UAVs are an emerging industry that Oregon can help lead, and the state would be wise to support it.  Oregon State University has formed a consortium with industry, government and others to develop the use of these aerial systems, a potential multi-billion dollar job growth engine that will also provide significant benefits to society.

Under a mandate from Congress, the Federal Aviation Administration will establish several test sites for UAVs by 2015, and one of those sites could be in Oregon. Our state offers a unique combination of research excellence, varied terrain, relevant industry and local applications in agriculture and forestry.

There’s not much that UAVs can do that a pilot in a small plane couldn’t do, but they can do it more safely and at much lower cost. UAVs can monitor and help manage wildfires or support a search and rescue mission. They can help forest-product industries plant trees to avoid wind or heat damage. They can monitor wildlife, improve irrigation, detect crop-disease outbreaks and gauge environmental health.

Decades of experience in remote sensing have drawn OSU to this venture. Our oceanographers use NASA satellites to monitor global phytoplankton productivity and identify harmful algal blooms. We use optical remote sensing to detect earthquake faults, assess wildfire impacts on forests and measure tsunami inundation patterns. We have instruments on the International Space Station to study shoals and ocean shores.

Natural Extension

We have already formed the OSU Unmanned Vehicle System Research Consortium to bring a national UAV test center to Oregon. The business and job potential is high. With more than 300 companies and nearly 7,000 employees, Oregon’s aviation sector sees UAV technology as a natural extension of industry within our state that already is building helicopters, small aircraft and aviation components. OSU and industry partners n-Link and Prioria have conducted the state’s first FAA-sanctioned mission – a UAV flight over McDonald Forest near Corvallis that provided live video of the research forest.

We recognize that the transition toward the civilian benefits of UAVs has raised privacy concerns. Protection from prying cameras where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy is a legitimate concern, legally protected by current law and the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Every new technology raises some kind of social concern, and society figures out reasonable solutions. We urge that these solutions be pursued in parallel with the needed technical research as the FAA develops a comprehensive privacy policy.

This technology will be developed somewhere in the United States. Because of Oregon’s comprehensive scientific and industry experience, and our state’s ideal geography, we can choose to be a leader in this exciting venture. That choice would be good for Oregon business, industry, researchers, workers and our environment.

Environmental philosopher Michael P. Nelson gamely copes with “ginormous” mosquitoes and gobs of “moose grease” as he necropsies a moose on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. (Photo: John A. Vucetich)

When Michael P. Nelson talks about his work, he mentions carcasses and cadavers to a startling degree — startling because Nelson is not a physician or a veterinarian or even a biologist. He’s a philosopher. So at first glance, necropsy seems an odd topic of discourse.  But it starts to make sense when you notice that Nelson’s office is in Oregon State’s College of Forestry, not the College of Liberal Arts where universities typically house their philosophers. And, as the only philosopher ever hired to lead one of the National Science Foundation’s 27 Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites — in this case, OSU’s H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest — Nelson again defies tradition.

“We started the search assuming we’d end up with some sort of ecologist, hydrologist or biophysical scientist,” recounts John Bliss, the associate dean of forestry who led the hiring process. “I knew we’d turned a corner when the ecologists on the committee stopped me in the hall to say things like, ‘Maybe a philosopher is what we need!’”
With -ologists already well represented, they opted instead for Nelson’s novel viewpoint. “Michael brings a philosopher’s logic to complex problems, unencumbered by disciplinary straitjackets,” Bliss says.

Mind Over Matter

To understand these discrepancies, you have to go back to Nelson’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, where, in a high school anatomy class, he saw a dead body laid out on a steel slab. “I thought that cadaver was the coolest thing in the world,” he recalls. But once he got to college, the study of biology struck him as tedious. Too many equations to solve, too many chemical reactions to memorize. In contrast, he found himself relishing his philosophy classes. Ideas like the moral imperative and the inherent nature of being quickened his imagination. He soon switched majors and began to ponder the world on a cerebral rather than cellular level.

Michael P. Nelson

His fascination with biological systems, however, never went away. Eventually, this man whose mental petri dish was awash in syllogisms instead of cell divisions circled back to where he started — to that raw, physical nexus of life and death that is a carcass. It happened about a decade after he earned his Ph.D. at England’s Lancaster University, the cradle of environmental philosophy. By then, Nelson was teaching at Michigan State University, where he met John A. Vucetich, co-director of a long-term, multidisciplinary study of predator-prey dynamics. Vucetich invited Nelson to visit the study site: a wild, isolated, mist-wrapped island in Lake Superior. Nelson was enchanted. Soon he became the “resident philosopher” for Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale.

Which is how, in 2005, he came to be kneeling beside a pile of bones and sinews where wolves had devoured a moose. Every summer, Nelson participates in collecting biological samples, including scat and skulls, for DNA analysis and pathology studies. Now in its 55th year, the project has tracked the dynamics between wolves and moose over a timespan unprecedented in the annals of predator-prey studies. Surprising insights into island biogeography and wildlife management are emerging from the mists.

“What I really like about my work, is that it exists at the edges of disciplines.”

— Michael P. Nelson

Sting Like a Bee

In front of a crowd, Nelson moves nimbly, like a boxer, on the balls of his feet. An aura of great energy emanates from his face and hands. It’s clear that he’s in a hurry to push his thoughts outward. Planet Earth is, after all, poised on the cliff of calamity, he says during a joint presentation on ethics and climate change with OSU conservation philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore. He and Moore challenge the scientists in the audience to couple their facts (climate models, data sets, statistical analyses) to their values (as parents, as community members, as global citizens). It’s time to kick the advocacy taboo to the curb, the two philosophers exhort, arguing that meaningful action arises only when facts (“what is”) are welded to values (“what ought to be”).

To drive home the urgency of curbing fossil fuel use, Nelson cites sources as diverse as “Genesis” and Dr. Seuss. At last year’s meeting of LTER scientists nationwide he did a riff inspired by The Lorax. This scholar of striking contrasts can recite playful couplets one moment and the next, dare scientists to rethink the most basic assumptions of their careers.

“Look, we don’t know how to create careers in science that fully empower scientists,” Nelson tells a roomful of researchers. “What we do know is this: Everything has changed. You have taught us that. You should ask yourself some questions: Are the old forms of scientific practice working? Or do you need to create another path? What does it mean to be a scientist now? You are studying systems, ecosystems; you know about the necessity of connections. Live what you know. That’s integrity.”

____________________________

Read more

See details about Michael Nelson’s teaching, books, ongoing projects and affiliations.

Predator and Prey, a Delicate Dance, The New York Times, May 8, 2013

Wolves Teach Scientists Their Limitations, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 1, 2013

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.

For replanting purposes, Matt Horning, a USDA Forest Service geneticist, identifies tree seedling varieties with a high likelihood of success. (Photo: Lynn Ketchum, OSU Extension and Experiment Station Communications)

BEND, Oregon – The seedlings are barely visible among the tufts of lupine, balsamroot and bunchgrass dominating the study plot in the Deschutes National Forest. Matt Horning tramps over the uneven ground, naming each tiny tree as he goes — Douglas fir, Ponderosa pine and a dozen other species whose survival rates, growth patterns and genetic makeup are under scrutiny for a joint study by Canadian and American scientists.

Out beyond the Cyclone fence enclosing the hilltop site, acres of charred forest march across the landscape, thousands of blackened trunks etched eerily against the Three Sisters peaks. “We’re still replanting from the B&B Complex fire of 2003 because the burned area was so huge,” notes Horning, a geneticist for the U.S. Forest Service. “Seedlings not only have to be adapted to the local climate, they also have to compete with existing vegetation and withstand nibbling by deer and other browsers. Replanting on some of the units has not been as successful as it has on others.”

Understanding the optimal growing conditions for trees and other vegetation helps foresters ensure good outcomes when they replant burned-out, pest-infested or logged-over stands of timber. “My role is to help identify the most appropriate plant materials that will be used in reforestation and revegetation,” says Horning, who has studied genetic diversity and adaptation of flora and fauna ranging from the American robin to a threatened prairie lily.

“So if there’s a big fire or some other disturbance, and the Forest Service decides to revegetate the area, land managers will be able to use the best plant materials to create a healthy, sustainable forest.”

Ancient Giants

Scientists with the Forest Service and OSU’s College of Forestry have collected legions of data on Northwest species over the decades. They have mapped which plants thrive in each local mix of geography, elevation and climate. These maps are called “seed-zone” maps — they pinpoint places where each seed type is best suited.

But the climate defining those zones is shifting fast. As forests get wetter or drier, warmer or cooler, vegetation migrates in response. For short-lived plants, the shifts are quick. Grasses can adapt nearly overnight. But for the giants of the Northwest’s boreal and temperate forests, which take decades to mature, a rapidly changing climate can be catastrophic. A seedling that takes root during one climatic period may suffer stress or die in another. Its genetic code, written over eons of evolutionary adaptation, no longer matches the world it lives in.

“Some species can migrate more readily than others,” says Horning, who collaborates not only with OSU forestry researchers but also with crop and soil scientists on rangeland studies. “Species that are generalists, like western red cedar or bluebunch wheatgrass, are more broadly adaptable. Species that are specialists, like whitebark pine, are more susceptible to climate change.”

In fact, more than half of the evergreen species across northwestern Canada and the U.S. already are losing their competitive edge, according to a new study led by Richard Waring, an emeritus professor in the OSU College of Forestry. “Some of these changes are already happening, pretty fast and in some huge areas,” says Waring.

Seeding the Future

That’s why the Forest Service and OSU recently created a Seedlot Selection Tool — a public website built with GIS mapping technology and climate modeling software — to help land managers adapt to change. (A “seedlot” refers to seeds of a certain plant collected at one time and likely to have similar germination rates and other traits.) Horning’s Forest Service colleague Brad St. Clair at the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Corvallis and OSU tree geneticist Glenn Howe led the project with funding from the U.S. Forest Service’s Global Change Research Program.

