resistant to overused viral sprays in Germany. Despite ever-better methods for managing pests, nature remains — will always remain — one step ahead of human ingenuity. As Richard Hilton observes, “We will never fully understand the life of an insect.”

Nitrogen got you puzzled? Learn how to estimate nitrogen from cover crops here.

To support organic agriculture research at OSU, contact the Oregon State University Foundation.

Three times a week, as dawn breaks over the Willamette Valley, 25 women show up at the Benton Center gym in Corvallis. Their exercise clothes are loose and casual. No spandex for this crowd. On average, they’re my mother’s age and as feisty as they are friendly. “Oh, there’s men creatures in here,” clucks one when she sees me and a photographer. “Watch where you point that camera,” says another.

They hang up coats and put on tennis shoes. Some don weighted vests. Under bright lights and past mirrors and brightly colored exercise balls, they begin to walk around the gym. They share the latest news about themselves (“I walked four miles yesterday to see a friend”) and their families (“At the bone lab yesterday, my grandson got all excited because he got to see my skeleton”). Then they collect in a circle so the instructor can lead them through exercises that have them stretching, lunging, panting and “glistening” (not sweating, says one) for an hour.

For these women, the Better Bones and Balance class provides more than a few laughs and a faster pulse. It generates resilience. For some, it has already meant the difference between avoiding a fall and taking a trip to the hospital. OSU laboratory tests confirm that exercisers strengthen muscles and maintain or increase bone mass, reducing the risk of debilitating injury.

Resilience, the ability to adapt or recover from injury, comes into play in our cover story, too. Salmon researchers aim to increase the resilience of this iconic Northwest fish. The future of salmon depends on two things: their ability to respond to habitat changes and our management of hatcheries, watersheds and harvesting practices.

Resilience is also a cultural asset. Teaching Oregon Native Languages offers a view of language diversity at the time of statehood. Today, the native language movement is preserving knowledge and experience that has been encoded in the way people speak.

As exercisers know, building resilience takes work and commitment, but it’s well worth the effort. Our future depends on it.

- Nick Houtman,
Editor

In support of her work, the Ohio native received a three-year STAR (Science to Achieve Results) Fellowship from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In OSU Associate Professor Kim Anderson’s toxicology lab, Layshock analyzes the chemical composition of particles from coal and oil combustion products known as polyaromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs. Some types of PAHs are known to interact with DNA and thus pose a health threat. In her toxicity analyses, she is comparing particles transported from Asia with those produced locally.

Layshock plans to complete her study in 2010. She hopes to work for a government agency developing new pollution control techniques or reducing human exposure to pollutants.

Now a group of researchers at Oregon State, Cornell and Howard universities; Bowdoin College; and the Conservation Fund, are undertaking a five-year quest to find creative ways of applying computer science to ecological science, bio-fuels and natural resource management. Their work is supported by a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

The project is led by Tom Dietterich at Oregon State with OSU colleagues Claire Montgomery and Heidi Jo Albers in forestry and Weng-Keen Wong in engineering and with Carla Gomes at Cornell.

“Many scientific fields have come to rely on rapid, large-scale computation to make major advances,” says Dietterich, “but the field of computer science has more to offer than just raw computer power. Clever algorithms (recipes for carrying out steps in the computer) have led to major advances in molecular biology and the genomics revolution as well as to advances in computational chemistry and astronomy. We hope to have a similar impact in ecology and natural resource management.”

Among the topics that scientists and engineers will pursue are fishery economics, wildlife reserves, species distribution and fuel reductions in forests.

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The Campaign for OSU
OSU news releases

• Dietterich Named AAAS Fellow (11-12-07)
• OSU Spin-Off Company Created, Acquired by Seattle Firm (7-7-06)

“The concept is to use new, fundamental scientific advances to drive more efficient production and fabrication methods, use green materials and reduce environmental impacts,” says Douglas Keszler, center director and distinguished professor of chemistry at OSU. “The focus will be on electronics and related areas. This is cutting-edge science and technology, and it was born and bred here in Oregon.”

State investment in ONAMI, the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, has helped to pave the way for the new center which, if successful, could be in line for up to $25 million in federal funding over the next five years.

Dave Johnson, center co-director and Rosaria P. Haugland Foundation Chair in Pure and Applied Chemistry at the University of Oregon, says that state support for ONAMI was key. “ONAMI investments in facilities, increased ties to Oregon and regional industry, an ONAMI spin-out company and the intercampus collaborations were all key elements in putting together this winning proposal.”

“Among projects sponsored by the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, I believe this new center holds great potential for future growth in both the research enterprise and commercial entities,” says Skip Rung, ONAMI president and executive director.

