Using 3D to Solve the “Three D’s” of Forestry

Heesung Woo, an assistant professor of advanced forestry, is one of the few people in the world leading forestry robotics research. This research, which involves emerging technology like artificial intelligence, precision mapping, machine learning and tree planting drones and robots, is looking to solve two big challenges facing forestry today — a declining and aging workforce and the need to incorporate AI, robotics and 3D mapping solutions into everyday forest management.

“The first challenge facing forestry — and this is a worldwide challenge — has to do with the forestry workforce,” says Woo. “There is a labor shortage, including an aging, fairly homogeneous workforce with fewer younger people and a small percentage of women working in the field.”

Woo says forestry is often referred to using the “three D’s” (not to be confused with 3D technology). “Forestry can be difficult, dirty and dangerous,” says Woo.

“Partially for that reason, it can be challenging to recruit the next generation, but it’s vital that we continue to diversify the workforce and continuously ask how we can expand and better train the population we recruit, as well as give the broader field of forestry more advanced yet accessible tools for managing their forests.”

One of the answers lies in technology, which plays a key role in attracting younger, more diverse audiences to the field. As young people are already familiar with computers and digital tools, they are more inclined to embrace the latest innovations. These technological advancements not only offer exciting opportunities but also help reduce the physical demands and risks associated with traditional forestry tasks by automating many processes.

Technology is also the answer for another challenge facing forestry — the software to analyze and understand the forests and move from broad brush management to granular prescriptions that digitally capture data, can be expensive and inaccessible to a small woodland owner. Woo is working to both revolutionize the technology used in forestry and democratize knowledge and software through open-source applications.

“Often the basic technology is not the expensive part, it’s the software,” says Woo. “The software also requires training so even if someone can get their hands on the technology, a knowledge gap can exist.”

Woo is developing free applications and open-source software, so forestry managers can have access to previously cost-prohibitive software. That takes the prices of some systems down from $500,000 to a few
thousand dollars, giving a broader group of people access to the latest technology.

He is also developing robots equipped with low-cost LiDAR systems to explore opportunities in autonomous forest monitoring applications, utilizing 3D mapping and precision data collection with LiDAR sensors.

Woo is committed to investigating and promoting advanced forestry practices that go beyond conventional methods to help foresters and land managers make data-driven decisions, remain safe and help forestry attract a more diverse workforce.

“By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and open-source technology, we can make forest monitoring and management more accurate, more efficient, more sustainable and an attractive field for the next generation,” says Woo.

A version of this story appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Focus on Forestry, the alumni magazine of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.

Exploring How Oregon Forests Could Dampen Seismic Waves
The Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center is measuring whether certain types of forests can act as natural shock absorbers during earthquakes. Following the last Cascadia earthquake, which triggered few landslides, researchers are asking if forest structure plays a role in dampening seismic waves. Professor Ben Leshchinsky, the Richardson Chair in Forest Engineering, Resources and Management, is working with his team to test this hypothesis by installing SmartSolo 3C seismic sensors, which are all-in-one devices that record ground motions, in the McDonald-Dunn Research Forest. The findings of this study could provide insights into how forests and landscapes interact during major seismic events and shed light on strategies to enhance landscape resilience.

Renewable Diesel From Forest Biomass
The OSU Clean Fuels Project, led by Kevin Lyons, the Wes Lematta Professor of Forestry Engineering, is exploring how forest biomass residues can be used to produce renewable diesel for internal combustion. This project analyzes how factors such as moisture content, particle size and tree species affect the quality of fuel produced through pyrolysis. It will also measure the environmental impact of these fuels on air quality, water resources and wildfire risks in Oregon. Findings aim to provide data that will inform policy and support cleaner fuel production with a focus on reducing carbon emissions.

SSMART Forestry: Sustainable, Safe, Machine-human Harmonized, Resilient and Technology-driven
The SSMART Forestry Lab, led by Woodam Chung, Stewart Professor of Forest Operations, is testing and identifying robotic exoskeletons that can be used in certain forestry tasks, such as tree felling and planting. Exoskeletons are proven to enhance worker strength, increase productivity and reduce risk of injury. This research is part of a broader effort to develop innovative technological solutions to transform the forestry industry.