“Because forest trees are genetically adapted to their local climates, local seed sources are generally recommended for reforestation,” St. Clair, Howe and their colleagues explain. “These recommendations, however, assume that climates are stable over the long term, an assumption that we now know is unlikely.” The Seedlot Selection Tool is one of several projects undertaken in recent years by OSU’s Taskforce on Adapting Forests to Climate Change, whose mission is to provide science-based management options for public and private forest landowners. At a genetics workshop for researchers in 2010, Horning highlighted the user-friendly tool during a presentation on seed-transfer guidelines. “We sat down in Corvallis — the genetics community in the Forest Service along with a lot of researchers from OSU and elsewhere — and said: ‘What sort of management recommendations can we make to folks to help mitigate climate change?’”

Matching seeds with sites is one key strategy. To get the free, online tool into the hands of stakeholders, the OSU taskforce brought potential users together in 2010 for a workshop. Among the attendees were members of OSU’s Tree Improvement Research Cooperative, which includes Starker Forests, Stimpson Lumber Co., Weyerhauser Co. and a dozen other private firms and public agencies.

With a few clicks on the computer, users can try out various seedlots on a selected planting site (or they can map various planting sites onto a selected seedlot) under a range of climate scenarios. In places where precipitation has dropped and temperatures have risen, for instance, they might discover that drought-tolerant Ponderosa pine is a better fit than moisture-craving Douglas fir. “The best way to learn about the tool,” notes Howe, “is to try it.”

A section from a 53-year-old splitnose rockfish (Sebastes diplopra) otolith shows annual growth rings. (Photo courtesy of Bryan Black)

Fish bones aren’t exactly the most prized portion of the catch of the day. Encountering a nearly translucent sliver in a grilled fillet is at best an annoyance and at worst a choking hazard. But for one Oregon State University researcher, certain fish bones are immensely valuable.

Bryan Black, an associate professor at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, is using the otoliths – or ear bones – of Pacific rockfish to reveal the effects of climate change at sea and on land. By measuring the tiny growth increments in fish otoliths, Black has learned that marine and forest ecosystems are joined at the hip. When exposed to the same climate conditions, they respond in synchronous but different ways. Winter climate, he has also found, may have far greater effects on these systems than researchers had previously guessed.

As a dendrochronologist, or tree-ring analyst, working in Pennsylvania, Black came to Hatfield in 2003 when he saw a job advertisement calling for someone who could apply growth increment science to fish otoliths. These bones grow outward from a core, forming annual growth increments similar to those of trees. Though Black had not been trained in marine science, he was enthusiastic to learn how forestry techniques could be applied to ocean ecosystems.

“It was quite a learning curve to begin with,” Black says. “Coming from understanding forests and forest ecology and learning to apply that to marine ecosystems took a lot of learning about marine ecology, but it was exciting at the same time.”

Otolith Library

Once Black mastered the marine knowledge he needed and began studying growth increments on rockfish otoliths, he discovered a connection between ocean, climate and forest that would prove essential to understanding a broader climate story. As with trees, larger growth increments in otoliths indicate a more favorable growing season. After analyzing increments in a collection of otoliths catalogued over the last several decades, Black found that rockfish growth was correlated with climate. During years when rockfish flourished, he discovered, winter climate was characterized by persistent high-pressure weather systems between Hawaii and the West Coast. (see graphs and map below)

A core taken by Bryan Black from this large Douglas-fir near Cape Perpetua will be dated and its rings compared with those of other trees as well as geoducks – the Northwest’s largest bivalve. Such comparisons allow scientists to study climate change in new ways. (Photo courtesy of Bryan Black)

“After developing these growth chronologies I found that they were very sensitive to what happened in the winter months,” Black says. “Climate in the winter seemed to be determining how well these fish grew throughout the year, and I think that’s because if you get favorable climate in the winter you get an early start to the growing season.”

The high-pressure systems that Black noted were encouraging winter upwelling along the coast, a process in which wind drives nutrient-rich water toward the ocean surface, effectively jump-starting the growing season. What made this connection to winter climate particularly interesting, he says, is how it also shows up in tree rings. Black combined the rockfish and climate data with tree-ring chronologies. As the data came together, he realized that rockfish and trees along the West Coast were reacting to the same forces but with opposite results. While the high-pressure systems created favorable conditions for rockfish, the systems blocked moisture flow to the forest, causing drought and producing poor growing seasons for trees.

500-Year Record

Once Black had established the relationship between trees, rockfish and winter climate, he began to expand his data, joining knowledge of marine and terrestrial systems to better understand both. He used networks of tree-ring chronologies, many of which extended for more than 500 years, to illustrate conditions of the past and provide context for understanding modern climate patterns.

“You can use the trees to tell us how this winter pattern has varied over the past several centuries, which is much longer than any instrumental record can provide,” Black says. “It’s really underscoring the importance of these distinct seasonal patterns and that, especially for this winter pattern, the marine and terrestrial systems are both affected. We’re using these chronologies to tell us about this history.”

By learning how climate has varied in the past and understanding its effect on growing seasons, Black hopes to determine how ecosystems have been affected by climate variation as well as by human presence, and how they might respond in the future. In addition to increasing our understanding of the sensitive relationships between climate and terrestrial and marine systems, he says further knowledge would have practical value for fisheries to predict expectations for growing seasons and set catch limits.

“Before you can forecast any effects of climate change, you have to understand how climate affects these systems right now,” Black says. “That’s where I come in, to try to tie these climate and ecosystem patterns to the environment and human influence where possible.”

Global Network

This magnified slice of a geoduck shell clearly shows incremental growth rings used by scientists to analyze sea surface temperatures. (Photo courtesy of Bryan Black)

Now, Black is sharing his methods with other researchers. Together, he and his colleagues are applying tree ring chronology methods to study the growth increments in the otoliths of different fishes as well as other species, such as bivalves, which have growth increments in their shells. By collaborating with researchers around the world, from Alaska to Europe and Australia, they hope to establish chronologies for diverse marine systems and compare them across broad regions. The goal is to learn about the effects of climate patterns on global marine and terrestrial systems.

“There is a huge network of tree ring chronologies that has been developed all over the world and it is a leading indicator of forest responses to climate and climate change,” Black says. “I think the same could be done in marine systems as these chronologies are developed. I find it very exciting to contribute something that is of practical and ecological importance to understanding how these systems function.”

Figure A shows the relationship among wintertime sea level pressure off the coast of western North America, tree growth in central and southern California, and sea level measured at San Francisco (an especially long instrumental record in comparison to sea level pressure). B shows the full history of wintertime sea level pressure from tree-ring data, including 95% confidence intervals (gray shading). The reconstruction extends back in time to 1507 AD, providing a 500-year record of wintertime climate variability important to marine and terrestrial ecosystems. (Graphs courtesy of Bryan Black)

The map shows correlations between winter sea level pressure off the coast of western North America and 1) northerly winds, where positive correlations indicate flow from the north, 2) winter precipitation on land, and 3) tree-ring chronologies in western North America (note: the larger the tree symbol, the stronger the correlation with winter sea level pressure). In summary, high pressure off the West Coast of North America means more north winds, which favor marine productivity as well as drought on land, which reduces tree growth. (Map courtesy of Bryan Black)

(Photo: Eppic Photography)

Oregon State University forestry scientists have a habit of redefining the conversation about carbon and forests. Professors Beverly Law, Mark Harmon and their colleagues have demonstrated that old-growth stands on the west side of the Cascades store as much carbon or more than that held in tropical rain forests.

In 2009, Law reported that forests from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Columbia River could theoretically double the amount of carbon they currently contain.

In 2007 and 2009, her research group determined that Pacific Northwest fires emit less carbon than previously thought. Most emissions were from combustion of the forest floor and understory vegetation, and only about 1 to 3 percent of live tree mass was burned.

Not surprisingly, tree cutting turns forests from carbon sinks to carbon sources. Law has determined that it may take 15 years or more for young trees to begin absorbing more carbon than is lost through decomposition of branches, roots and other dead material. She conducted her studies in ponderosa pine, and her conclusions were later confirmed in an international study of boreal and temperate forests.

Ameriflux Network

Now, Law has co-authored a national study concluding that forests and other terrestrial ecosystems in the lower 48 states can sequester up to 40 percent of the nation’s fossil fuel carbon emissions, a larger amount than previously estimated, unless a large drought or other major disturbance occurs.

Carbon dioxide, when released by the burning of fossil fuels, forest fires or other activities, is a major “greenhouse gas” and factor in global warming. But vegetation, mostly in the form of growing evergreen and deciduous forests, can play an important role in absorbing some of the excess carbon dioxide.

Widespread droughts, such as those that occurred in 2002 and 2006, can cut the amount of carbon sequestered by about 20 percent, Law and her colleagues concluded in a study that was supported by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy.

The research, published by scientists from 35 institutions in the journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, was based on satellite measurements and data from the AmeriFlux network, a system of nearly 100 carbon-monitoring sites in the Americas.

Not all of these data had been incorporated into earlier estimates, and the new study provides one of the most accurate assessments to date of the nation’s terrestrial carbon balance.

“With climate change, we may get more extreme or frequent weather events in the future than we had before,” Law adds. “About half of the United States was affected by the major droughts in 2002 and 2006, which were unusual in their spatial extent and severity. And we’re now learning that this can have significant effects on the amount of carbon sequestered in a given year.”

Climate Mapping

Such information is important to understand global climate issues and develop policies, the researchers note. This study examined the carbon budget in the United States from 2001 to 2006. Also playing a key role in the analysis was OSU’s PRISM climate database, a sophisticated system to monitor weather on a very localized and specific basis.

The period from 2001 to 2006, the researchers say, had some catastrophic and unusual events, not the least of which was Hurricane Katrina and the massive destruction it caused. It also factored in the 2002 Biscuit Fire in Northern California and southwest Oregon, which burned nearly 500,000 acres and was among the largest forest fires in modern U.S. history.

The research found that temperate forests in eastern states absorbed carbon mainly because of forest re-growth following the abandonment of agricultural lands, while some areas of the Pacific Northwest assimilated carbon during much of the year because of the region’s mild climate.

Croplands were not considered in determining the annual magnitude of the U.S. terrestrial carbon sink, because the carbon they absorb each year during growth will be soon released when the crops are harvested or their biomass burned.

