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 [...]
Tag » Environment & Natural Resources
February 26, 2013
Roots of Relationship
Under the pine needles lies one of the secrets to forest health
February 1, 2013
Corps of Discovery
Mastering the natural history of Oregon's storied lands and waters - and passing it on
Just as some babies are born with special gifts for music or math, Harvard’s Howard Gardner argues, others come into the world with an exceptional sensitivity to nature. The Oregon Master Naturalist program was designed to tap into this devotion to the land and build a statewide corps of expert volunteers.
January 31, 2013
Lake of the Woods
Where the wild things are
“The three key words in the mission of Oregon Master Naturalists are explore, connect, contribute.”
January 30, 2013
An Ethical Tightrope
Learning to make delicate choices
Making ethical choices about animals can be a philosophical high-wire act — a precarious balance of practicality and principle. Weighing practical needs against “normative ethics” — right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust — requires more than a handbook of do’s and don’ts. “The institutional protocols — the laws, regulations, policies — provide [...]
January 23, 2013
The Road to Ecosystem Safeguards
Unsnarling the regulatory tangle in transportation planning
“This new tool will help speed up transportation projects while beefing up environmental stewardship.”
July 25, 2012
Bug Problems? Call in the Chickens
Oregon State Extension experiments with pest control in organic apple orchard
“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, [...]
July 11, 2012
Horns of Africa
Dylan McDowell studies endangered rhinos in Tanzanian reserves
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 [...]
July 11, 2012
Sea Urchin
Caitlyn Clark takes her love of ecology to Ireland's first marine reserve
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 [...]
June 20, 2012
Relay for Wheat
If wheat breeding were a relay race, the land grant all-star team would include Foote, Kronstad, Peterson and now Zemetra
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 [...]
June 6, 2012
Fisher of Rivers
Haley Ohms wades into Dolly Varden research in Japanese streams
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 [...]
June 5, 2012
Pumped Up
Zachary Dunn helps bring clean water to Kenyan farmers
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 [...]
May 25, 2012
Evidence for Change
Rigorous climate science trumps our senses
Some people take a dim view of the idea that Oregon, as well as the rest of the world, could be expected to continue warming in coming decades. They may cite March snowfall in the Willamette Valley or unpublished comparisons of mean temperatures over a given time period in specific places. Appealing as it is, [...]
February 2, 2012
Native health
Tribe and OSU scientists study exposure to wood-smoke pollutants
Stuart Harris can still remember the sights, scents and sounds of the autumn day when he gathered with his family as a boy and helped the adults smoke deer: crisp leaves, a dusting of frost and the laughter of children mingling with the smell of smoke in the air. For Harris, a member of the [...]
December 14, 2011
Advocate for the planet
Bill McKibben travels the Earth to save it
What we’ve come to understand in recent years is the scale of change and the pace of change that we’re now kicking off. We’re not going to be able to adapt past a certain point.
December 13, 2011
Strange bedfellows: magnetism and climate
What's magnetism got to do with it? An OSU postdoctoral scientist joins an expedition to the Atlantic to look for climate clues.
Chuang Xuan is at sea on the research vessel JOIDES Resolution studying magnetic and climate evidence in deep-sea sediment cores.
November 16, 2011
Chasing the canine connection
When Cristina Eisenberg first heard a wolf howl, she felt comforted and curious.
[Editor's note: Ingrid Ockert is senior pursuing a liberal arts degree with a focus in the history of science ] When Cristina Eisenberg and her family moved to Montana in 1994, they received a warm welcome from their neighbors. On the first night in their new log cabin, they were greeted by the sonorous howls [...]
October 27, 2011
Rice Paddy People
In a rural village, farmers fight industrial pollution
The young Chinese laborer was desperate. Like millions of other migrant workers in China’s dash to industrialize, he had left his home and family to work in a factory in the rural interior. Now, environmental officials had closed the zinc smelter in Futian where he worked, and without a job, nearly out of money and [...]
May 9, 2011
Place names link birds and King Island culture
Seabirds figure prominently in the island's history and culture.
In her effort to document the place names of her native King Island, Alaska, Deanna Paniataaq Kingston encountered cultural links to birds. Many of the names and stories referenced them. Kauna vaktuat is “the place where you can reach and get birds from rocks,” Tayaguq is “crested auklet place” and Iizrayaq is “sea gull cliff.” [...]
January 25, 2011
Cascadia Roulette
The odds are good that a major earthquake will strike the Pacific Northwest in the near future. We're overdue, says Robert Yeats.
Bob Yeats has spent his career preparing people for the possible: a catastrophic earthquake
January 25, 2011
First Oregon ShakeOut
On January 26, Oregonians will participate in the state’s first Oregon ShakeOut to raise earthquake awareness. What they learn could save lives when the next Big One hits.
November 19, 2010
Earth Ethics
Extension’s National Network for Sustainable Living Education has grown from the work of OSU professor Viviane Simon-Brown. Starting with 12 colleagues in five states in 2004, more than 80 people at 30 land grant universities now collaborate to promote planet-friendly lifestyles.
April 23, 2008
Windows on Watersheds
A clear look at industrial forests
Old-style logging left scars on the landscape, but nearly 40 years ago, research in Oregon changed tree-cutting practices. Now researchers are joining landowners to update the science behind modern forest management.
July 23, 2007
Grasping for Air
Nighttime breezes may be key to mountain forests
Under a blue sky in mid-March, an Oregon State University research team left Corvallis to collect data in a valley deep in Oregon’s western Cascades. The two-hour ride to the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest gave the technicians and graduate students time to catch up before arriving at the facility’s headquarters near Blue River. They would [...]