The Oregon coast is both laboratory and teaching arena for Jane Lubchenco (Photo: Kelly James)

The nomination of Oregon State University marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reflects OSU’s growing leadership in federal environmental science programs. If confirmed, Lubchenco will be the second OSU scientist to head NOAA. Former OSU president John Byrne served as NOAA Administrator from 1981 to 1984. The agency’s $4 billion budget supports research and monitoring of fisheries, weather and marine and coastal resources.

Also serving in national agency leadership roles are five professors in OSU’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences (COAS):

• Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Sciences Division at NASA
• Timothy J. Cowles, program director for the Ocean Observatories Initiative, the National Science Foundation’s signature research project on climate change
• Kelly Falkner, director of NSF’s Antarctic Ocean and Climate Sciences program
• Jim McManus, associate program director of the chemical oceanography program at the National Science Foundation
• Mark Abbott, COAS dean and member of the National Science Board (and co-chair of Oregon’s Global Warming Commission)

OSU scientists also chair federal government committees that guide programs in such areas as marine reserves, social science research, public health, biomedicine and forest resources.

Euro-American traders and settlers brought Russian, French, Spanish and English to the region we call Oregon, but native people spoke at least 18, possibly more than 25 distinct languages. By 1859, English was becoming dominant, foreshadowing the almost complete loss of native languages and the development of Chinook Jargon (or “Chinuk Wawa”) as a common creole language. Ten of these languages are being revitalized today.

Below, in excerpts from Teaching Oregon Native Languages, OSU anthropologist Joan Gross offers a glimpse of this linguistic heritage. She and co-authors advocate for support of native language instruction “to promote the value of multilingualism in our society and the deep respect for cultural diversity that it brings.”

What became the state of Oregon, an area stretching south from the Columbia Gorge to the Siskiyous, and east from the Pacific over the Coastal Range and Cascades to the High Desert, was a land of many languages, each one encoding information about the land and how to survive on it. The various languages of Oregon belong to language families as different from each other as English is from Arabic: Athabaskan, Salishan, Shastan, Uto-Aztecan, and a number of families that have been roughly grouped into the Penutian phylum (Chinookan, Kalapuyan-Takelman, Sahaptian, Lutuamian, Molallan, Cayusan, Yakonan, Siuslawan, Coosan). Each of these families consisted of several languages, and each language of several spoken dialects. Even within what might be called the same dialect, each village probably had its own subdialect, differing from neighboring villages in the way certain sounds were pronounced and a few vocabulary words…

In addition to the high value placed on learning multiple Native languages, there was still a need for a means of communication in short-term encounters between speakers of different languages. This need was filled by the creation of a trade language that came to be known as Chinook Jargon. By the time Lewis and Clark made their voyage down the Columbia, there is some evidence of a mixed language being spoken, but it most certainly stabilized into a pidgin language during the fur-trading period.

Both natives and Euro-Americans in the Northwest saw the advantage of this easily learned language. Pidgins have a simplified grammatical structure and are much easier to learn than historically rooted languages that have developed all sorts of unsystematic complexities over the years. Languages that bridge communication gaps between speakers of different languages are know as lingua francas. Chinook Jargon quickly became the lingua franca of the Northwest.

The first European nuns who arrived in the Willamette Valley in 1844 to teach the children growing up in this multicultural area used Chinook Jargon with their students. Several Chinook Jargon words drifted into Northwest frontier English. Words like “tyee” (chief), “skookum” (strong), “tillicum” (friend), “wawa” (talk), and “alki” (soon) were used to metaphorically claim identity with the region. An Oregon congressman in the 1880s talked about how General Sheridan and the translator, Nesmith, conversed in Chinook Jargon back in Washington, D.C. (Once, one of their telegrams was intercepted by the Secretary of War who, seeing the incomprehensible words, suspected a plot was afoot.)

Teaching Oregon Native Languages, by Joan Gross, Erin Haynes, David Lewis, Deanna Kingston and Juan Trujillo, published by Oregon State University Press in 2007, can be ordered online.

Note: OSU Press will expand its work in indigenous studies through a $1 million grant to four university presses from the Mellon Foundation. See a January 9, 2009 story in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

A day after his high-school graduation, Rob Golembiewski landed a summer job experimenting with turf grass at Michigan State University. The self-confessed perfectionist says he still loves to work in his yard. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum)

Rob Golembiewski wears a size-13 shoe, but that’s nothing compared with the shoes he has to fill. The former head of the golf and turf management program at the University of Minnesota’s Crookston campus has replaced Tom Cook as the director of Oregon State University’s turf management program.

Thirty-one years ago, the hardworking and revered Cook, who retired this fall, single-handedly created the program, which has produced superintendents at prominent golf courses, including Pebble Beach and Bandon Dunes.

“It’s phenomenal what Tom did as a one-man show. I have an appreciation for what he built. I’ll be very protective of it, and I look forward to taking it to the next level,” says Golembiewski, who launched the golf and turf program at Montana State University and co-owned a landscaping company for six years in Arizona.