The study was led by Jingfeng Xiao, a research assistant professor at the Complex Systems Research Center, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, at the University of New Hampshire.

“Our results show that U.S. ecosystems play an important role in slowing down the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

Ø Online: See more about Beverly Law’s terrestrial ecosystem research at terraweb.forestry.oregonstate.edu/

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa and South America, have been drying up in the past decade, a group of researchers conclude in the first major study to ever examine “evapotranspiration” on a global basis.

Most climate models have suggested that evapotranspiration, which is the movement of water from the land to the atmosphere, would increase with global warming. The new research, published online this week in the journal Nature, found that’s exactly what was happening from 1982 to the late 1990s.

But in 1998, this significant increase in evapotranspiration – which had been seven millimeters per year – slowed dramatically or stopped. In large portions of the world, soils are now becoming drier than they used to be, releasing less water and offsetting some moisture increases elsewhere.

Due to the limited number of decades for which data are available, scientists say they can’t be sure whether this is a natural variability or part of a longer-lasting global change. But one possibility is that on a global level, a limit to the acceleration of the hydrological cycle on land has already been reached.

If that’s the case, the consequences could be serious.

They could include reduced terrestrial vegetation growth, less carbon absorption, a loss of the natural cooling mechanism provided by evapotranspiration, more heating of the land surface, more intense heat waves and a “feedback loop” that could intensify global warming.

“This is the first time we’ve ever been able to compile observations such as this for a global analysis,” said Beverly Law, a professor of global change forest science at Oregon State University. Law is co-author of the study and science director of the AmeriFlux network of 100 research sites, which is one major part of the FLUXNET synthesis that incorporates data from around the world.

“We didn’t expect to see this shift in evapotranspiration over such a large area of the Southern Hemisphere,” Law said. “It is critical to continue such long-term observations, because until we monitor this for a longer period of time, we can’t be sure why this is occurring.”

Some of the areas with the most severe drying include southeast Africa, much of Australia, central India, large parts of South America, and some of Indonesia. Most of these regions are historically dry, but some are actually tropical rain forests.

The rather abrupt change from increased global evapotranspiration to a near halt in this process coincided with a major El Nino event in 1998, the researchers note in their report, but they are not suggesting that is a causative mechanism for a phenomenon that has been going on for more than a decade now.

Greater evapotranspiration was expected with global warming, because of increased evaporation of water from the ocean and more precipitation overall. And data indeed show that some areas are wetter than they used to be.

However, other huge areas are now drying out, the study showed. This could lead to increased drought stress on vegetation and less overall productivity, Law said, and as a result less carbon absorbed, less cooling through evapotranspiration, and more frequent or extreme heat waves.

Some of the sites used in this study are operated by Law’s research group in the central Oregon Cascade Range in the Metolius River watershed, and they are consistent with some of these concerns. In the last decade there have been multiple years of drought, vegetative stress, and some significant forest fires in that area.

Evapotranspiration returns about 60 percent of annual precipitation back to the atmosphere, in the process using more than half of the solar energy absorbed by land surfaces. This is a key component of the global climate system, linking the cycling of water with energy and carbon cycles.

Longer term observations will be needed to determine if these changes are part of decadal-scale variability or a longer-term shift in global climate, the researchers said.

This study was authored by a large group of international scientists, including from OSU; lead author Martin Jung from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany; and researchers from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland, Princeton University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, Harvard University, and other groups and agencies.

The regional networks, such as AmeriFlux, CarboEurope, and the FLUXNET synthesis effort, have been supported by numerous funding agencies around the world, including the Department of Energy, NASA, National Science Foundation, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States.

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Editor’s Note: The study citation is: Jung, M., M. Reichstein, P. Ciais, S.I. Seneviratne, J. Sheffield, M.L. Goulden, G. Bonan, A. Cescatti, J. Chen, R. de Jeu, A.J. Dolman, W. Eugster, D. Gerten, D. Gianelle, N. Gobron, J. Heinke, J. Kimball, B.E. Law, L. Montagnani, Q. Mu, B. Mueller, K. Oleson, D. Papale, A.D. Richardson, O. Roupsard, S.W. Running, E. Tomelleri, N. Viovy, U. Weber, C. Williams, E. Wood, S. Zaehle, K. Zhang. 2010. A recent decline in the global land evapotranspiration trend due to limited moisture supply. Nature xxxx: xxx-xxx.  DOI 10.1038/nature09396.

About the OSU College of Forestry:  For a century, the College of Forestry has been a world class center of teaching, learning and research. It offers graduate and undergraduate degree programs in sustaining ecosystems, managing forests and manufacturing wood products; conducts basic and applied research on the nature and use of forests; and operates 14,000 acres of college forests.

Scott Sell spent his 2010 spring break climbing in a favorite spot, Red Rocks in Nevada (Photo: Patrick Leavitt)

All Scott Sell wanted to do was to prove Richard Mikula wrong. “He was one of those teachers who makes you want to learn. He was tough,” says the Oregon State University senior from Ashland, Oregon.

In his drive to show a thing or two to his former high school chemistry teacher, Scott has become a key player in a long-term environmental research project at one of the nation’s premier ecological research sites, the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the Oregon Cascades.

In high school, the avid camper and rock climber preferred searching for toeholds on a vertical rock face to cracking the books. He got C’s in Mikula’s class but did well — scoring a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5 — on the Advanced Placement chemistry test. Scott heard from a friend that Mikula was surprised.

At OSU, Scott traded his climbing ropes for lab notebooks. He majored in advanced chemistry, running experiments and analyzing results. He lasted about a year and a half. After an instructor told him that his academic program wouldn’t ever allow for much outdoor exploration, he switched to environmental chemistry.

Scott comes from an active and competitive family (younger brother Tyler is a nationally ranked rower) and was looking for opportunities to combine chemistry with environmental issues. In an internship search, he just happened to walk into Kate Lajtha’s office in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology.

Lajtha, a botanist who focuses on soils and vegetation, leads a project with a name that is true to her calling: DIRT (Detrital Input and Removal Treatments). The real dirt is where much of the action happens in a forest. Carbon, nitrogen and other chemicals cycle through forest soils, she says, in a dynamic process that she calls “a nightmare of variability.” DIRT focuses on what controls those cycles and particularly how disturbance — tree harvesting and plant growth — affect the stability of carbon in the soil. The results could apply to efforts to sequester more carbon in forest soils across the world.

Through Lajtha’s lab, Scott learned how to analyze soil samples for major elements and micronutrients. He maintained databases, developed statistics and assisted graduate students. He learned, in short, to take ownership of the scientific process. He will become a co-author on scientific papers, an achievement that will help pave his way to graduate school.

Last summer, Scott completed his senior year working as a research assistant at the Andrews Forest. He managed a sophisticated new device (cavity ring-down laser spectrometer) that automatically analyzes air samples for isotopes of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Last winter, when it stopped working, Scott contacted the manufacturer, made repairs and conducted weekly tests.

“The work is self-directed,” he says. “I love that I get out to the Andrews. I get to spend all this time out in forest. It’s beautiful and serene and quiet.”

Scott hopes to apply his knowledge by teaching chemistry or working for a company or government agency cleaning up pollution at oil spill and Superfund sites. That, he says, would indeed make Richard Mikula proud.

In the tropics of Costa Rica, this violet sabrewing hummingbird is helping researchers understand the effects of forest fragmentation on ecosystems.

A thrush’s melody, warbler’s trill and sparrow’s chip-chip-chip form the musical backdrop for a hike in the woods. When birds sharing a forest patch all sing at the same time, the cacophony suggests the jumbled chatter of a human social gathering, with competing tones and pitches. In the din, distinguishing among species of warblers, for instance, or tracking individual chickadees is tricky. Scientists who study birdsong call this the “cocktail party” problem. Further muddying the forest sound-scape is background noise: rushing wind, splattering rain, crashing branches, foraging animals. Making sense of this audio hodgepodge can test a biologist’s mettle.

Matthew Betts is not deterred.

The OSU researcher is taking an innovative approach to recording birdsong in old-growth and second-growth forests. About a dozen microphones recently installed in Oregon’s H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest are capturing the calls of bird communities from high in the canopy to low in the understory. A parallel study is under way in New Hampshire’s experimental forest, Hubbard Brook.

Concerned with widespread reports of declines in bird populations, Betts is developing new ways to analyze trends in biodiversity. “We’re looking at the distribution of 40 or 50 species across the entire elevation gradient at each experimental forest,” explains the assistant professor of forest landscape ecology. “We want to know why species live where they do. Why do some species cut off at 1,200 meters yet others persist higher? Is it competition among species? Is it vegetation that’s driving that relationship? Is it climatic? It’s basic research, but it has big implications for how we predict the effect of climate change on animals.”

Matt Betts

Birds by Bytes

Gathering acoustic data digitally, he says, has big advantages over the current practice: putting people in the woods to count birds, song by song. Still another technological advance – artificial intelligence – will streamline the analysis of the electronic data. By employing smart computers that can “learn” to sort ambient noise from distinct species sounds, a team of computer scientists in OSU’s Ecosystem Informatics Program is translating the recordings into signals that can be read by computers. Betts and his collaborators hope to push forest ecology to a new level of efficiency and sophistication.

“We spend an immense amount of time and money every year surveying birds with technicians,” Betts says. “The overall idea of setting up microphones in the forest was, wouldn’t it be cool if we could have cheap, long-term data?”

But Betts’s investigations don’t stop there.  His research program, which has taken him and his graduate students all over Central and North America – from pollination experiments in Costa Rica to molecular studies of migratory birds in New Brunswick, Canada – has chalked up a lot of firsts: first to influence warblers’ nesting choices with recorded sound. First to put radio transmitters on tropical hummingbirds. First to test continental-scale geographic-dispersal patterns in the chemistry of feathers.

Each study launched from the Betts Forest Landscape Ecology Lab, no matter how far-flung geographically or out-front technologically, has one overarching goal: to isolate the effects of habitat loss, landscape fragmentation and climate change on biodiversity and species persistence (survival over time).

