Nearly a century of data provides knowledge for the future.
Since 1926, Oregon State University has conducted hundreds of studies across the College of Forestry’s 15,000 acres of research forests. These studies have contributed impactful solutions to the everyday and real-world challenges of sustainably managing forests for many uses.
Cat Carlisle who is pursuing a graduate degree in the Forest Engineering and Resource Management department, is adding her own study to the mix, examining the potential for Oregon’s forests to contribute to carbon storage and sequestration. Carlisle is analyzing the inventory of carbon stock in the McDonald and Dunn Forests — and projecting how different forest management strategies might shift carbon levels in the forests over the next 150 years.
“The hope is to find ways to use forest management to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequester it in biomass, to contribute to climate change mitigation. I hope this project sheds light on how to manage a sustainable working forest in a way that considers ecological factors like carbon stock, especially as the climate changes,” Carlisle explained.
Because Carlisle is conducting this work in the research forests, she was able to immediately jump in and access a wealth of existing data.
Edmund Hayes Professor in Silviculture Alternatives, Klaus Puettmann, manages a long-term research study in the McDonald-Dunn and facilitates opportunities for students to learn in the forests. His study investigates alternatives to clearcutting and examines whether features of mature and old-growth Douglas-fir forests could be retained through a variety of types of timber harvests. He is a staunch advocate for the research forests and their value as a long-term resource.
“The research forests offer examples of a wide range of forest conditions and hold great value for researchers and teachers who want to consider a multitude of forestry approaches,” Puettmann says, “We don’t have many examples of different silviculture treatments that are this close to campus and accessible to students.”
Puettman says one of the greatest benefits of performing his research project on the McDonald and Dunn research forests is the wealth of long-term data available. “Researchers and educators investigating various studies can potentially launch their project with the help of decades of data,” he said.
Learn more about past and present research in Oregon State University Research and Demonstration Forests.
Trevor Denning is on a mission to make the outdoors more accessible for people with physical disabilities. And he’s starting with Peavy Arboretum, in the Oregon State University College of Forestry Research Forests.
Denning, who graduated in 2022 from the College of Forestry with his bachelor’s degree in tourism, recreation and adventure leadership, with a double minor in natural resources and leadership, has been in a wheelchair since 2011, after a spinal injury when he was 15. With the guidance of his major professor Ashley D’Antonio, he focused his final capstone project on ways to make Peavy Arboretum more accessible to those with physical disabilities. That project launched him into a short-term position with the research forests.
“I believe there needs to be more people who are disabled making decisions about accessibility because we are the ones with the real-world experience and know what needs to change,” said Denning. “On many occasions, I have visited a local, state or national park that is deemed ‘accessible,’ when in fact, it is not.”
Accessibility, according to Denning, is “not a one-shoe-fits-all type of problem to address.”
“One of the greatest barriers or obstacles to accessibility is the lack of knowledge about the vast amounts of disabilities that exist,” said Denning.
His work in the research forests will include providing trail information to people with disabilities so they can be empowered to make the best and most informed decision for themselves about whether they can navigate the trail. Information like trail length, width, travel surface, grade, elevation gain, location of the steepest pitch, as well as trail conditions, will be posted on the research forest website.
As the research forest team and volunteers perform trail maintenance and work on new trails, Denning will provide input and guidance and review processes like entrance and gate accessibility.
“Most people don’t think of the research forest as a place for people with physical disabilities. But it needs to be,” said Stephen Fitzgerald, director of the Oregon State University Research Forests. “Peavy Arboretum has shorter trails with less elevational pitch that have the potential to be modified easily. Trevor had a plan, ideas, expertise and the lived experience to help us begin to make these changes.”
“Navigating a nondisabled world is tough,” said Denning. “Restaurants, grocery stores, bookstores, classrooms and housing are some of the many things that need to be made more accessible. The first step is having people who are disabled in a position to make these changes. For the longest time, I have wanted to be one of those people.”
And now he is. After his work in the research forests, Denning hopes to work for a federal agency such as the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service or the Army Corps of Engineers, helping give people with physical disabilities greater access to the outdoors.
OSU Extension quickly mobilizes to respond to emerald ash borer discovery.
In late June 2022, the dreaded emerald ash borer, which has decimated hundreds of millions of ash trees east of the Rocky Mountains, was discovered in Oregon. Oregon State University Extension Service, working with Oregon Department of Agriculture, Oregon Department of Forestry and other partners, responded immediately.