He has wasted no time getting down to work. He clocks at least 12 hours a day teaching, picking the brains of industry professionals over lunch and speaking at conferences. On weekends, he’s at his office, which he painted himself – a luminous Beaver orange. (“It was a little brighter than I expected,” he confesses.)

Right now, he’s deciding what research projects to take on.

“I’ve been visiting with turf breeders, golf course superintendents and landscapers trying to get feedback about what the Pacific Northwest industry sees as key issues,” he adds. “I want to do research that impacts the Northwest and the nation.”

He plans to continue the program’s research on perennial ryegrass, the fertility of annual bluegrass and the performance of certain grass mixtures in shaded conditions. The research is conducted on five acres of experimental plots and putting greens at OSU’s Lewis-Brown Farm. Golembiewski intends to expand the putting green area there by up to 10,000 square feet.

He’s also looking to enhance what takes place inside the classroom. In December, he met with a committee of industry representatives to hear its thoughts on how graduates of the program have performed at the representatives’ companies and how the curriculum stacks up to others.

Unlike Cook, though, Golembiewski doesn’t have to scramble to gather grants and donations to fund his employment during the summer. Earlier this year, the family of the late OSU alumnus Nat Giustina announced that it had donated $1 million to endow a professorship for Cook’s replacement.

Golembiewski’s endowment is a far cry from his first paid job in the business. That was back when he was a teenager taking care of a neighbor’s immaculate yard.

“They loved me because I was meticulous,” says Golembiewski, 39, the second youngest of 11 children. When it comes to his own yard, the Michigan native describes himself as a perfectionist. “I mow straight lines and pick up every leaf,” he says. “I love to work in the yard.”

As drug-resistant strains of TB spread around the world, Luiz Bermudez works urgently on new treatments. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

M. tuberculosis is a tenacious germ.

Armored in a thick, waxy wall impervious to water, the bacterium can lie dormant in the lungs for decades, waiting for a weakness in its human host. When airborne on a cough or a laugh, it can infect a new victim in a simple breath of air. With a flip of a gene, it can dodge healing drugs by mobilizing legions of mutant clones.

Once considered a disease of the past (the last of Oregon’s sanitariums were closed in the 1970s), TB is making a comeback. Around the world, more than 8 million people are infected yearly, and 2 million die. Piggybacking on the epidemic of HIV/AIDS, the opportunistic TB pathogen is more dangerous than ever. Some 12,000 strains, each bearing a distinct “genetic fingerprint,” have turned up in hospitals, prisons, refugee camps and clinics.

In OSU’s biohazard lab, thousands of these strains are undergoing experiments that could give the world its first new TB therapy in four decades. Luiz Bermudez, M.D., is leading an investigation into the anti-TB properties of a drug commonly used to treat malaria. The two-year project is funded by a nearly $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major partner in a worldwide race to defeat M. tuberculosis.

Some strains have developed fierce resistance to the powerful drugs rifampin and isoniazid, the “backbone of modern anti-TB chemotherapy,” explains Bermudez, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine. Until recently, scientists believed this potent cocktail had virtually wiped out the killer disease. But new drug-resistant strains have emerged. “Now it is very common for a healthy person to acquire drug-resistant bacteria directly,” Bermudez warns. “In terms of public health, that is a nightmare.”

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has designated some strains as “extensively drug resistant” (XDR) – that is, they survive just about anything doctors throw at them. In the U.S., 17 cases of XDR-TB have been reported.

With drug-resistant TB raging in hotspots such as Russia and Argentina, the Gates Foundation and others (including billionaire philanthropist George Soros, the World Health Organization and the World Bank) have mounted an aggressive 21st-century battle against the resurgent germ.

Of Germs and Genomes

Bermudez studies a family of infectious pathogens called mycobacteria, of which M. tuberculosis is one. Hansen’s disease, or leprosy, is another. A third is M. avium, which attacks humans whose defenses are compromised by conditions such as HIV-AIDS.

Bermudez and his colleagues – pharmacy professor Mark Zabriskie and several post-doctoral assistants – work with the rod-shaped microorganisms inside OSU’s Biosafety Level-3 laboratory. (Level 3 is designated by the CDC for airborne pathogens, including anthrax, West Nile virus, typhus and yellow fever.) The Gates-funded study focuses on Mefloquine, a drug that has proven extremely lethal to M. avium, both in test tubes and in animals. But there’s a downside: Mefloquine causes neurological side-effects – from depression to paranoia – in 15 percent of patients.

In a recent breakthrough, Bermudez was able to isolate the most active compound in Mefloquine. It turned out to have a dual benefit. “The compound that is most effective against mycobacteria is the least toxic of the compounds,” Bermudez says.