Betts cites a 2010 report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature showing that steep declines in populations of birds, mammals, amphibians, plants and invertebrates are continuing across the planet, despite some successful efforts at conservation.

“Habitat loss and fragmentation are known to be the primary cause of species extinctions worldwide,” he notes. “With thousands of species verging on extinction, discovering how animals respond to habitat degradation and disruption is urgent if we hope to reverse the trends.”

By opening all sorts of new windows onto avian behavior – such as using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology in a recent habitat study with Woods Hole Research Center – Betts has become a noted innovator in the field of landscape ecology.

“Matt’s research on the response of bird populations to forest fragmentation has served as a critical guide for many young and aspiring ecologists,” says Benjamin Zuckerberg, a research associate with the Citizen Science Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  “Using advanced statistical approaches, he has made significant contributions to the study of ecological thresholds and breeding-site selection in forest birds. Land managers and policymakers, as well as graduate students, appreciate his ease in communicating complex scientific concepts.

“Most importantly,” Zuckerberg concludes, “the results of Matt’s research emphasize the role of landscape ecology in natural resource conservation.”

Lab-Rat Bird

In the hardwood forests of New Hampshire’s White Mountains lives the black-throated blue warbler. Nesting in low-growing shrubs, this abundant warbler is easy to find and count, making it a favorite subject for East Coast ornithologists.

“The black-throated blue warbler is the lab rat of eastern avian demography,” jokes Betts, who first studied the species as a post-doctoral fellow at Dartmouth College.

These handy birds have given Betts surprising new insights into the purposes and powers of song. Wondering how birds choose nesting sites, Betts and a team of researchers from Wellesley College and from Queen’s University and Trent University in Ontario, Canada, recently ran an experiment to see whether, in essence, they could “trick” the warblers into picking poor places by making them think other warblers favored those spots. The scientists played electronic warbler songs at 54 White Mountain locations – scrubby areas with scant cover that warblers normally would bypass. But having heard their species’ songs broadcast as they flew over in the late summer, many returning warblers chose the sub-par nesting sites the following spring. In fact, more than 80 percent of first-time breeding males settled in the bad habitat, Betts and his colleagues reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

“We were very surprised,” Betts told Science magazine’s blog, ScienceNOW. “It was almost as if we’d attracted a spotted owl (secretive old-growth dwellers) to a parking lot.”

Taking cues from fellow warblers is a shortcut to scoping out optimal breeding grounds, Betts explains. It’s a behavior that can aid the species’ adaptability to rapidly changing landscapes.

“The approach this bird uses can be very efficient in allowing individuals to find new habitat quickly when old habitat has been lost or degraded,” he says. “We’re developing a library of species that use this nest-site selection strategy, which may make them less sensitive to environmental changes than species that are poor at finding new habitat.”

Flight Paths

The green hermit hummingbird of Central America weighs over three-tenths of an ounce – approximately the heft of a good-sized chickadee. By hummingbird standards, that’s huge. (In contrast, the Pacific Northwest’s ubiquitous rufous hummingbird tips the scale at just one-tenth of an ounce.) The green hermit’s heavyweight status makes it a prime candidate for tracking by radio transmitter because although the transmitter weighs less than one-hundredth of an ounce, it’s too heavy for the tiny rufous to carry on its back.

Betts and Ph.D. student Adam Hadley wanted to investigate hummingbirds’ travels through the rainforests of Costa Rica to help explain why pollination levels around the world appear to be dropping. In particular, they wondered how fragmented forests – patches of trees left stranded amidst areas cleared for roads, crops or timber – affect the flight patterns of the iridescent, curved-billed pollinators.

“Recently, people have started realizing that landscape configuration, especially fragmentation – how habitat is distributed – can be quite important for some species,” Betts explains.
So in the winter of 2008, the researchers glued miniature transmitters to 19 green hermits with false-eyelash adhesive and then monitored the birds’ movements for several weeks until new feather growth made the transmitters fall off. In the journal Biology Letters, the scientists reported that the birds adhered closely to  forested corridors in the landscape, clinging to treed areas while avoiding open patches devoid of cover – even when that meant flying longer distances. Not only are the longer distances potential stressors for the birds, but the avoided patches may miss being pollinated, thus losing plant diversity over time.

“We don’t yet know for sure if pollen dynamics are being disrupted by forest fragmentation, but we think so,” says Betts. “Our hummingbird research suggests that maintaining riparian corridors of forest between patches could be quite important for pollination dynamics.”

Heroic Triumvirate

Betts’ heroes – three titans of biology, Edward O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr and Paul Ehrlich – all began their careers studying animals (ants, birds and butterflies, respectively). But over time, they extended their inquiries to such sweeping scientific questions as the mechanisms of evolution, Earth’s ecological thresholds and the origins of human nature. All became active in the political sphere, advocating on behalf of the planet’s long-term survival.

While not presuming to share the lofty status of these science superstars, Betts imagines his career taking a similar beyond-the-lab trajectory. For him, however, public-policy work will be a homecoming of sorts. As an undergraduate – motivated by his childhood wanderings among the woods of New Brunswick – he aspired to conserve the forests where so many mysteries were secreted. So he studied political science. He soon realized, however, that if he hoped to influence policy, he first needed grounding in the fine and complex details of ecosystems – in what he calls the “micro” sphere of forest management and conservation. So he went back to study biology and ecology.

Still, it’s at the policy level where discoveries give rise to action. Betts sees himself looping back more strongly to the macro sphere as time goes by. “It can get very frustrating doing science when you’re just pumping out scientific papers and nobody’s paying any attention to it,” says Betts, who serves as OSU’s representative on Oregon’s State Forest Advisory Committee, which provides input to the Oregon Department of Forestry on forest management issues. “That’s what drew me to the College of Forestry, actually. There’s this potential link between basic research and applied work, and then translation into some kind of action.”

If science can, for instance, reveal how fragmentation affects animals – as opposed to simple habitat loss – the findings can guide decision-makers in tangible ways.

“We have the power to design landscapes in different ways,” Betts notes. “Losing the same amount of habitat, developers or foresters could decide to leave wildlife corridors, or they could decide to leave a single big patch instead of making four little ones. It becomes pretty important when thinking about the persistence of species.”

Still, he says, doing science – even stopping for a minute to enjoy a warbler’s stirring call – can be a satisfying refuge from the contentious political arena.

“Basic research is nice because it doesn’t depend on people that much,” he admits. “So if I’m depressed about the rate at which my findings get turned into policy, at least I’m finding out some interesting things about nature. That’s good in itself.”

To support forest ecology research in the OSU College of Forestry, contact the OSU Foundation.

OSU forestry student Steve Ashley has spent six summers fighting forest fires in Central Oregon. (Photo courtesy of Steve Ashley)

Which of Oregon’s abundant tree species can provide not only logs for your vacation cabin but scented oil for your afternoon massage and flavor for your evening cocktail? Juniperus occidentalis, western juniper. This hardy species – which is endemic to the dry, rocky grasslands east of the Cascades – has heartwood that is both beautiful and enduring, fragrance that is coveted for soaps and lotions, and berry-like cones that give gin its characteristic taste (indeed, the word “gin” is derived from the Dutch word for “juniper,” genever or jenever).

Despite its potential market value, this high-desert native is viewed mainly as a worrisome invader across much of Oregon’s rangeland. Its dense roots suck up gallons of water, stealing scarce moisture from sagebrush, grasses and streams. Habitat for wildlife and forage for livestock are becoming lost or degraded. Ranchers are fighting back, downing the trees with chainsaws and tractors. Much of the wood remains where it falls, unused.

From Logs to Lotions

Transforming juniper from problem to profitability is the vision of OSU forestry student Steve Ashley. Cultivating new markets for juniper products could benefit not just Oregon’s ranchers but also its mills, builders, landscapers, furniture makers, garden centers, retailers and enterprises in specialty niches such as essential oils, craft distilleries and animal bedding, he says. And then there’s the growing demand for sustainable energy. Juniper is a vast source of biomass just waiting to be tapped, Ashley asserts.

So what’s getting in the way? That’s the question Ashley explored for his senior thesis in the Wood Science and Technology program with guidance from his adviser, Scott Leavengood, director of OSU’s Wood Innovation Center. For the young man from Albany who spent boyhood summers working on the 700-acre Prineville farm where his grandfather grew mint, alfalfa and sugar beets, it’s more than just an academic question. He is constantly drawn back to the sage and rimrock and dry, desert winds of Central and Eastern Oregon. For the past six fire seasons, he’s been back out among the junipered hills battling wildfires with the U.S. Forest Service.

“Since I was a kid helping out on my grandpa’s ranch, I’ve seen the juniper grow up and take over,” Ashley says.

Reviving Ecosystems

An estimated 6.5 million acres of private and government lands in Oregon are classified as juniper savanna or juniper forest. That’s up from just 1.5 million in the 1930s. Suppression of wildfires on rangelands has allowed young seedlings to survive and flourish in recent decades. Yet despite the abundance – and landowners’ eagerness to be rid of it – juniper occupies a very small place in Oregon’s wood-products industry. Typically a short, limby tree that tapers sharply and has a swirling grain pattern, juniper is not ideal for mills, which are geared for long, straight-grained, knot-free logs, Ashley says. With only one large-scale juniper mill in the state – the nonprofit REACH (Rehabilitation, Employment and Community Housing) mill in Klamath Falls – transportation costs and logistics hinder large-scale logging.

Harvesting presents its own set of hurdles. Scattered widely and randomly across the landscape, juniper doesn’t lend itself to efficient logging like dense stands of, say, Douglas fir or ponderosa pine, Ashley explains.

But none of these impediments is impossible to overcome, according to Ashley. In his study, he makes recommendations for expediting the western juniper market, including using alternative harvesting methods such as mule or horse logging and creating a “value-added” product such as wood chips right on the harvesting site.

His vision for juniper in Oregon centers on its “green” assets.

“The ecological effects of removing western juniper have yielded great results in increasing stream flows and native grasses,” Ashley says. The ranchers he interviewed have seen “drastic ecological changes” after cutting juniper on their land. In fact, one of those ranchers, Bill McCormack of Brothers, told Ashley that “the grasses seem to grow overnight” as soon as the juniper is cut down.