After ODA confirmed and announced the identification of the invasive insect in Forest Grove in Washington County, OSU Extension stepped in to curate and disseminate essential information about the devastating pest and assist with initial monitoring efforts to determine how far and fast the insect is spreading in Oregon.
“For emerald ash borer, and other known and emerging issues, OSU Extension has become a valued and trusted partner because of our ability to quickly bring relevant expertise to the table and effectively share research-backed information through our statewide network,” said Alex Gorman, OSU Extension forester. “With this foundation and our established connections with agency partners, we were poised not only to contribute to the immediate response, but also to longer-term actions.”
Gorman had only recently started in his new position serving Washington, Columbia and Yamhill counties. His first reaction, he said, was a sense of dread followed by sadness. Gorman knew what to expect from his exposure to EAB while a graduate student at the University of Minnesota.
Guided by Oregon’s existing emerald ash borer readiness and response plan,he knew how to quickly contribute that expertise. OSU Extension’s role is to conduct and share results of relevant research, which includes coordinating Oregon Forest Pest Detector training programs and providing information through its established channels and programs, including Master Gardeners, Master Woodland Managers, Master Naturalists and other volunteer networks.
The same day the detection was announced, OSU Extension activated an interdisciplinary team that includes faculty and staff with expertise in forestry, pest management, invasive species, horticulture and communications. The OSU team quickly organized essential information on their online EAB resources webpage and shared it through social media, announcements on county webpages and newsletters. The page includes information on how to identify ash trees, how to identify the insect and recognize look-alikes, how to monitor for EAB and report sightings and recommendations for tree protection.
An existing publication, Oregon Forest Pest Detector Pest Watch — Emerald Ash Borer, was rapidly updated online and a pocket guide was reprinted. Copies immediately went to ODF and all OSU Extension offices around the state for distribution. The guide includes insect identification, host plants, signs and symptoms and what to do if you suspect an insect you’ve seen is EAB.
“We have infrastructure, expertise and capacity to disseminate information in a way that makes sense and is helpful and productive and informative,” said Chris Hedstrom, communications and outreach coordinator for the Oregon IPM Center in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences. “Extension does a great job moving quickly. We have the ability to publish quickly and to house all the information in one place.”
OSU Extension’s EAB resource page includes several publications, articles, a video and a podcast episode. Extension foresters have distributed information through educational workshops, webinars, community events and social media posts through OSU Extension’s Master Gardener program.
Temesgen Hailemariam plays a key role in improving the productivity, health, and sustainability of intensively managed, planted forests in the Pacific Northwest
Temesgen Hailemariam has accomplished a lot in his 20 years at OSU’s College of Forestry – and he’s not done yet. In 2022, Temesgen was named the Giustina Professor of Forest Management and appointed as the director of the Center for Intensive Planted-forest Silviculture (CIPS), two prestigious roles that reflect his wealth of experience and expertise.
His new leadership position with CIPS will position him to play a key part in shaping the silviculture activities and research at OSU – and beyond. Their core mission is to improve the economic and environmental performance of the Pacific Northwest forests and to enhance the regional and global competitiveness of the Pacific Northwest producers in the forest products industry.
“As a land-grant university, we have a responsibility to Oregonians and to the public,” he said. “And we also have a responsibility to promote economic and environmental sustainability in the Pacific Northwest. The Center for Intensive Planted-forest Silviculture brings all of those objectives together and I’m honored to be able to contribute to sustainable forestry management, conservation, and economics through this role.”
He says it’s an especially critical time for this work, with both climate change and economic stressors impacting the forest industry. His goal will be to increase the profitability of the forest industry while also finding ways to mitigate climate change through forest management. He’ll be collaborating with stakeholders to implement sustainable forest management and restoration, provide opportunities for youth, and advance the forestry sector into the 21st century.
Temesgen first joined the College of Forestry faculty in 2003, as an assistant professor in forest biometrics and measurements. Since then, he’s taught hundreds of students, published more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, secured more than $4 million in research funding, and conducted work in Vietnam, Ethiopia, Canada, Germany, the United States, Chile, and South Korea. One of his greatest joys as a faculty member is mentoring students and he says he’s honored to have trained 5 postdoctoral scholars, 7 doctoral and 15 master’s degree students while at OSU.
His research highlights include developing a method to estimate the amount of carbon sequestered by a tree or by a forest, developing biomass and carbon equations, integrating airborne LiDAR and ground data to estimate status, change, and trends within a forest, and using advanced statistics to estimate the productivity of a forest.