Conducting Research Amid Wildfires
Nina Ferrari, a Ph.D. student in forest ecosystems and society, conducts bird research by climbing towering trees and joining the birds in their own realm — high up — rather than on the ground. In 2022 and 2023, she climbed 14 Douglas-firs in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest multiple times, studying how songbirds like hermit warblers and chestnut-backed chickadees divvy up vertical territories in multi-layered ancient forests and younger canopies planted 60 to 80 years ago. Recent inquiries at the Andrews have indicated that older complex forests offer cool pockets for songbirds to escape heat in a warming climate. Though half of Ferrari’s study trees burned in the 2023 Lookout Fire, she remains optimistic, believing her work will contribute to science amid climate extremes. Ferrari’s work was recently featured in National Wildlife Magazine.

A version of this story appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Focus on Forestry, the alumni magazine of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.

Artificial intelligence enhances monitoring of threatened marbled murrelet

Artificial intelligence analysis of data gathered by acoustic recording devices is a promising new tool for monitoring the marbled murrelet and other secretive, hard-to-study species, research by Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service has shown.

The threatened marbled murrelet is an iconic and elusive Pacific Northwest seabird that relies on the sea for food but raises its young as far as 60 miles inland in mature and old-growth forests.

“There are very few species like it,” said co-author Matt Betts of the OSU College of Forestry. “And there’s no other bird that feeds in the ocean and travels such long distances to inland nest sites. This behavior is super unusual, and it makes studying this bird really challenging.”

A research team led by Adam Duarte of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station used data from acoustic recorders, originally placed to assist in monitoring northern spotted owl populations, at thousands of locations in federally managed forests in the Oregon Coast Range and Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Researchers then developed a machine learning algorithm known as a convolutional neural network to mine the recordings for murrelet calls.

Findings, published in Ecological Indicators, were tested against known murrelet population data and determined to be correct at a rate exceeding 90%, meaning the recorders and AI are able to provide an accurate look at how much murrelets are calling in a given area.

“Our results offer considerable promise for species distribution modeling and long-term population monitoring for rare species,” Duarte said. “Monitoring that’s far less labor intensive than nest searching via telemetry, ground-based nest searches or traditional audio/visual techniques.”

College of Forestry graduate student Matthew Weldy joined Betts and Duarte in the study, along with Zachary Ruff of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Jonathon Valente, a former Oregon State postdoctoral researcher now at the U.S. Geological Survey, and Damon Lesmeister and Julianna Jenkins of the Forest Service.

Indigenous Knowledge and western science braided into recommendations for land managers

Two College of Forestry faculty are among the lead authors of a report that combines Indigenous Knowledge and western science for the purpose of informing future climate-adapted land management decisions across the United States. The authors say their recommendations include “practical and cultural
management interventions that could help avert the loss of thousands of acres of old-growth forest.”

The report, co-led by Cristina Eisenberg and Michael Paul Nelson of OSU and fire ecologists Susan Prichard of the University of Washington and Paul Hessburg of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station, urges that Tribal stewardship practices such as thinning and burning be considered in future land management decisions by the U.S. Forest Service. The Forest Service had expressed interest in gaining a better understanding of the connection between Indigenous Knowledge and western science in land management planning.

“Our forests are in grave danger in the face of climate change,” said Eisenberg, the College of Forestry’s associate dean of inclusive excellence. “By braiding together Indigenous Knowledge with western science, we can view the problems with what is known as Two Eyed Seeing, to develop a path forward that makes our forests more resilient to the threats they are facing. That is what this report is working to accomplish.”

Eisenberg, who is Native American, is the associate dean of inclusive excellence and the Maybelle Clark
Macdonald Director of Tribal Initiatives for the college and Nelson is a professor of environmental philosophy and ethics.

“Our report is deeper than changes in policy and management—it proposes a fundamental change in the worldview guiding our current practices,” Nelson said. “Our writing team’s cultural, geographic and disciplinary diversity allows for guidance on a shift in paradigms around how we approach forest stewardship in the face of climate change.”

Represented on the core writing team are Tribal members and Forest Service personnel as well as faculty from North Carolina State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Idaho, the University of Minnesota, the University of Arizona, the University of California and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

A version of this story appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Focus on Forestry, the alumni magazine of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.