Besides reviving ecosystems, harvested juniper can be used in all sorts of green products, from long-lived fence posts and landscape timbers that don’t need to be treated with chemicals to pellets for woodstoves to biofuels for energy generation.

Down to Business

For the juniper market to take off in Oregon, however, landowners, mill operators and government agents need to reach a meeting of the minds on how to move it forward, Ashley says. This “communication triangle,” he insists, must collaborate more closely to benefit all stakeholders. In the meantime, he plans to seek investment capital for a start-up company where he can put his extensive juniper knowledge to work.

“The public needs to be re-educated about western juniper,” he says. “They may be very interested in juniper products because the harvest restores ecosystems and yields ‘green’ products. Anything green is selling these days.”

To support student scholarships, contact the OSU Foundation.

Experience Oregon’s beauty and bounty through OSU research

Take a hike! Summer may have arrived a bit late in the Pacific Northwest, but you can make up for lost time by exploring public demonstration gardens, old-growth forests, wetlands, agricultural field days and an archaeological dig through OSU’s Summer of Science Google map. Each listing on the map includes directions and a description of what you’ll find.

View Oregon State University Summer of Science in a larger map

Rural landowners depend on access roads to move livestock and farm equipment. (Photo: Jesse Abrams)

Beautiful landscapes may inspire us, but it takes more than scenery to create community vitality. Wallowa County and rural communities across the country struggle with economic development, a future for their youth and the cultural tensions that arise from changing land ownership. For more than a decade, such issues in Wallowa have been addressed by Wallowa Resources, one of the nation’s leading nonprofit natural resources organizations.

“Wallowa Resources shows us what is possible. There are few places you can go in the country to get this range of innovative thinking about rural communities,” says Oregon State University forestry professor John Bliss.

So it was natural for Bliss and Associate Professor Kate MacTavish in Human Development and Family Sciences to partner with Nils Christoffersen, Wallowa Resources executive director, in the creation of an experiential learning course for OSU graduate students. Since 2005, students have spent 10 September days living with families and meeting with community leaders from Garibaldi on to the coast, to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Central Oregon, to Wallowa County in the northeast corner of the state.

For students, the experience has been unforgettable. Caitlin Bell, who participated in 2008, had this to say on her final exam: “I was faced repeatedly with the formidable and humbling task of dismantling my assumptions and preconceptions and rebuilding knowledge from scratch. I learned, among many things, that rural residents are innovative, entrepreneurial, and warmly hospitable people who value community, simple living, and hard work.” Wallowa Resources reprinted her remarks in a 2009 newsletter.

The Communities and Natural Resources course has spawned student projects that arm local decision-makers with useful information about trends in education, land use, forests and other topics, adds Christoffersen. For example, two students working with MacTavish – Devora Shamah and Brooke Dolenc – surveyed Wallowa County high school students and graduates to find out what drives their aspirations. They discovered that while about a third of high school students wanted to live in Wallowa County as adults, about one quarter of graduates were actually doing so. Dolenc’s and Shamah’s reports are available online in the OSU Scholar’s Archive.

OSU’s relationship with Wallowa County is just one example of the close partnerships between the university and rural communities through Extension and agricultural experiment stations. In addition, the OSU Rural Studies Program has established formal agreements to do research in Wallowa and Tillamook counties and has been active in Lake, Coos and other counties as well.

A signature effort has been the development of “community indicators” of vitality. OSU students and faculty have collaborated with local citizens to identify markers that allow leaders to prioritize goals and evaluate progress in reaching them. Wallowa County was the focus of a recent effort led by Lena Etuk, a social demographer with OSU Extension and the College of Health and Human Sciences. With funding from the Ford Institute for Community Building, she worked with Wallowa Resources and a team of volunteers to outline 26 indicators of vitality in social, economic and environmental health and community capacity.

Reports for Oregon counties, including Tillamook and Wallowa, are available online here.

Related story: The Mythbuster

To support OSU Extension or the Rural Studies Program, contact the OSU Foundation, 800-354-7281.

OSU graduate student Jesse Abrams interviewed ranchers, homeowners, business people and local officials to understand changes unfolding in Wallowa County. (Photo courtesy of Jesse Abrams)

On the 1,300-mile drive from Flagstaff, Arizona, to Corvallis, Oregon, Jesse Abrams took a detour. It was the summer of 2007, and he was pondering his upcoming Ph.D. in forest resources. He pulled into Enterprise, Oregon, the county seat for Wallowa County in the state’s mountainous northeastern corner.

It was a homecoming of sorts. For his master’s degree at Oregon State University, Abrams had worked here in 2003 for a nonprofit organization, Wallowa Resources, spending part of his time on the county’s noxious weed program. Four years later, he had other ideas in mind. As a staff member of the Ecological Restoration Institute in Flagstaff, he had juggled the needs of the environment and community development. Now, he wanted to examine the socioeconomic and land-use changes afoot in resource-dependent rural places.

These concerns hit home in a place like Wallowa County, where 58 percent of the land is in public ownership and where farming, ranching and logging have sustained families for generations. In the 1990s, changes to federal forest management led to the closure of three local sawmills. Later, as retirees and vacation-home buyers moved in — drawn by spectacular scenery and what Abrams calls the “idyll of rural America” — land prices started to rise, making it more difficult for young families to get established.

Local Leadership

These and other trends led some to worry that the county’s heritage was threatened and that its future was in the hands of outsiders, says Abrams. “Rather than having a community’s fate decided by the federal government, special interest groups, the courts or corporations, I wanted to look at how local people can exercise leadership and determine their own future,” he says.

So in Enterprise, the student who grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, met with three Wallowa Resources representatives to discuss how his project might help the organization address some of the county’s problems and develop local solutions.

Abrams set out to define trends affecting the county’s private lands: changes in ownership, road access, grazing by livestock, forest management, weed control, hunting rights and zoning. He interviewed landowners — both newcomers and long-time residents — and talked with public officials. He analyzed past land-use patterns, land sales records and demographic trends.

OSU forestry professor John Bliss advises Abrams and praises his ability to work hand-in-glove with local people. “He convened community leaders to help him get in touch with local concerns and provide feedback. It takes a mature researcher to maintain the necessary academic independence while engaging with such an advisory group, and Jesse has been extremely effective at it,” says Bliss, holder of the Starker Chair in Private and Family Forestry.

Bliss calls Abrams a “mythbuster.” Contrary to the view that before the 1990s, populations and land uses were stable and communities autonomous, Abrams has demonstrated that Wallowa County’s economy and social networks have always been vulnerable to outside forces. “If you look at the county’s history, what defines it is not continuity but change. From the Homestead Era on, land was not just a family asset. It was a commodity. People bought it, sold it, traded it and carved it up,” says Abrams.

“What’s happening now is new in some ways. It’s the first time a significant proportion of private land in the county has been owned by people who don’t depend on forestry or agriculture for their livelihoods,” he adds.

Abrams hopes that information about past trends will contribute to efforts to manage the county’s spectacular resources. He plans to finish his project in December 2010

–Nick Houtman

Related story: Partners in Rural Vitality

To support student scholarships at OSU, contact the OSU Foundation, 800-354-7281.

Forest landowners are beginning to take advantage of emerging carbon credit markets while scientists confirm details of the forest carbon cycle. (Photo: Eppic Photography)

As Arctic ice thins, sea levels rise and glaciers recede, Ken Faulk takes stock of his trees in the Oregon Coast Range. Last summer, he began measuring his stands of Douglas fir and white oak by pounding plastic pipes into the ground to mark the centers of circles nearly 30 feet across.

Working steadily in the soft twilight under the forest canopy, he recorded the height and diameter of every tree in each circle. It took him five days to cover 40 acres, but Faulk didn’t mind. He regards trees with the experienced eye of a man who loves the woods. “I saw old friends I hadn’t seen in a long time, trees I remembered, that I had taken an interest in. It was of value to me for that alone,” he says.

He sent his data to Oregon State University forest modeler Greg Latta, who analyzes carbon offset policies for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Latta calculated that Faulk’s Douglas firs, planted in 1980 by a previous owner, were growing fast enough to absorb more than five tons of carbon per acre annually, an amount equivalent to that generated by a car driving more than 35,000 miles.

Faulk’s forest isn’t unusual. The process, known as carbon sequestration, occurs everywhere that plants grow. As they absorb carbon dioxide from the air during photosynthesis, trees store part of that carbon in branches, stems and roots. Not all species are alike. The oaks come in a poor second to the firs, and on Faulk’s land, they absorb only about one ton per acre.

An OSU College of Forestry alumnus and the son of a Tacoma millworker, Faulk has seen the woods from every angle – independent logging contractor, Weyerhaeuser forester, Oregon Department of Forestry inspector and now president of the Oregon Small Woodlands Association. The nonprofit organization’s 3,000 members own about 16 percent of Oregon’s 30.5 million forested acres. With help from OSU Extension, the American Forest Foundation and other organizations, OSWA has created a company, Woodlands Carbon of Salem, Oregon, to create access to carbon sequestration markets.

By the end of December, Woodlands Carbon had signed up 11 landowners who agreed, like Faulk, to tally the tons of carbon being sequestered by their woodlands. More importantly, according to OSWA’ s Mike Gaudern, it had assembled nearly 20,000 tons of carbon credits and was seeking buyers for them. Unlike with other commodities – two-by-fours or bags of wheat – you can’t take a ton of carbon home and put it in the garage. But by paying landowners to lock carbon away in the woods for a period of time, buyers can offset their own carbon emissions.

“We need to look for ways forest resources can mitigate or ameliorate undesired climate change.”