The agent has also proven effective against M. tuberculosis in test tubes. The researcher’s goal now is to pinpoint the “essential target” on the DNA of resistant TB mutants. That is, he’s looking for the key metabolic gene the germ needs to survive. Once he finds it, scientists can develop new drugs that attack TB in new ways. “Most antibiotics shut down bacteria by inhibiting protein synthesis,” Bermudez says. “For Mefloquine, we don’t yet know what the mechanism is. But it appears to do more than just inhibit the mycobacteria – it kills it.”

In a world where everyone is only a plane ride from everyone else and M. tuberculosis can be transmitted in a cough, a sneeze, even a hymn sung with gusto in church, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Salmon seiners on the Columbia River, 1914 (Photo, courtesy of the U.S. Geologtical Survey)

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were early witnesses to the majesty that is the salmon in the Pacific Northwest. When the explorers first came upon the confluence of the Yakima and Columbia rivers, they observed a scene that was both confusing and awe-inspiring. Wrote Clark:

“This river is remarkably Clear and Crouded with Salmon in manye places and I observe in assending great numbers of Salmon dead on the Shores, floating on the water and in the Bottoms which can be seen at the debth of 20 feet.”

Lewis and Clark may not have known about the wondrous life cycle of the salmon, but the aboriginal peoples of the Pacific Northwest certainly did. Salmon provided an abundant and predictable protein source that was cured, smoked and dried. It provided sustenance through bone-chilling winters and was traded to inland tribes for obsidian or other goods.

The value of salmon was soon recognized by others. In 1824, the Hudson’s Bay Company sent barrels of salted salmon to London. Although they spoiled, the industrialization of the resource had begun. By 1865, the first cannery was established on the Columbia, and by the end of the century, canneries could be found on the Rogue, Umpqua, Nehalem, Nestucca, Alsea, Coquille and Siletz rivers, and on Tillamook and Yaquina bays.

Over-fishing began to take its toll on the mighty salmon. As westward migration brought more people into the Northwest, dams were built and streamside forests were cut. Eroding soils buried spawning grounds in sediment, and complex river channels became pipelines. Wastes poured into once-pristine waters.

The finger of blame for declining salmon runs has pointed at these and other factors: sea lions, birds, aquaculture, development and hatcheries. Climate change and ocean conditions may trump them all.

Since Oregon’s commercial salmon fleet brought in nearly $50 million at the dock in 1988, revenues have steadily declined. Recreational fishing has boosted rural communities, but the salmon economy has stalled. In 2008, the commercial season was closed along the California and Oregon coasts. If the decline has been a process of death by a thousand cuts, restoring salmon runs may require the application of a thousand small bandages. We are finally admitting that we don’t know quite as much about salmon as we thought we did, but the research is catching up.

More than two-dozen scientists in four OSU colleges and colleagues in state and federal agencies are studying the salmon life-cycle. Their work is generating a rare feeling about the future of this Northwest treasure. It is called hope.

The following stories suggest what it will take for this symbol of the Northwest to thrive.

Running the Gauntlet

Salmon have struggled past dams for decades, but the harm may go deeper than we think. Certainly the towering hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River have served as a barrier to adult salmon migrating upstream to spawn. Then scientists discovered that hundreds of thousands of juvenile fish met their demise on the way downstream to the ocean, victims 
of poorly designed fish passageways and spillways.

But the full risk of dams may be underappreciated, according to Carl Schreck, who has spent much of his career studying the young fish.

Schreck is a U.S. Geological Survey scientist with a courtesy appointment in OSU’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. A leading expert on the impacts of stress in fish, he received the Meritorious Presidential Rank Award last year at a White House ceremony for his contributions to fisheries science. His studies suggest that juvenile salmon may be harmed by the stress they endure as they navigate the Columbia’s hydro system. (Listen to Schreck describe his research here.)

“Stress in fish delays development,” Schreck says. “It also suppresses the immune system, which can increase the chance that fish will be susceptible to disease or parasites. Even though the data suggest that a certain percentage of juvenile salmon survive the freshwater phase of their migration, their weakened condition can be the difference when a young salmon (known as a smolt) needs to adapt to a saltwater environment.”

Additional risks stem from chemical contaminants and changes in water flow rates and temperatures. Despite the complexities, Schreck is optimistic that science and engineering are beginning to make a difference. New fish passage technologies and increased water release over spillways have improved smolts’ initial survival past the Columbia River dams, he says. But when smolts delay their migration for days before trying to navigate past the first dam, the added stress could be setting them up to fail once they enter the ocean.

One possible solution: start with a healthier smolt.

Shaun Clements is a former OSU research associate and colleague of Schreck, now working as a biologist with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. During a study of juvenile salmon on the Columbia, he compared the health and vigor of smolts that were captured at Lower Granite Dam. His research team inserted radio and acoustic transmitters into the young fish at the dams to trace their migration downriver.