Tree Ring Lab studies fire history through dendrochronology

The College of Forestry’s Tree Ring Lab takes a deep dive into learning from tree rings—through the science of dendrochronology. By analyzing tree rings, lead scientist Andrew Merschel, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) postdoctoral scholar with the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University, is uncovering important new information about fire history, forest stand development and Indigenous burning that informs our understanding of forest ecosystems, the complexity of old-growth development and how we might better steward the diverse forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Merschel works with a large team of management collaborators, science partners and students to collect, process and interpret the stories trees tell through their rings and wood. Associate Professor Meg Krawchuk and Amanda Brackett co-direct the lab and all three work together to support the research, training and teaching opportunities the lab provides.

“This research allows us to travel back in time and provide evidence of historical fire regimes that created the mature and old-growth forests we value so much today,” said Merschel. “There’s a surprising amount of fire in our forests documented by tree rings—it’s the basic ecology work that I wish we would’ve been doing decades ago to inform management of our forest ecosystems today.”

Graduate students in the Tree Ring Lab are applying this research in various ways. Ph.D. student Jennifer Bailey Guerrero is studying the development of marbled murrelet nesting habitat in relationship to fire. Sven Rodne’s master’s degree research involves historical stand and fire reconstructions in southwest Oregon. Charles Drake, who is also pursuing his master’s degree, is looking at historical fire throughout the McDonald and Dunn Research Forests. A team of undergraduate students and field technicians are critical to collecting and processing samples, and are aspiring tree ring scientists, ecologists and practitioners of the future.

“Tree rings provide a shared understanding of the history of forests, people, fire, climate, wind, water, management—it’s all there,” said Krawchuk. “When you walk into a room with a cross section of tree rings and their stories, it opens up a rare opportunity to talk through ideas and worldviews about trees and forests that draws people in and brings them together in an astonishing way.”

Reconstructing historical, cultural fire regime in Oregon’s Coast Range

Glenn Jones, a master’s student in the department of forest engineering, resources and management, is an Oglala Lakota descendent, an enrolled member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe of rural Northern California, and an active prescribed fire/cultural fire practitioner. Jones is working with Assistant Professor Chris Dunn to reconstruct a historical, cultural fire regime in the east slope of the Central Oregon Coast Range. Through a cultural lens, Jones sees the past seven generations (approx. 150 years) of land management as the crux of contemporary forest conditions. By better understanding forest conditions of our ancestral past, through Indigenous Knowledge and fire history, it informs our future seven generations’ land management strategies in forests that are threatened by contemporary wildfires, climate change and contain critical habitat for culturally and ecologically important species. Funded by the Seeds of Success Bureau of Land Management grant, Jones will be working in conjunction with the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians of Oregon and BLM lands to carry out his research.

New dual degree to focus on wildland-urban interface issues

Assistant Professor Chris Dunn is working on a new dual degree program with Erica Fischer, an associate professor in the College of Engineering, to train the next generation of wildland-urban interface researchers. It aims to bridge the gap between modeling and mitigating wildfire in natural landscapes and the built environment as more fires intrude upon communities. He is also part of a collaborative spatial fire planning process across the Pacific Coast states that bring partners, stakeholders and Tribes together to pre-plan wildfire response to be more proactive instead of reactive. A third project takes a critical look at using prescribed and cultural fire in recently burned areas to maintain the reduced risk, while protecting recovering areas from a reburn fire.

Assessing post-fire regeneration after the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire

John Bailey, professor of silviculture and fire management, is evaluating post-fire regeneration and recovery four years after the Holiday Farm Fire near Eugene, Oregon, including the potential to use drones to assess forest recovery. He’s also examining the fuel hazard implications of operational silviculture on Humboldt and Mendocino Redwood Companies’ lands in Northern California, and how it can be used to address wildland fire risk. His newly released book “A Walk with Wildland Fire” covers these two topics as well as the dozens of other complex issues surrounding society’s challenging relationship with wildland fire—before, during and after it occurs.

Expanded courses update “fire and restoration” curricular option

Led by Associate Professor John Punches, Guard School is a wildland firefighting course with field sessions on campus and in the OSU McDonald and Dunn Research Forests. Available in credit and non-credit versions, undergraduate and graduate options, and open to OSU students and employees, Guard School utilizes National Wildfire Coordinating Group and Federal Emergency Management Agency curricula and certifies participants as entry level wildland firefighters. Punches also leads the prescribed fire practicum, which teaches students how to use prescribed fire to achieve ecological and fuel reduction objectives, with an emphasis on private land efforts. The course includes student led prescribed fire implementation. Additionally, Associate Professor Daniel Leavell, in collaboration with Professor Mark Hoffman from the College of Health, has created a new Wildland Firefighter Health and Safety course, and work is underway on a Dealing with Stress in Wildland Fire Ecampus course. Funding for these new courses has been provided through a grant from the Bureau of Land Management.