It was not a direct path that led Temesgen to Corvallis. He studied and conducted research on three different continents before he made his way to Oregon. He was born and raised in Ethiopia, where he first developed an interest in the natural environment and forestry and decided he wanted to study biometrics and pursue work in forestry statistics. He got his first degree in Ethiopia and then headed to Ontario for his master’s degree before hopping across Canada to finish his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He also did a stint in Germany as a visiting scientist at the Institute of Forest Management and Yield studies at the University of Göttingen.
He brought all of this global experience and perspective to OSU, where he’s now happily settled with his family. One of his sons is attending OSU and the other is a high school senior.
“Our challenges are global, and our views should be as well. My journey to OSU has shaped my views and prepared me to tackle future challenges,” he said.
Marbled Murrelet on its nest. Photo: Brett Lovelace/OSU
It’s not easy to find a marbled murrelet’s nest in Oregon. It wasn’t until 1990 that researchers even located the first one in the state. The elusive breeding behavior of this threatened species has made it challenging to protect through conservation efforts and strategic management of coastal forests. It’s clear the population of this small seabird has declined from historic levels — but the reasons why are murky.
That’s why a team of College of Forestry researchers launched Oregon’s first large-scale, long-term study of murrelet breeding biology. This collaborative project, initiated in 2016, drew immediate support from a diverse group of stakeholders across the state.
“Murrelets are a listed species, so there’s a lot of interest in recovering this population,” said Jim Rivers, an assistant professor of wildlife ecology who’s leading the research effort. “But we haven’t had the information we need to understand what’s constraining reproductive output.”
For phase one of the project, the research team turned to existing data to better understand why the birds travel inland to nest some years, but not others. Murrelets rely on the sea for their food, including forage fish like anchovy, herring, and smelt, and commute as much as 50 miles inland to nest in old-growth and late-successional forests, where they lay a single egg. The researchers learned when it’s a bad sea year and ocean temperatures are too high, the birds forego breeding, unable to get food to feed their young.
A small radio tag is affixed to a marbled murrelet so it can be tracked to its nest site. Photo: Jaymi Heimbuch
For the next phase of research, the team studied the murrelet’s breeding behavior, tracking them from sea to nest. Venturing out on a research vessel, the team boarded inflatable boats to catch murrelets, install radio tags and release the birds back into the wild. When breeding season hit, the team patrolled the coast with airplanes, listening for beeps from radio tags to narrow down potential nesting sites for the ground crew and tree climber to locate.
But because murrelets nest in older forests, just getting to the vicinity of a nesting tree usually involves scaling piles of blowdown and bushwhacking through thick growth for miles. And murrelets are sneaky nest-builders — and sitters. They don’t use twigs and branches to build their nests like other birds. Instead, they find a mossy branch where they lay a single egg and take turns incubating it. They trade spots once every 24 hours, sitting so still that their only movement may be just the blink of an eye.
And when they’re moving in and out of the nest, they’re really moving. Murrelets have been clocked at nearly 100 mph and their typical cruising speed is 60-70 mph. They usually fly at dawn and dusk, so it takes an eagle eye to spot these birds and find their nests, a large reason there were only 29 active nests recorded in Oregon before this project. The team of OSU researchers more than doubled that number, also installing cameras at each nest to monitor success.
“We’re learning a lot about where murrelets are nesting, how successful they are and what causes them to fail,” said Rivers. “This information has been a long time coming, and it ties back to how challenging it is to do this fieldwork.”
A version of this story appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of Focus on Forestry, the alumni magazine of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.
Balancing timber production to maximize biodiversity
As the human population grows, the demand for resources is increasing. But at what cost to biodiversity? Just as the agricultural industry contends with how to sustainably feed eight billion humans, the challenge for forest managers is to find sustainable ways to meet human wood consumption needs, explains Matt Betts, Ruth H. Spaniol chair of renewable resources and professor in the department of forest ecosystems and society.
“What we consume has a huge impact on our planet’s biodiversity,” said Betts. “But very few researchers have tested approaches to minimize tradeoffs between timber production and biodiversity conservation.” Betts explains that in agriculture, there are two main camps of thinking. The first, “land sparing” involves setting aside large portions of the landscape as unmanaged reserves, and growing crops intensively in others. The second, “land sharing” involves low-intensity “nature-friendly” agriculture. This results in lower yield, increased total area for food production and therefore few or no reserves.
In forestry, this “land sharing versus sparing” model has been expanded to a triad approach, where a given landscape may be divided into differing proportions of three distinct management groups — reserves, focused on biodiversity conservation; intensive management, focused on wood production; and ecological forestry, which is a mix of both.