“One day, we’d get a group of fish that were released from one hatchery and they’d be relatively weak, then a few days later we’d get a bunch of fish from a different hatchery, and they would be robust,” Clements says. “Hatcheries weren’t the only variable. Sometimes fish from the same hatchery would range from poor to excellent in quality, possibly due to environmental factors such as water temperature in the reservoirs.

“These same mechanisms may also apply to wild fish where we see different watersheds producing smolts of differing quality,” he adds. “The point is that the quality of smolts entering into the system can have an impact on their ability to survive the entire migration and the transition into the ocean.”

Good Breeding

Such differences among young salmon — why some are 98-pound weaklings and others strut their stuff — may be influenced by hatchery practices. In 2007, OSU geneticist Michael Blouin published a study on steelhead, a close relative of salmon, in the journal Science documenting a stunning loss of “reproductive success” at a Hood River, Oregon, hatchery. He reported that 15 percent fewer offspring of first-generation hatchery-raised fish returned to spawn as adults than did the offspring of wild fish. And second-generation hatchery fish produced about half the number of surviving offspring as first-generation fish. The first- and second-generation hatchery fish were raised in the same environment, so the difference between them must be based on genetics.

“We weren’t surprised by the effect,” Blouin says, “but we were certainly surprised at how quickly it happened.”

Scientists aren’t sure why. Certainly, hatcheries provide an artificial environment for young fish that offers plenty of food and little danger — conditions that could lead to vulnerability once they leave their concrete cocoon. In the wild, he says, natural selection continually purges fish species of genetic weaknesses.

Designing and managing hatcheries to emulate natural conditions may help offset the reverse Darwinism they engender, Blouin adds, but then the mortality rate for the fish would rise. “At some point, if we are down to a 3-percent survival rate for the fish, what’s the point of the hatcheries?”

Despite their flaws, hatcheries could play a role in helping salmon and steelhead runs rebound, but there are knowledge gaps to overcome. “We don’t know what genetic selective processes are going on at hatcheries,” Blouin says. “We do know that a population cannot be adapted to two different environments at the same time. If there is strong selection process for the artificial environment, then the fish will be maladapted to the wild.”

Blouin plans to conduct tests at the Oregon Hatchery Research Center near Alsea, a collaborative venture between OSU and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. He’ll focus on optimal growth rates for fish and at genetic differences between smolts that come from wild fish, hatchery fish and crosses.

Rivers Transformed

Over the last 200 years, habitat loss for salmon and steelhead has been epidemic. On some river systems, dams have slowed currents, eliminated miles of habitat and blocked upstream spawning and rearing tributaries. Logging, agriculture and residential and urban development have had similar impacts on free-flowing rivers.

For thousands of years, Oregon’s anadromous fish have survived droughts, floods, landslides and other natural disruptions. The encroachment of humans has been a different story.

OSU fisheries ecologist Stan Gregory says one of the most damaging environmental changes caused by humans has been the transformation of complex, braided river systems into single-channel streams that essentially mimic pipelines.

“If you look at what many Northwest rivers were like a couple of hundred years ago,” Gregory says, “you would see multiple channels that spread the impact of flooding, slowed down currents and created holding places for migrating and resident fish. Development and the transition of the land from floodplain and riparian forests to pastures and housing tracts have eliminated that complexity from many river systems. Dams and flood control have reduced the beneficial effects of floods that create floodplains, scour pools, deposit riffles and create complex channels that provide cold-water habitats.”

Healthy streams with vibrant ecosystems have another benefit. They remove excess nitrogen that is generated by human activities (principally urban development and agriculture) and thus help maintain suitable fish habitat. In a study published in the journal Nature, Gregory and a team of 30 other scientists found that river systems that maintained their complexity could filter out 40 to 60 percent of the nitrogen taken up by the river system within 500 meters of the source where it entered the river.

“It does this by filtering the nitrogen through uptake by tiny organisms such as algae, fungi and bacteria that live on rocks, pieces of wood, leaves or streambeds, and releasing it harmlessly into the atmosphere,” Gregory says. “But to work effectively, the stream has to have an opportunity to absorb the nitrogen we put in the river instead of sending it immediately downstream.”

Understanding the importance of historic river channels is key to giving young salmonids adequate habitats for their seaward journey.

As an undergraduate, Ajeet Johnson (left) worked with Andrew Meigs to study the ages of fault lines. Research, says Meigs, requires students to think differently. “If I tell you that something is one way, you’re not supposed to nod your head and say ‘yes.’ You’re supposed to say, ‘why do you know that?’” (Photo: Conner Burke)

Skiing and rock climbing just weren’t enough. Growing up in Central Oregon’s spectacular landscape, Ajeet Johnson challenged the backcountry of the Cascades. She pulled herself hand-over-hand up Smith Rock and carved down slopes at Mt. Bachelor, but over time, she became curious about the forces that shaped the terrain and will influence its future.