A version of this story appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Focus on Forestry, the alumni magazine of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.

Using science to inform policy for a wildfire adapted Oregon

In response to longer and more severe wildfire seasons, a growing population living in the wildland-urban interface and the extensive impacts of the 2020 Labor Day fires, the Oregon Legislature passed Senate Bill 762 in 2021, laying the groundwork for statewide wildfire community adaptation efforts in a rapidly changing wildfire environment.

As part of this broader statewide effort, SB 762 directed Oregon State University, in collaboration with Oregon Department of Forestry, to create a map identifying where wildfires pose the most hazard to structures and other human developments. OSU was also directed to map the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, to be used in tandem with the wildfire hazard map to guide new defensible space and fire hardening building code standards in high-risk areas, bolstering community protection across Oregon. Additionally, SB 762 called upon OSU to map social vulnerability to help decision makers further allocate limited resources to those most in need.

The College of Forestry led an interdisciplinary team from across OSU. Their diverse expertise included wildfire risk science, rural economic development and social vulnerability, community combustion and impacts and communications and outreach. This team worked directly with a 26-member rulemaking advisory committee, county commissioners and planners, and engaged the public to co-produce maps that used the best available science, grounded in local knowledge of landscapes and communities.

“The hazard map was designed to give the state agencies implementing those codes a science-based foundation for deciding where to prioritize implementation,” said Andy McEvoy, a College of Forestry wildfire risk scientist involved in the maps’ development. “The state of Oregon wants to invest resources, people power, dollars, education and outreach into the communities where they can most positively affect risk reduction.”

Informed by science and practice

When the initial maps were released in the summer of 2022 according to the legislatively mandated timeline, they sparked many questions and concerns from people across Oregon. The pushback was strong enough that ODF rescinded the first maps less than two months after they were released.

Since then, the OSU science team working on the maps have been reviewing public feedback, coordinating with local professionals and planners, and incorporating changes into draft maps that address the primary concerns expressed about the first maps. Two significant changes reflect how fuels are less likely to burn on agricultural lands that are either irrigated or managed as hay and pasture. OSU researchers relied on input from fire modeling specialists, fire and fuel professionals and ranchers to develop the specific changes.

Public feedback in 2022 also caused the legislature to pass Senate Bill 80 during the 2023 session. SB 80 clarified that the map reflects environmental hazard rather than risk, an important distinction that more accurately captures the science behind the map and how to interpret it.

The OSU team, along with five other state agencies and groups, also embarked on a comprehensive public engagement effort to provide information about the draft maps and how they’ll be used by state agencies, and to address concerns about how community wildfire disasters across the West are affecting Oregon’s insurance market.

Looking to the Future

As a dynamic tool, Oregon’s wildfire hazard map will continue to be updated every five years based on current data, best available science and policy direction to support statewide strategic community wildfire programs. By engaging with policymakers and the public, OSU scientists gained firsthand scientific knowledge, learned from practitioners’ experience, and found gaps in public outreach and engagement processes fostering new and nontraditional partnerships and collaborations to address some of Oregon’s most pressing needs.

“Our efforts here in Oregon have demonstrated the challenge, but also the importance of leveraging science to inform policy decisions,” said Chris Dunn, a College of Forestry assistant professor of wildfire risk science. “It will be a big help in Oregon as well as other Western states grappling with increasing community wildfire risk.”

Learn more about the map!

How was wildfire hazard calculated?
To create the wildfire hazard map, OSU researchers combined two primary datasets: (1) burn probability, the average annual likelihood a location will experience wildfire, and (2) fire intensity, measured in flame length. Both were modeled across Oregon using the best available science with the help of state and local fire professionals using four criteria: climate, weather, topography and vegetation.