— Hal Salwasser, Dean, College of Forestry

The hope is that carbon credits can provide a boost to financially struggling landowners who are facing growing pressure to convert their lands to other uses. If Gaudern and Faulk succeed, they won’t be the first. Such deals have already been struck in California, Michigan and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

An Appetite for Carbon

Oregon has long been the nation’s mother lode for softwood lumber, but if carbon sequestration is the goal, Faulk and other forest landowners are in the right place. OSU researchers have determined that forests here are among the best in the world for absorbing carbon dioxide, the gas linked to global warming. Old-growth stands in the Coast Range and west side of the Cascades store as much or more carbon than tropical rain forests, according to studies by OSU forest scientists Mark Harmon, Beverly Law and their students. Moreover, Law and her team have found that there is enough capacity to theoretically double the amount of carbon currently stored in forests stretching from San Francisco to the Columbia River.

“Many of the mature and old forests are on public lands, so they are uniquely positioned to act as carbon reserves,” Law told a U.S. Senate subcommittee chaired by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden November 2009.

To Faulk, more capacity for carbon means opportunity. “Scientists are telling us we need to draw the carbon dioxide level down as quickly as we can,” he says. “And that’s what we’re aiming to do here. Whether we can find some buyers who will accept that concept is our next challenge.”

It is just one of many hurdles confronting forest owners and scientists who are still coming to grips with what it might mean to put a price on forest carbon. At present there is little consensus. While professional forestry groups develop standards for inventorying carbon, economists are highly skeptical that, without national carbon emissions limits, carbon-credit markets can work. Forest ecologists are evaluating the carbon consequences of forest management practices and have barely begun to consider the influence of a changing climate. And forest products engineers have shown that wood can both store carbon for long periods and reduce carbon emissions by replacing other energy-intensive building materials such as concrete and steel.

Global Accounting

“If you’re going to make policy decisions to reduce carbon emissions and to mitigate by picking up carbon on the land, you need to measure these processes and ask, ‘Are we even coming close to what we think is going on?’” says Law, a Professor of Global Change Forest Science. “‘What is the ultimate effect on the atmosphere across the globe?’ That’s a big task.” (Note: Law is a member of a National Research Council committee that released a report, Verifying Greenhouse Gas Emissions, March 19. Download a PDF of the report here.)

Law seems undaunted by big tasks. In 1996, she joined scientists planning a new national network that monitors the exchange of carbon dioxide between forests, shrublands and other biomes, with the atmosphere. The goal was to track carbon flows across the country – from the maple, spruce and fir of New England, to the Ponderosa pine and aspen of the West. She suggested that sensors needed to be standardized and calibrated regularly so that data could be compared and analyzed nationally. “I spoke a little too much and became the science lead,” she says, a position she holds today for the international AmeriFlux network. Law also advises climate science programs run by the federal government and the United Nations.

Closer to home, she and her OSU colleagues manage three AmeriFlux sites in Oregon – two west of Sisters and another on land owned by Starker Forests Inc. along the Marys River near Philomath. They complement atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration measurements at three other locations – Newport, Marys Peak and Burns – that capture changes as air flows from the coast to the Great Basin.

Hardly a molecule moves at AmeriFlux sites without being detected. Instruments monitor weather, sunlight, heat and moisture. They track carbon in the soil, water, atmosphere and even water flowing through tree sap. Data flow every half-hour via cell-phone networks to Law’s lab on the Corvallis campus where she and her team monitor the instruments. They use the data to calibrate computer models that evaluate how carbon dioxide flows in and out of the forest and how carbon remaining in the forest changes at local, regional and national scales. Scientists will need such models to achieve the most ambitious result of the recent climate talks in Copenhagen: a program to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2050 and to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, particularly in tropical rain forests.

Meanwhile, the OSU professor and her collaborators have produced groundbreaking studies of Pacific Northwest forests. Some of their findings:

Fires produce less carbon emissions than previously thought. Even in a high severity fire, only about 10 percent of above-ground live carbon stocks are burned. About 60 percent of burned carbon comes from litter on the forest floor, underlying duff and mineral soil, and most of the rest comes from snags and other dead material. Less than 1 to 3 percent comes from the trunks of live trees, somewhat lower than the fraction commonly used by scientists who produce national estimates of fire emissions.

Like all living systems, forests constantly send carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere, but most of it, about 70 percent on average, comes from the soil (roots and microorganisms), not tree stems and foliage.

Still, most forest carbon is stored in the soil, and 15 to 25 percent of soil carbon is long-lasting fire-produced char.

Disturbance

When it comes to carbon, Mark Harmon describes the forest as a leaky bucket. As carbon pours into the bucket through photosynthesis, it constantly leaks out through other processes, mostly decomposition and respiring plants and microbes.

It’s no different, he adds, than a bucket of water. “People tend to think that a leaky bucket can’t hold water. Well, that’s not true at all. It can, and it does. As long as there’s something coming into the bucket and the leaks aren’t mammoth, some water will accumulate. The more you pour in, the higher it will rise. The more holes you have, or leaks, the more it will go down.”

The holder of the Richardson Chair in forestry has specialized in two parts of forest carbon cycle: dead wood and the disturbances that produce it. Logging typically leaves large amounts of branches and other unsaleable material on the forest floor. In past years, much of this so-called slash was burned to “clean” the site. Harmon’s research has showed that as this wood decays, it fertilizes the regenerating forest. Leaving slash on the ground not only benefits young trees, it saves money by eliminating unnecessary work.

However, decomposition sends carbon back into the atmosphere. Harmon and Law have shown that for 15 years or more, the amount leaving a harvested site outpaces what young trees can absorb. Eventually, rapidly growing trees catch up and reverse the flow, resulting in the high rate of carbon sequestration that is occurring in Ken Faulk’s forest. But, says Harmon, forests must go through a massive carbon release before they reach that stage. “You just can’t get to the mountain peak without going through a valley,” he adds.

Harmon and colleagues demonstrated this process in a landmark study published in the journal Science in 1990. In the late 1980s, some scientists had proposed replacing old-growth forests, thought then to be stagnant, with carbon-hungry youngsters that would take more carbon out of the atmosphere. Together with OSU colleague William Ferrell and Jerry Franklin of the U.S. Forest Service, Harmon reported that replacing old-growth with young stands would in fact pump more carbon into the atmosphere, even accounting for the carbon stored in wood products. It could take at least 200 years, they concluded, for the regenerating forest to store as much carbon as the old-growth.

“You look at a tiny young forest and a massive old forest and ask which one stores more carbon. It doesn’t take much to figure this out, although it’s taken some people a really long time,” Harmon says. It’s an argument that continues to the present day and has continued to motivate research by Harmon and his students on tree mortality, decomposition and the carbon consequences of harvesting systems.

Green Wood

The carbon story doesn’t begin and end in the forest. In fact, the benefit of wood as a “green” building material goes beyond its ability to sequester carbon. It also serves as an alternative to more fossil fuel-intensive products such as aluminum, steel, concrete and plastic. “If you don’t look at what it’s displacing, you miss a big part of the story,” says Jim Wilson. “You have to look at the whole life cycle.”

For the last decade, the OSU wood scientist has worked with a national organization, the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials, or CORRIM, to follow the carbon trail for wood and other industrial materials from cradle to grave. With public and private funding, CORRIM has conducted life-cycle analyses of wood products industries across the country, from softwood lumber and plywood in the Pacific Northwest and South to hardwoods in the Northeast. It has analyzed wood flooring, particle board, laminated timbers and even the adhesive resins used in engineered wood products.

A 2009 CORRIM report, Maximizing Forest Contributions to Carbon Mitigation, notes that harvesting trees more slowly to increase carbon storage in forests would be counterproductive. That’s because a smaller supply of wood products would lead builders to substitute materials that require more energy to produce, thus leading to larger carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Over time, according to the CORRIM model, the use of wood to displace other building materials keeps more carbon out of the atmosphere than would be solely stored in the forest ecosystem itself if no harvesting was done.

To reach that conclusion, Wilson and his colleagues compared typical wood-frame houses to homes built with steel framing and concrete blocks. They also assumed that wood would come from “sustainably managed” forests, not old-growth. “If they aren’t sustainable, it’s not going to work,” Wilson adds.

“The CORRIM study suggests that when we take a comprehensive look at building materials, including total energy consumption, global warming, air and water emissions and solid waste disposal, wood turns out to perform better in most categories,” Wilson says in a 2009 report, Building to Benefit the Environment, by the Oregon Forest Resources Institute.

Pork Bellies

Andrea Tuttle, board member for the nonprofit Pacific Forest Trust (PFT), put it bluntly in a recent public radio interview: “Anything you can do with a pork belly, you can do with forest carbon, in terms of cash sales, derivatives, hedge funds, portfolio mixes. It’s a legitimate product now.” The trust has arranged to sell carbon credits from a mixed redwood and Douglas-fir forest in northern California to politicians (Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi), utilities and even commodities traders. It predicts that the Van Eck Forest in Humboldt County will store an additional 500,000 tons of carbon over the next century. Spurred by California’s climate change program, buyers have already paid nearly $2 million for 185,000 tons of carbon credits, according to Christine Harrison, PFT communications director. In December 2009, national energy supplier Green Mountain Energy was selling Van Eck carbon credits for $19.95 per ton.

Despite this success, economists find the idea of a carbon market hard to swallow unless there is a government policy imposing emissions limits. “Carbon is not like pork bellies,” says Andrew Plantinga, OSU professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics. “Since people can derive the benefits from carbon sequestration without paying for carbon credits, there are powerful incentives for them to free-ride on other people’s purchases. Unless there are restrictions on emissions, the incentives for anybody to buy carbon credits are weak.”

Even with emissions limits, a market for forest carbon suffers from three major problems, he explains. The first, known as “additionality,” stems from the fact that trees sequester carbon just by growing. Landowners need to demonstrate that their actions will cause the forest to store more carbon than it would have done on its own.

Second, he adds, carbon credits aren’t permanent. If a contract ends and landowners are free to harvest their forest or convert their land to another use, much of that carbon can be released back into the atmosphere.

Third, carbon credits can reduce tree harvests in the short term and lead to less wood available for paper, construction and other uses. That may raise prices and give other landowners an incentive to harvest their trees earlier. This so-called “leakage” problem also puts carbon back into the air.