Over the last four years, Johnson has gone from jamming her boots into toeholds and plowing through deep powder to mapping data and measuring fault lines. She received scholarship support for her research and graduated with a bachelor’s in geosciences from Oregon State University last summer. Today, she is pursuing her master’s at OSU.

Her wonderment at the origins of mountains has morphed into a question that has concerned geologists for decades: Why does the expanding Basin and Range region of the American West – one of the most geologically active in the continental United States – come to an abrupt end in the area east of Bend known as the High Lava Plains?

The answers could have implications for Central Oregon’s future. Population has grown faster (73 percent between 1995 and 2007) here than in any other part of the state. The area has seen more than 75 volcanic events over the past 10,000 years, and while the region’s unusual geology provides a source of geothermal energy, it also poses a continuing risk of earthquakes. South of Bend, cinder cones and the 17-square-mile-wide Newberry Crater are reminders of a violent past.

Johnson has focused her research on the Brothers Fault Zone, a complex of relatively young, one- to 10-kilometer-long cracks in the Earth’s surface that run from near Bend toward southern Idaho. Conventional wisdom among geologists is that the age of a fault relates to its length and the differences in height (what geologists call “displacement”) of adjacent terrain. The problem is that, east of Bend, ancient lava flows cover hundreds of square miles, obscuring faults and complicating analysis of their ages.

In 2007, Johnson started measuring fault lines, distinguishing between those that are partially buried and those that are not. She measured the elevations of hundreds of points along the tops and bottoms of slopes. Using a geographic information system, she analyzed data to see if a standard method would yield ages that were consistent with other evidence.

She received support for her research from the Mark W. Chambers Undergraduate Research Grant in the Department of Geosciences and from the Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship and Creativity fund in the OSU Office of Research.

In a March 2008 presentation at a Geological Society of America meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, Johnson reported her findings. In short, her analysis showed two results. For faults that cut across rocks older than 7 million years, growth is revealed by the length and height of the fault scarp, or adjacent slope. Faults that cut younger rocks, however, do not show this relationship. Linking among faults and burial of the landscape by lava flows obscure the fault topography.

For her master’s research, Johnson plans to continue studying the forces at work under Central Oregon. Questions remain, she says, about this transition zone between the Basin and Range to the south and the Yakima Folds to the north on the Columbia River Plateau. “The Basin and Range is spreading and is thought to be pivoting from a point in Eastern Washington or Idaho,” says Johnson. “What we’re learning is important for the growing population here and for educating our future scientists.”

Illustration by Scott Laumann

When Spanish expeditions explored what is now the Santa Barbara, California, region in the 16th and 17th centuries, they found thriving native communities. Explorers’ diaries reported that the Chumash people were farming, harvesting shellfish and crafting canoes from local trees. Since then, archaeologists have documented more than 8,000 years of human habitation there.

For OSU historian Anita Guerrini such evidence of human influence on the land must be considered in modern restoration efforts, whether for salmon, marine mammals or birds such as the snowy plover.

“The goal of restoration is to create a self-sustaining environment,” says Guerrini, who came to OSU last summer as one of two holders of the Thomas Hart and Mary Jones Horning Chair in the Humanities. “You have to figure human use into it. You can’t just say, ‘OK, if we take the people out, this is what’s going to happen.’ But you can’t just take people out. You have to deal with that.”

In her previous post at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), Guerrini taught in the history and environmental studies departments. She was a member and chair of UCSB’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Her focus on restoration arose unexpectedly from what started as a narrow historical study of an oceanfront reserve on the UCSB campus. Bordered by a heavily urbanized area, the land is the target of plans that include development restrictions and ecological restoration.

In the course of her study, Guerrini discovered that both she and UCSB marine ecologist Jenifer Dugan had an interest in expanding the kinds of evidence that could be used to set restoration goals. They collaborated on a three-year project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to explore the role of history in restoration.

Their report (upcoming in Restoria, edited by Marcus Hall) cites examples of dramatic coastal change and concludes that restoration should go beyond a specific set of conditions. “In this coastal context, it can only mean restoring the ecological processes, not a particular point in time,” they write. “Larger answers to the challenge of developing restoration goals for the . . . coasts of the world will require a synthesis of physical and ecological dynamics and processes, anthropology, history, sea level change, natural and cultural resources, and human population growth and needs.”

National parks, especially those that preserve history, face a similar challenge, Guerrini says. “Gettysburg is an example of this. It’s an historic but also an ecological site. How do you preserve history while making it ecologically sustainable? Do you keep the trees as they were in 1863?” she asks.

