Summer 2012 « Terra Magazine

Terra in Print: Summer 2012

Many Oregon State University students take advantage of summer to do research in our forests, dive into coastal waters or work in labs. Others are traveling the world for science. You can read about their international exploits and in some cases follow their blogs.

Horns of Africa

Healthy Planet, Stewardship, Student Research, Summer 2012

In the place where Dylan McDowell grew up, wildlife meant sea lions, sandpipers, salmon and passing pods of spouting whales. Where he’s going this summer, wildlife means something else entirely, something reminiscent of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, exotic and fearsome: wildebeests, jackals, baboons, leopards, warthogs. And rhinos that have been poached nearly [...]

Sea Urchin

Healthy Planet, Stewardship, Student Research, Summer 2012

On her first-ever research trip, Caitlyn Clark trudged up and down hundreds of spongy hummocks spanning miles of arctic tundra, all the while swatting at giant mosquitoes and scanning for hungry polar bears. She was in Manitoba to collect data about the habitats of boreal frogs and stickleback fish for Earthwatch Institute Student Challenge Awards [...]

The Milky Way

Fall 2012, Healthy People, Student Research, Summer 2012, Vitality

When Rachel Miller was shadowing a pie scientist in her hometown of Spokane, Washington, no one — not her teachers, not her parents, and certainly not she herself — could have predicted that her high school job shadow would lead to possibly the coolest summer internship in the universe: tasting ice cream in France. OK, [...]

The Earth Burps and Burns

Earth, Fall 2012, Healthy Planet, Student Research, Summer 2012

When the Earth burps, WeiLi Hong listens. Whether Earth’s gaseous emissions bubble up from “mud volcanoes” on the planet’s surface or seep out of fissures on the ocean floor, the Oregon State University Ph.D. student has his monitoring gear to the ground. And sometimes, he’s actually in the ground. “I fell in twice,” Hong admits, [...]

Legacy of a Whale

Departments, Earth, Fall 2012, Features, Healthy Planet, Stewardship, Student Research, Summer 2012

Rain was pouring hard the day Renee Albertson first connected, face-to-face, with a marine mammal. She was a 7-year-old visiting British Columbia’s Sealand aquarium (Canada’s now-defunct answer to California’s SeaWorld) with her mom and dad. The daily show had been cancelled because of the downpour. The usual crowds were absent. As the soggy trio from [...]

Dolphin Defender

Earth, Healthy Planet, Student Research, Summer 2012

A dolphin’s dorsal fin can be as distinctive as a human fingerprint. As the fin slices through the sea, its unique pattern of pigments, nicks and scars relays the animal’s personal story to observers on the surface. Often, scientists can use these markings to ID individual dolphins. But for some species, fin IDs are not [...]

Science Without Borders

Fall 2012, Healthy Planet, Perspectives, Summer 2012, Terra Blog

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 [...]

Labor of Love

Healthy People, Student Research, Summer 2012, Vitality

The resilience of the women was surprising, as was their appreciation for just being heard. After all, they are at the bottom of the social hierarchy in one of the world’s poorest countries. No one had shown much interest in their stories until an Oregon State University student showed up last winter. Bonnie Ruder, a [...]

Relay for Wheat

Healthy Economy, Stewardship, Summer 2012

When he was a college student, Bob Zemetra found the perfect career. “I liked working with plants, and I realized that in plant breeding — in theory — I could be outside in the good part of the year and inside in the bad part of the year.” Things didn’t turn out that way, he [...]

Oregon State Goes to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Healthy People, Summer 2012

One of the nation’s most popular summer fairs, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., features hands-on exhibits created by Oregon State University.

Wheat for the West

Fall 2012, Footprints, Healthy Economy, Stewardship, Summer 2012

It is arguably the plant that made the West. Pioneers brought wheat in practically every wagon on the Oregon Trail. It fed farm families in the Willamette Valley and miners in the John Day and California gold-rush towns. It was currency and foreign exchange. As the nation grew, scientists developed dryland and irrigated growing techniques. [...]

Fisher of Rivers

Healthy Planet, Stewardship, Student Research, Summer 2012

A river runs through Haley Ohms’ life. Actually, a whole bunch of rivers. So spending the summer hip-deep in fast-moving water will feel familiar to the Oregon State University graduate student — even if those cold, tumbling waters flow on the other side of the Pacific Rim. The fish will seem familiar, too. The Dolly [...]

Pumped Up

Fall 2012, Healthy People, Stewardship, Student Research, Summer 2012

How far would you go to help someone get a glass of clean water? Zachary Dunn knows exactly how far he’d go: 9,000 miles. And that’s just one trip, one way. By summer’s end, Dunn and fellow Oregon State University students had traveled almost 36,000 miles — greater than the Earth’s circumference — to help [...]