In an analysis for The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, Plantinga and Kenneth R. Richards of Indiana University suggest an alternative: an international treaty that places national limits on forest carbon emissions and requires regular accounting of carbon stocks across the globe. Such a system could avoid the pitfalls of a project-by-project approach, which was adopted in the Kyoto Protocol.

“We need to look at forestry at as broad a scale as possible,” says Plantinga. “We need to count everything. We should have a way of looking at all of the forests in the United States and relative to a (carbon) benchmark that we all agree on, determine if they go up or go down.”

A national cap on carbon emissions could provide an incentive for utilities and other emitters to buy carbon credits, such as those offered by Woodlands Carbon and Green Mountain Energy. Plantinga is currently studying the potential for policies based on emissions caps to meet the problems posed by carbon markets.

OSU news releases:

January, 2010, “Effects of forest fire on carbon, climate overestimated”

July, 2009, “Forest fire prevention efforts will lessen carbon sequestration”

July, 2009, “Northwest forests could store more carbon, help address greenhouse issues”

January, 2009, “Warmer Climate Causing Huge Increase in Tree Mortality Across the West”

January, 2007, “Nitrogen study may improve accuracy of ecological predictions”

To support the OSU College of Forestry, contact the OSU Foundation

Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya, legendary for flamingoes and other birds, will be home to OSU zoology student Shalynn Pack for eight weeks this summer. (Photo: iStockPhoto, Steffen Foerster)

Ah, summer vacation. Time to kick back, right? Not so much for OSU students who are discovering opportunities to expand their horizons. They’re modeling blood flow, studying wildlife conservation in Africa, surveying Oregon’s old-growth forests and teaching entrepreneurship.

Here are a few of their stories.

In the Blood

Ishan Patel was more than pleased when he heard the news last spring. In fact, he says, “I was ecstatic.” The first-year student in bioengineering and the University Honors College had received a Johnson Scholarship to work in a research lab at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland this summer. His focus: an experimental model to simulate “pressure-driven bleeding.”

Patel grew up in Redmond, Oregon, where he attended the International School of the Cascades, graduating as class valedictorian. Research was high on his list, and at OSU, he joined Christine Kelley’s lab in the School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering. Under her guidance, he gained confidence in working with a genetically modified type of yeast that can be used in a process to produce biofuel.

At OHSU, Patel will work with Owen J. T. McCarty, an expert in cell transport in arteries. Medical researchers have had limited success in simulating arterial bleeding, says Patel. Working with a mechanical model system, he intends to “find ways to simulate arterial bleeding with clotting and then creating model curves for later use.”

Patel hopes to attend medical school and follow his love of research by finding ways to address cardiovascular disease or cancer.

Entrepreneur for Life

When Alexa Carey was growing up in Gold Beach, Oregon, business talk was heard as often over dinner as “please pass the potatoes.” Her parents were “serial entrepreneurs,” she says, who sold sporting goods, photography equipment and flowers; managed the local JC Penney store; and operated a dry cleaning business. “My dad took maybe three days off a year,” she adds.

That entrepreneurial spirit is stitched into Carey’s DNA. The sophomore in business, speech communications and the University Honors College is helping to run Project Earth, which stands for entrepreneurship, art, rural sustainability, training and holistic support (“Yes, it’s a mouthful,” she says).

Carey and three Oregon friends – Laura Murdoch, Carol Hahn and Darryl Lai – created Project Earth in a late-night brainstorming session. Their dream: teach children “how to run a business, how to be successful, how to create a better standard of living for yourself and your family.” Students learn to make a marketable craft product and to create a “life vision map” of their long-term goals.

In May, Carey and the core Project Earth members took the program back to Gold Beach. “We taught 100 fifth-graders how to achieve their goals. We got crazy messy on the playground with hand painting. We taught them how to market themselves and businesses. Kids love it when you take an interest in them. It was spectacular.”

Carey has big plans for Project Earth. She’d like to take it to students in Brazil where a friend teaches school. This summer, she plans to stay a bit closer to home and do a workshop at the Oregon School for the Deaf in Salem (Carey can use American Sign Language). She will also serve as a project manager for the annual Young Entrepreneurs Business Week summer camp, July 19-25 at OSU.

Off to Kenya

Shalynn Pack likes a challenge. Right after graduating from Thurston High School in Marcola, Oregon, she bucked family loyalties when she decided to attend Oregon State University, even though her dad is “a huge Ducks fan.” She has traveled on her own in Spain and other parts of Europe. She has volunteered in veterinary hospitals and the Oregon Primate Rescue Center in Longview, Washington.

This summer, she will take her most ambitious journey yet. The junior in zoology will fly to Kenya where she will work at Lake Nakuru National Park, famous for a “pink sea of flamingoes lapping at its shores.” Surrounded by grasslands and situated between two volcanic craters, the lake is home to about 450 bird species. Working for the Kenyan Wildlife Service will bring Pack face to face with other exotic wildlife – white rhinos, tree-climbing lions, warthogs and baboons – and the threats they face from deforestation, pollution and encroaching development.

“Traveling in Europe and Spain, I knew what to expect. With Africa, what you hear in the media – the wars, that it’s really unstable – it’s hard to get over that. But everything I’ve read and people I’ve talked to say the people are really generous. And I’ll be living with a host family,” says Pack who dreams of a career in tropical wildlife conservation and community-based tourism.

After her eight-week internship, she will spend a week traveling before returning to Corvallis in time for classes in the fall. At OSU, Pack has studied molecular genetics in salamanders, served as a mentor in a science education program and volunteered for the Homeless Gardens Project.

Woods Walker

It’s not a bad job if you hike or fish. Andrew Merschel does both. The senior in forestry and the University Honors College will pack his fishing pole and a personal pontoon boat this summer and head for the Pringle Falls Research Station on the Deschutes River south of Bend. When he’s not going after steelhead and salmon, he and fellow OSU forestry student Claire Rogan will be surveying forest plots.

Under guidance from Tom Spies, courtesy professor of forest ecology, and with support from the Deschutes National Forest, Merschel is pursuing an elusive goal: a useful definition of old-growth forest in country dominated by ponderosa pine, western juniper and mixed-conifer stands.

“The old-growth forests of the west side (of the Cascades) develop their complex structure and diversity over hundreds of years, and a lot of work has been done to understand how these forests develop,” says Merschel, “but the dry mixed-conifer forests of the east side aren’t as well understood. The different species and conditions there create a much different scenario for old-growth habitat.”

Merschel and Rogan will measure trees in 45 to 50 two-and-a-half acre plots in the Crooked River area and in the Ochoco Mountains east of Prineville. They’ll record species, measure tree height and diameter, drill cores and sample woody debris on the ground.

In addition to looking for patterns that can define old growth, they’ll use data from their surveys to evaluate the accuracy of forest maps created from satellite images. Their work will assist the Deschutes National Forest in revising management plans.

Merschel intends to graduate next winter and apply to graduate school.

Immune Defense

To compete for a Goldwater Scholarship, you need a big idea. The award aims at nothing less than building the country’s future science and engineering talent pool. Beth Dunfield has ambitious goals for herself and a desire to help others, so she proposed to work on a cure for cancer. She wants to enable the body’s own immune system to recognize tumor cells and insert a therapeutic gene, killing the tumor.

If she succeeds, Dunfield may get a chance to put her ideas into practice. She plans to go to medical school and to focus on cancer or geriatrics. “I enjoy learning how the human body works. At night, I like to read books for fun on anatomy and physiology. It just really fascinates me,” she says.

This summer, the OSU senior in biophysics and biochemistry and the University Honors College will work in OSU Professor of Chemistry Vince Remcho’s microfluidics lab. For her honors thesis, she will develop a microchip-based laboratory device. This emerging technology is essentially a “lab on a chip” that enables scientists to conduct chemical reactions with control and sensitivity.

“I’ll design, fabricate and test a device for chemical and biological applications,” she says.

Dunfield’s work impressed the Goldwater Scholarship committee. In March, she learned that she was one of 278 students in the United States to receive the award which will pay up to $7,500 in tuition and fees. She credits Kevin Ahern, senior instructor and director of OSU’s HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) summer undergraduate research program with helping her through the process. “He’s been a great adviser. He really challenges students to push themselves,” she adds.

Feel the soft skin of an octopus or the spiny texture of a sea urchin at the Visitor Center at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.

Learn which native plants are adaptable for home landscaping and see drought-resistant and wheelchair accessible gardens at more than 17 locations managed by OSU-trained master gardeners.

View a colorful exhibit in the State Capitol Rotunda that reveals all the drama and tumult of Oregon’s geologic history.

Watch archaeologists literally dig in Oregon’s past at Champoeg State Park, Oregon’s first provincial capital, and at Civil War era Fort Yamhill.

With this interactive map, click on the dots, learn what you can do and begin making your plans. (NOTE: Best viewed in Firefox or Safari. Internet Explorer may not display content.)

John Sessions coaxes maximum efficiency out of the intensely complex puzzle of forestry with a careful eye to minimal ecological impact. (Photo: Jim Carroll)

John Sessions likes to refer to forestry as “a bio-energy puzzle.” Like a lot of 21st-century puzzles, its solutions are digital 
and mathematical.

“Forest landscape planning, as it is known today, was not possible before the advent of high-speed computers, geographic information systems, modern algorithms and graphic interfaces,” says the holder of the endowed Richard Strachan Chair of Forest Operations Management at OSU.

Translation: Long-term sustainability for Oregon’s forest industry now relies on data, knowledge, software and advanced computing power. Harvesting wood in sensitive ecosystems makes up one set of puzzle pieces. The other has to do with earning a living in a volatile economy and a competitive world. Trying to achieve these goals — protecting the environment 
while producing timber products — can cause tension.

Professor Sessions’ mission, indeed his passion, is figuring out how to meld the myriad elements of nature, regulation, jurisdiction and commerce to maximize efficiency without sacrificing ecology. To do this, he uses a method called “combinatorial optimization.” Boiled down, that simply means “getting the best out of the most.” In support of Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) efforts, he has designed a software program called Harvest and Habitat, which crunches voluminous sets of data on possible cutting schedules, forest structure (age, species and density of trees) and wood transport for 632,000 acres of Northwest forests. The resulting simulations are used by ODF to guide management decisions in seven districts, including Tillamook, Astoria and Forest Grove. Foresters use the models to compare one harvest strategy against another — before bringing in the loggers and the loaders.