Guerrini has published on the history of European science, medicine and animal experimentation. She is currently working on a book about the groundbreaking contributions of animal anatomical studies to the study of natural history in Paris during the reign of Louis XIV. She has been a visiting fellow in Paris, Canberra and Edinburgh as well as at the OSU Center for the Humanities.

Researchers lay cable at Blue Lake Reservoir in Oregon's Cascades for an experiment measuring relative humidity during an OSU-led summer workshop. (Photo: Lina DiGregorio)

High-tech science got a lift last summer from a curiously low-tech device: a potato launcher.

Puzzling over the best way to string fiberoptic cable through dense, old-growth canopy, OSU scientists devised a “canon” with an air-compression gun and fishing line weighted by a starchy tuber. From a 100-foot research tower in Oregon’s H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a research assistant spent an afternoon in June launching lengths of Swiss-made cable through towering boughs of Douglas fir and big-leaf maple.

“We needed a projectile with a mass sufficient to place the line, something that would not be hazardous and would not light the forest on fire,” explains OSU researcher John Selker. “We tried everything – bows and arrows, slingshots. In the end, we were shooting organic, biodegradable potatoes around the forest.”

Transformative Science

Selker, a professor in the Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering, is taking ecosystem sensing to new heights with an advanced generation of high-tech cable. Today’s fiberoptics use glass strands so pure that pulses of light zip along the line with little resistance. By detecting the tiny amount of light that scatters back from the source, scientists can measure the temperature of the glass. What that means for monitoring the infinite complexities of ecosystems such as watersheds and ancient forests is an exponential increase in precision, down to hundredths of a degree. Scientists can now take measurements more frequently (every three seconds) at closer increments (every meter) across longer distances (up to five or six miles), capturing spatial structure in three dimensions. The result is an infinitely more nuanced – and thus more accurate – depiction of the natural world.

“With fiberoptics, we’re getting about 10,000 times more data than we did with traditional sensors,” says Selker, a hydrologist who studies stream dynamics. “We’ve added a whole bunch of zeroes to the precision of our measurements. This is transformative science. It’s changing how we see the world.”

Getting finer data about the temperature, relative humidity and evaporation of a stream will vastly improve resource management, Selker predicts. Indeed, warming is one of the greatest dangers threatening watersheds. That’s because fish thrive in narrow spectra of water temperature. A few degrees warmer can mean less oxygen, more pathogens and greater stress on aquatic animals. Strategies for stream protection and restoration can be more effective if based on truer readings and better models.

But for its promise to be fully realized, the novel technology needs rigorous field testing. “There are a whole lot of practical problems to be overcome,” Selker says. The sensors need to be carefully calibrated, for example, to correct for things like weld joints in the wires, “jitter” caused by stream flow and albedo (light reflection). “The history of science is littered with great measurement techniques that fizzled because of poorly run experiments,” says Selker. “We need to seed the science community with people who know how to do this.”

So Selker, along with colleagues at the University of Nevada, the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the U.S. Geological Survey recently led two international workshops to test and troubleshoot fiberoptics and sensing instruments in real-life settings. The National Science Foundation’s Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science funded the sessions, which were part training, part joint problem-solving – what Selker calls “proof of concept” studies.

The rockfish tank captivates Newport first-grader and oceanography buff Noah Goodwin-Rice during a visit to the Visitor Center at the Hatfield Marine Science Center (Photo: Jim Folts)

From their oceanfront timeshare in Newport, Oregon, Jerry and Diane Plante were enjoying the view one September morning when they spotted an unusual vessel. Peering seaward through their high-powered binoculars, the retirees could make out a black trawler named Pacific Storm. Tethered to it was a yellow, donut-shaped buoy. Poking out of the buoy was some kind of cylindrical shaft.

Intrigued, the Plantes watched and wondered as the boat and buoy bobbed on the distant swells for four days. “We couldn’t figure out what they were doing,” says Jerry, a former fraud investigator from Sherwood, Oregon. Adds Diane, a retired schoolteacher: “I don’t know why we thought the boat was so fascinating, but we did.”

Then, soon after the mysterious boat and buoy disappeared from their picture window, they happened to spot the Pacific Storm tied up near the Yaquina Bay Bridge. Excited, they buttonholed a man working on the dock behind a sign reading “authorized personnel only.” He told them they had been armchair witnesses to a floating wave-energy experiment conducted by OSU researchers. He was a member of the science team and suggested they could learn more at the nearby Hatfield Marine Science Center. And that’s how the curious couple wound up in the Visitor Center raptly studying an exhibit about OSU’s pioneering work in wave energy, oblivious to crowds of school kids jostling around them.

Jerry and Diane Plante are what social scientists these days call “free-choice learners.”