To test this approach, he is collaborating with stakeholders inside and outside the College of Forestry to launch a 20-year study across 40 different sub-watersheds in the Elliott State Research Forest. The research is designed to test different proportions of all three management types across various forest landscapes (watersheds). By doing this, Betts and his team hope to learn how these management approaches affect biodiversity and wood production over time.
Before the project can begin, it must gain the approval of many stakeholder groups to be completed on the state-owned forest. In the meantime, Betts is working on a shorter-term version of this project funded by the National Institute for Food and Agriculture.
In collaboration with several CoF researchers, including Klaus Puettmann, Doug Mainwaring and John Sessions along with Taal Levi, a professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences, and doctoral student Maggie Hallerud, Betts’ team is collecting data from forests that fall under the categories of reserve, intensive management and ecological forestry. They are performing preliminary modeling about how each approach affects biodiversity. Hallerud is leading the biodiversity data collection and analysis and Levi is leading the eDNA analysis in this work.
Before and after each experiment, the team counts various species, measures vegetation and incorporates cutting-edge research methods. Researchers are identifying recorded bird sounds through machine learning, tracking wildlife with game cameras powered by artificial intelligence and using DNA barcoding (eDNA) to monitor species diversity.
This study comes with limitations, however, and Betts thinks the most meaningful insights will come from a longer-term project with more controlled experiments at landscape scales.
“That’s the real gold standard for science,” he says. “What we find in short-term studies is often overturned by what we find in long-term studies. And with how long-lived trees are, there’s certain information we could never get during a single career.”
Betts believes a long-term research project in the Elliott State Research Forest could offer critical insights into how to conserve biodiversity and sequester carbon while sustainably keeping up with society’s increasing demand for wood products.
“We don’t have enough information about this mix of forestry practices in the Pacific Northwest,” he said. “A long-term project like the one proposed for the Elliott would enable us to try to reduce the potential trade-offs between timber production and conservation — and identify an ideal mix of forestry management practices that enable production of wood while still maintaining biodiversity. If successful, this could be a fantastic example of approaches to balance human needs with biodiversity conservation, and how people can collaborate to move beyond historical conflicts about forest values.”
A version of this story appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of Focus on Forestry, the alumni magazine of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.
Food-grade vacuum tubing is linked to draw sap from multiple trees.
The sugar maple has a reputation as a powerhouse for maple syrup production — but it’s not the only maple game around. An interdisciplinary team of researchers led by the College of Forestry is at the forefront of a movement to tap into Oregon’s bigleaf maple. The goal? Put the Pacific Northwest on the maple syrup map.
“This is a great economic opportunity for Oregonians to build an industry centered around the bigleaf maple, particularly in western Oregon, where the tree is especially abundant,” says Eric Jones, the principal investigator for the project and assistant professor of practice at the College of Forestry.
So why hasn’t a bigleaf maple tapping industry taken off before in the Pacific Northwest? Economics. The bigleaf maple, acer macophyllum, has less sugar in its sap — usually about one-third to one-half — than the sugar maple. So instead of needing around 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup, as is the case with sugar maple, you need 80-90 gallons of bigleaf maple sap. But technology advancements like food-grade vacuum tubing that extract higher volumes of sap from trees and commercial reverse osmosis machines which remove 75 percent of water from the sap, have resulted in a cost-effective way to turn less sugary sap into syrup.
“This technology is a gamechanger for the bigleaf maple,” says Jones. To help establish a sustainable bigleaf maple industry in Oregon, Jones assembled a diverse research team including scholars and students from anthropology, food science, extension, geography, environmental arts and humanities, economics, ethnobiology and engineering. The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded the team $1 million in funding through a pair of multi-year awards to promote the emerging industry, provide training and educate landowners interested in developing commercial enterprises.
“I think there’s a romance and infectious nature to tapping bigleaf maples and we’re trying to help landowners find the easiest and most economic and ecologically prudent path to get into ‘sugaring,’ as they refer to it in the maple industry,” says Jones.
Bigleaf maple syrup
Besides producing maple syrup with a complex flavor profile, the bigleaf maple is the source of other products like nutritional maple water, edible flowers, honey, lumber, figured wood and firewood.
The research team is working to mitigate the risks involved with managing and sugaring bigleaf maples, including incorporating food safety standards into commercial production and investigating how wildlife, diseases and different climatic conditions affect bigleaf maple stands.