But simulation software is just the tip of the Douglas fir for Sessions, a Distinguished Professor of Forestry. He brings a lifetime of forest-science experience (including managing 4,000 workers on a Brazilian pulp plantation and consulting for 15 countries worldwide) to his astonishing workload at OSU. Admitting, with some embarrassment, to working 12 hours every single day except Christmas and Thanksgiving, the youthful 65-year-old can’t fathom a more satisfying way to spend his earthly time allotment. Academia satisfies his two deepest drives: “I like solving problems, and I like teaching students.”

The problems he solves include the mundane, even minute, details of day-to-day forestry: the logistics of getting logs out 
of the woods and to the mills in the quickest, cheapest and eco-friendliest way. Often, he says, it comes down to scheduling — of harvests, of crews, of trucks. As part of a proposed Oregon Innovation Council initiative, Sessions will study the comings and goings of log trucks to help minimize wasteful trips.

Quite simply, inefficiency sticks in his craw.

“Why,” he wonders with a note of irritation, “would you ever see two empty log trucks, or two loaded log trucks, going down the road in opposite directions? You say, ‘Is there a way they could spend less time traveling unloaded as they move from job to job?’ We’re looking at using advanced algorithms, along with GPS and satellite phones, to help us assign the trucks more efficiently.”

To support OSU forest management research, contact the OSU Foundation

Students enrolled in a restoration field course collect stream macro-invertebrates with Matt Shinderman, top, and Instructor Karen Allen, lower right. (Photo courtesy of Matt Shinderman)

If you had happened upon Lake Creek, a tributary of Central Oregon’s Metolius River, in the fall of 2007, you might have seen Matt Shinderman and his Ecological Field Methods students standing nearly knee-deep in the water with dip nets in hand, hovering over tic-tac-toe style grids. And you might have been puzzled when they emptied their nets into buckets and began to pick and sort through the contents.

The biologist at Oregon State University’s Cascades Campus and his students were surveying aquatic insects, or macro-invertebrates, to determine how the ecosystem was responding to the equivalent of major surgery.

“Stream macro-invertebrates are a key indicator of biological stability in systems like Lake Creek,” says Shinderman, who works closely with Matt Orr, OSU-Cascades and University of Oregon instructor of biology and ecological restoration. Collecting samples before and after the restoration efforts let Shinderman, Orr and the students know how well the insects bounced back after workers with backhoes and dump trucks restored the stream to its original shape.

Orr initiated the project in 2005 through his Restoration Field Course, and Shinderman became involved as a guest instructor. During the fall 2007 field season, Shinderman had OSU-Cascades students enrolled in another field course collect additional samples in Lake Creek. The project is a good example of UO and OSU collaboration that benefits students at the Cascades Campus and local organizations, Shinderman and Orr say.

Lake Creek was once an important spawning ground for chinook and sockeye salmon, but the construction of the Pelton Round Butte dam complex nearly 50 years ago effectively cut off all salmonid migration to it and other tributaries. In order to reintroduce native salmon and steelhead into the upper Deschutes Basin, Portland General Electric (PGE) and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, who operate the complex, determined that restoring historically important tributaries was key to their success. Lake Creek was a priority.

“The historic value was high at Lake Creek, and its status was pretty poor for habitat value,” says Shinderman, who is also a professional fly-fishing guide. Led by the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council, Deschutes National Forest and the privately owned Lake Creek Lodge, the restoration project aimed to improve fish and wildlife habitat by removing concrete, rock retaining walls and a large pond that had been built in the 1930s.

Back in the lab, Orr and his students took the lead in counting and identifying insects. Their conclusion: Populations dropped dramatically right after restoration work, but within six months, they rebounded and even showed a slight increase. Although it’s too early to say how the stream manipulation will affect insects in the long term, the data clearly show that negative impacts are short-lived.

“We’re really going to need, as with most ecological data sets, probably 10 years’ worth of data to make any reliable comparisons in terms of before and after the project,” says Shinderman. “There are so many variables that impact macro-invertebrate populations.”

The Lake Creek project has already provided a useful model of landowner and agency collaboration. “We’ve definitely gained traction as a result of Lake Creek,” Shinderman adds. “The results here have generally been positive, and they provide a great opportunity to approach private landowners in the future.”

Next up in the Deschutes Basin: Camp Polk Meadow. The U.S. Forest Service, the Deschutes Basin Land Trust, the watershed council and a private landowner plan to restore this section off Whychus Creek, which runs through an old ranch. “This is a highly disturbed system and a significant restoration,” says Shinderman. “Lake Creek helped pave the way for this project.”

— CELENE CARILLO

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.

Donor support is critical to the success of these OSU students. From left, Laura Marquez-Loza, Stephen Summers, Hiromi Omatsu, Blake Kelley, Nikki Marshall. (Photos: Jim Folts)

Five undergraduates — five dreams.

Blake Kelley sees a bright future for nuclear power and is learning all he can about reactor designs.

For Hiromi Omatsu, the future is in technology that enables elderly people to stay in their own homes.

Writing is Stephen Summers’ love. He publishes poetry and fiction in OSU’s student literary magazine Prism and hopes to make a living as an author.

After studying the molecular machinery in living cells, Laura Marquez–Loza wants to go to medical school.

And Nikki Marshall’s research with seeds has inspired her to work in environmental restoration and organic farming.

The common thread? Private scholarship support has enabled each to stay in school and pursue his or her goals.

Carmen Steggell, professor in the Department of Design and Human Environment, knows how much that support matters. The recipient of OSU’s Faculty Teaching Excellence Award has seen high–achieving students drop out of school for lack of money. And she has seen students stretch financially to participate in research that opens career doors.

At OSU, students receive about $12 million in private support annually through scholarships, fellowships and other funds managed by the OSU Foundation. Nevertheless, says Steggell, rising expectations (bring a laptop to class; buy software and the latest textbooks) and tuition rates strain student budgets. The trend is national. According to a recent U.S. Department of Education report, “… financial barriers will keep nearly two million low– and middle–income college qualified high school graduates from attending college.” (A Test of Leadership, www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/hiedfuture/reports.html)

Steggell sees the local impact. “You can’t be frugal in the ways that you used to be frugal” she says. “And many of the students I work with are juggling work schedules around their class schedules. For most, it’s going to school money.”

The foundation has set a $100 million goal for endowed and current use scholarship funds in the Campaign for OSU. Here, in their own words, students describe their research and how scholarships have helped them.

Hiromi Omatsu

Year and discipline: Senior, Design and Human Environment
Hometown: Kawagoe City, Saitama, Japan
Scholarship: The University Research Awards Program in the College of Health and Human Sciences helped to pay my tuition. Without it, I would have had to work at other jobs. (Note: Hiromi also received a LIFE Scholarship, supported by OSU’s healthy aging research initiative.)
Inspiration: My parents, who allowed me to decide my own future, and my two brothers and my sister (flute repairer, computer systems engineer and embroidery expert), who created their own careers.
Career goal: To conduct research on or to design housing systems that enable elderly people to enjoy life in their own homes.
Academic focus: The technology that people use to monitor health, alert them to medications, detect movement and provide security.

Laura Marquez–Loza

Year and discipline: Senior, Wood Science and Engineering
Hometown: Mexico City, Mexico
Scholarship: The Richardson Scholarship allowed me to go to school. If it had not been for that I would have been unable to pay for college.
Inspiration: My parents, because they have overcome many obstacles together and achieved so much. My grandma has also been an inspiration because she was very independent and ran a successful business to help support her seven children.
Career goal: To apply to medical school and pursue a career in health-related research.
Academic focus: In a plant virology lab, I learned laboratory techniques (how to extract RNA). Last summer, I learned to analyze wood from transgenic poplars, performing macerations and working with imaging techniques to measure fiber lengths.

Blake Kelley

Year and discipline: Senior, Nuclear Engineering
Hometown: Grants Pass, Oregon
Scholarship: This year I’ve received 11 scholarships ranging from $500 to $2,500. The Alan H. Robinson Scholarship cemented my financial security, enabling me to focus on schoolwork and research. This also gives me time to prepare for graduate school and a summer internship.
Inspiration: People who teach math and science: my adviser, Todd Palmer; my high school physics and chemistry teacher, Ron Rollins; and my high school calculus teacher, Martin Connelly.
Career goal: Doing research on spent fuel storage, reactor design or radiation detection. I would like to live in an era when the public embraces nuclear power as a clean, longterm energy source.
Academic focus: Using new methods to simulate the response of radiation detectors.

Stephen Summers

Year and discipline: Senior, English and Philosophy
Hometown: Canby, Oregon
Scholarship: The Ronald P. Lovell Presidential Scholarship brought me to Oregon State. Without the funding, I wouldn’t have been able to come here and dedicate myself to my studies.
Inspiration: Writers inspire me, because they manage to take some memory from their own lives and transmit it across time and space into something that touches me. My parents inspire me in their wholehearted dedication to my brothers and me. Also, Jesus Christ.
Career goal: To teach literature at the university level. Eventually, I hope to support myself writing crime novels and making public appearances.
Academic focus: I write poetry for myself and fiction for others. I publish contemporary poetry and short fiction in Prism (OSU’s student literary magazine).

Nikki Marshall

Year and discipline: Senior, Bioresource Research
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Scholarship: The Jaworski Scholarship has opened up opportunities or me in sustainable, organic farming and ecosystem restoration. Financially, it has enabled me to pay for childcare for my daughter. (Note: Marshall has also received the E.R. Jackman Scholarship, support from the Oregon Seed Trade Association and an award from the American Seed Trade Association with Future Seed Executives.)
Inspiration: My daughter Trinity is 8 years old. She is always asking questions and giving me hope.
Career goal: To own a farm and to restore lands harmed by invasive species or toxic chemicals.
Academic focus: I have been learning how to control seeds through heat treatments and consumption by beetles. Seeds of invasive species and other weeds pose problems for agriculture and environmental restoration.