Choosing To Learn

“Much of what we learn, we learn because we want to, because events in our lives intrinsically motivate us to find out more,” explain Lynn Dierking and John Falk, Oregon Sea Grant professors in OSU’s Science and Mathematics Education Department in the College of Science. “Under these conditions, we learn not only what we want, but also where, when, and with whom we want. This is free-choice learning, learning that is guided by learners’ needs and interests – the learning that people engage in throughout their lives to find out more about what is useful, compelling, or just plain interesting to them. The Plantes are great examples of free-choice learners in action.”

Free-choice learning, a term coined a decade ago by Falk and Dierking, is a new addition to OSU’s graduate degree programs and research agenda in science and math education. The initiative launched by Sea Grant and the College of Science is designed both to teach and to study how people learn – particularly about science and math – outside formal school settings. Such learning is “incremental” (gathered in bits and pieces, here and there) and “idiosyncratic” (filtered through the learner’s one-of-a-kind lens), research tells us. Driven by intellectual curiosities and practical needs for information, most science and math learning happens not as we sit in a classroom, but as we explore the world around us.

Unique in the United States, OSU’s Free-Choice Science and Mathematics Learning program gives graduate students a theoretical grounding in the cultural, social and physical contexts that influence learning. Kids and adults alike build knowledge actively using their highly individualized prior knowledge and experience, the scholars say. With this “constructivist” theory as a foundation, the researchers are designing ways to enhance free-choice learning environments such as museums, science centers and Boys and Girls clubs. Along the way, they hope to forge stronger links among the myriad players in education’s “invisible free-choice learning infrastructure,” a web of institutions and information sources that includes zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens, libraries, national parks, natural history museums, Web sites, TV shows and after-school programs. Other research is delving into how this infrastructure intersects with schools, universities and workplaces.

“Research strongly suggests that the more the separate influential spheres of family, school, work and elective learning overlap in people’s lives, the more likely people are to become successful lifelong learners,” note Falk and Dierking, international leaders in this new discipline. In short, it’s the synergy among spheres that counts.

Before coming to Oregon State, Falk founded and directed the Institute for Learning Innovation in Annapolis, Maryland, a private, nonprofit organization devoted to understanding and facilitating free-choice learning. Dierking was the institute’s associate director.

Self-paced routines instill confidence. Kathy Gunter admits that if she had approached exercises for older women with a competitive attitude, many would have objected. "They had no problems telling me what they thought," she says. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

“Keep your tummies in. Arms up. Shoulders down. Up and over!” The sound of 25 pairs of feet thumping a wooden floor echoes through the Benton Center gym. On cue from fitness instructor Shelly Morris, the all-female class steps on and off platforms that range from four to 10 inches high, some participants moving quickly, lifting legs, planting feet, stepping to the side and going back in reverse.

Morris cheers on her students: “You’re looking great this morning! Best all week.”

“Of course. Women don’t sweat. We glisten!” one exerciser laughs.

It could be any exercise class anywhere except for one thing: Many of these women are the last people you’d expect to see in a gym. One celebrated her 88th birthday the previous week. If you saw a member of the class crossing the street, you’d be tempted to offer her a hand. “Nothing would annoy her more,” says Beth Lambright, one of Morris’ co-instructors, to the nodding agreement of several women in the class. “These women are more likely to help you.”

Fear of Falling

The class known as Better Bones and Balance has its roots in a 1994 Oregon State University research project and addresses one of the most significant health risks for older Americans. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, one in three people over 65 falls in a given year. The results are too familiar: broken hips, concussions and other bone-rattling traumas that, in 2006, sent about 1.8 million seniors to emergency rooms. Accidental falls are the leading cause of injury-related deaths among the elderly.

Reducing those risks is the purpose of Better Bones and Balance. Through a prescribed routine of self-paced stretching and weight-bearing exercises that build muscle, bone mass and confidence, the class equips seniors to safely handle everyday chores — getting dressed, doing the laundry, vacuuming floors, carrying groceries.

“Most seniors in the United States cannot stand on one foot for 30 seconds,” says Lambright. “Mine can stand like that for two minutes. We do things forever on one leg so that if they start to fall, they have time to figure out where they want to go. Or we train their legs to go out to the side where they can catch them and break the energy of the fall.”

Next year, she plans to start a class for 90-year-olds.

Better Bones and Balance grew from research by Christine Snow, former director of the OSU Bone Research Laboratory, and by Ph.D. student Janet Shaw, now a professor at the University of Utah. “Christine saw that athletes who participated in high-impact sports such as gymnastics, where the landing forces are very large, had extraordinarily high bone mass in comparison to other athletic populations,” says Kathy Gunter, assistant professor in OSU Extension’s Family and Community Development Program and the Department of Nutrition and Exercise Sciences. Gunter did her Ph.D. work with Snow. “Obviously we can’t have older adults dismounting off the (balance) beam and the impacts associated with that. The question came down to: How can we safely increase the load on the skeleton in a group-exercise setting and effectively increase or preserve bone mass?”