May 8, 2013
The phone has been ringing off the hook lately with calls from people describing sick and dying Douglas-fir and other conifer trees. The trees are of a wide range of ages and in many environments and settings, although most calls have been coming from within the valley margin and have to do with young trees. [...]
February 17, 2013
If you have called or emailed me recently, you have received an “out of office” message saying I would be away in February. The full story is that I am in the mountains of Northern Thailand, helping my graduate student, Hathai, with her dissertation research on forest regeneration dynamics of understory trees. Her work is [...]
January 4, 2013
Brad Withrow-Robinson, Forestry & Natural Resources Extension Agent for Benton, Linn and Polk Counties. Let me begin by saying that I am a Luddite. I am not the first among my family or peers to embrace new technologies. I was deeply suspicious of computers, even while my brother carried around stacks of punch cards [...]
December 28, 2012
The holidays are winding down; gifts given and received, time spent with friends and family; Christmas trees soon will be un-decorated (and some will be repurposed for the fish). This year I bought our Extension office a holiday gift: a CoCoRaHS rain gauge. CoCoRaHS stands for Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network. It is a national network of [...]
July 30, 2012
That is the question we asked concert goers in downtown Portland last week. The nonprofit organization Ecotrust hosted the music and invited groups to attend with educational booths related to the theme “Treasuring Forests.” At the OSU Extension table, we talked to members of the crowd about the Hopkins Demonstration Forest, the Women Owning Woodlands Network, and the [...]
June 4, 2012
(If you missed them, here’s Part 1 and Part 2. Now for the final installment…) Coweeta and other LTERs have all kinds of equipment which continuously monitor and record temperature, precipitation, stream flow, water chemistry, and so forth, and thus have compiled valuable long-term records. At Coweeta, these records date back to 1934, and two [...]
June 2, 2012
In Part 1, I reflected on whole-watershed-sized forest science experiments that have informed present-day management practices and understanding of water cycling through forests. But what happens when a factor beyond our control changes the forest ecosystem, creating a quasi-experiment of its own? That’s what is happening right now in the southeast U.S. due to an [...]
May 31, 2012
Last week, I traveled to western North Carolina for a natural resources Extension conference. While there, I took a field trip to the Coweeta Hydrological Laboratory – a 5,400 acre experimental forest and the oldest continually running LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) site in the country. Coweeta is famous as the site of groundbreaking studies [...]
February 7, 2012
As some readers are aware, the OSU Forestry Extension program has seen some significant personnel changes in recent months, including the retirement of longtime Linn/Benton County agent Rick Fletcher and the transition of Clackamas County agent Mike Bondi to an administrative leadership role. That, coupled with a declining overall program budget has led Extension administration [...]
December 29, 2011
The Natural Resources Conservation Service is accepting applications for the Conservation Stewardship Program now through January 13th. The CSP provides a per-acre payment to small woodland owners that can demonstrate that they are implementing conservation and stewardship practices such as stream restoration, wildlife habitat enhancement, or other measures. Interested landowners should contact their local NRCS [...]