Who was involved?
Led by the College of Forestry, the OSU research team included experts in:
–Wildfire risk science: Assistant Professor Christopher Dunn and Andy McEvoy
–Rural economic development and social vulnerability: Associate Professor Mindy Crandall and Caitlyn Reilley
–Community combustion and impacts: Professor Erica Fischer
–Communication, project coordination and public interface: Shannon Murray and Myrica McCune

External agency collaborators included Oregon Department of Forestry, Oregon State Fire Marshal and Department of Consumer and Business Services.

A version of this story appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Focus on Forestry, the alumni magazine of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.

FY2023: a record year for research
Bolstered by a big jump in funding from U.S. government agencies, Oregon State University’s research awards in the last fiscal year surged to $480 million, a university record. The College of Forestry also closed out its best-ever year with $25 million in research grants and contracts for FY 2023.

Cristina Eisenberg named a Beaver Research Champion
Cristina Eisenberg, the associate dean for inclusive excellence and Maybelle Clark Macdonald director of Tribal initiatives in natural resources, was named an Oregon State Beaver Research Champion. Eisenberg leads the Indigenous Natural Resource Office, and within it, the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Lab. In partnership with five Sovereign Tribes in Oregon, her team is weaving together Indigenous Knowledge with western science to help the Bureau of Land Management adapt its forests in Oregon to be more resilient to climate change. Eisenberg and Dean Tom DeLuca recently received a $1M grant to work with leaders from the U.S. Forest Service and Tribal Nations to convene a series of Tribal roundtables around the Pacific Northwest. This work is in direct response to President Biden’s Executive Order 14072, which calls for conserving and safeguarding mature and old-growth forests.

Pacific Northwest’s semiconductor and sustainable timber industries to be strengthened by two tech hubs
The White House, through the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, announced the designation of 31 Tech Hubs. Oregon State is the only university to lead two. The Pacific Northwest Mass Timber Tech Hub, led by TallWood Design Institute, a collaboration between Oregon State’s College of Forestry, College of Engineering and the University of Oregon, aims to be a global leader in mass timber design and manufacturing manufacturing, with a goal of reducing the construction industry’s carbon footprint and improving housing affordability.

Revision of Pacific Northwest bee ID key to support identification of native pollinators
Associate Professor Jim Rivers, in collaboration with OSU Extension, Oregon Department of Agriculture and Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, developed several bee ID keys to support native bee identification in the Pacific Northwest. The last version of the bee key was published in 1969. Given the growing interest in native pollinator conservation, the new bee ID keys will have a strong impact on bee research in the region.

Forest modeling shows which harvest rotations lead to maximum carbon sequestration
Forest modeling completed on the McDonald-Dunn Research Forest by College of Forestry graduate
student Catherine Carlisle and professors Temesgen Hailemariam and Stephen Fitzgerald, shows that a site’s productivity — an indicator of how fast trees grow and how much biomass they accumulate — is the main factor that determines which time period between timber harvests allows for maximum above-ground carbon sequestration. Over a 240- year projection timeframe, scientists found that for highly productive stands, 60-year rotations with low-intensity thinning at 40 years led to the greatest carbon storage (in the standing trees plus what was removed from the thinning). For stands on less productive sites, they found carbon storage was maximized by rotation periods of 80 years or 120 years.

Update from the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest
On August 5, 2023, a lightning strike ignited a wildfire within the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest and Long-term Ecological Research site in Oregon’s Cascade mountains, ultimately burning across 70% of the forest. The fire, dubbed the Lookout Fire because the ignition point was on Lookout Mountain, burned 25,000 acres, incinerating long-term, decades-old research plots and altering study sites.

2023 also marked 75 years of ecological data collection, and 42 years of Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) inquiry. The Andrews, as it’s affectionately known, also celebrated a successful midterm review by the National Science Foundation.

Throughout the challenges and celebrations, the H.J. Andrews community continues to make discoveries about the forest and engage with forest managers, teachers, students of all levels, artists, writers, musicians and many other groups.

Bridging gaps between forestry and engineering to better understand community resilience to wildfire
Wildfire researchers from Oregon State University, including College of Forestry Assistant Professor Chris Dunn, have received $750,000 for multiple projects to advance the science of wildfire risk and resilience. The strategies include embedding a doctoral student in Ashland, Oregon, the site of the largest primarily urban blaze in Oregon history that occurred in 2020; planning a global center for transdisciplinary wildfire research on community resilience; and creating a wildfire risk and resilience graduate program jointly advised by faculty in OSU’s colleges of engineering and forestry.