With climate change ushering in greater uncertainty about the future of Pacific Northwest forests, the team is interested in how the trees will fare under changing conditions. While hotter and drier weather in some areas will negatively impact bigleaf maple populations, the trees may prove resilient in certain microclimates. Jones is currently an advisor on a pilot project in Washington, where the group is planting thousands of bigleaf maple trees on old dairy land as part of a carbon offset program.
“The bigleaf maple is a tenacious tree, as any forester will attest to, and perhaps it has a role in helping mitigate climate change,” says Jones.
Jones hopes that a growing maple industry will invite people to develop a deeper appreciation for the land and find new ways to engage with each other and with Oregon’s biodiverse and ecologically complex environment.
“Our team of researchers is working hard to make the emerging bigleaf maple industry an inclusive and equitable economic opportunity,” Jones says. “We hope to ignite a bigleaf maple culture in the Pacific Northwest like the sugar maple culture in the Northeast.”
In May 2023, the team will hold the first bigleaf maple festival in Salem, Oregon. Learn more at www.oregontreetappers.net.
THE RESEARCH TEAM Eric Jones – CoF principal investigator Melanie Douville + John Scheb – CoF graduate students Barb Lachenbruch – CoF professor emeritus (tree physiology) Ron Reuter – CoF associate professor (soil science) Badege Bishaw – CoF courtesy faculty (agroforestry) Tiffany Fegel – Forestry and Natural Resources, Extension coordinator Lisa Price – OSU professor (ethnobiology) Joy Waite-Cusic – OSU associate professor (food safety) Ann Colonna – OSU senior faculty research assistant, (sensory testing) Rebecca McLain – Portland State University (ethnography)
A version of this story appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of Focus on Forestry, the alumni magazine of the Oregon State University College of
Creative solutions target the housing and climate crises
What if we could accelerate the use of mass timber, restore forests, create jobs and address the housing crisis in Oregon?
The Oregon Mass Timber Coalition thinks it’s possible. In September 2022, the OMTC was awarded over $41 million by the U.S. Economic Development Build Back Better Regional Challenge, to strengthen Oregon’s national leadership in mass timber, adding new capacity to produce mass timber modular housing.
“The housing crisis in Oregon is severe, with our state ranking 49 out of 50 for housing supply relative to its population,” says Iain Macdonald, director of the TallWood Design Institute at the College of Forestry. “A thriving mass timber industry could help provide affordable housing, while also decreasing the carbon footprint of built environments, improving the resilience of forests and creating living-wage jobs.”
Oregon State University is a key leader in the OMTC, which includes Business Oregon, the Oregon Department of Forestry, and the University of Oregon.
The two universities are spearheading the research for the coalition, including the development of two new facilities: the Oregon Acoustic Research Lab at the University of Oregon, and the Oregon Fire Testing Facility at OSU.
Stewart Professor of Forest Operations Woodam Chung is leading an important pillar of the project. He aims to leverage “smart technology” to modernize the field of forestry.
Chung explains that forestry in the region — and its workforce — has suffered from a lack of innovation, jeopardizing the sector’s sustainability and global competitiveness.
Forestry is also one of the most dangerous job sectors in the country — and has a diminishing and aging workforce.
But, Chung says, “smart forestry” can help shift these trends by modernizing forest practices through innovative technologies that make forestry more efficient and safer — from harvest to mill.
One pilot project Chung will pursue through the grant is the use of smart cameras on harvesting machines. The cameras use data-driven algorithms to detect which trees to harvest in real-time, based on their species, size, straightness and knot sizes. This kind of technology will enable foresters to utilize small-diameter trees for mass timber and maximize the value recovery of forest resources.
“We can apply this system to forest restoration practices, so we can efficiently separate trees that could be utilized for mass timber at harvest. This can improve the efficiency of wood handling and supply,” he says.
He explains that this will also increase fire resilience, as it will help thin dense forests so there is less wildfire fuel left behind. This is important economically, too. Forest restoration is costly, and if the removed fiber can be gainfully used in a commercial mass timber product, the U.S. Forest Service will be able to treat more acres each year.
Chung is also working on landscape mapping, wearable devices to improve health and safety for workers, and smart sensors.
“This kind of technology is a win for forest health, fire resilience, economic development and the environment,” says Chung.
“We’re looking at all of these interconnected issues holistically and weaving together research projects that can enhance and expand the mass timber industry,” says Macdonald. “It’s an incredible opportunity to drive real change that will result in meaningful improvements to livelihoods and our environment.”
A version of this story appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of Focus on Forestry, the alumni magazine of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.
COF professor is on a mission to build better for a more sustainable future.
The building sector is a major contributor to human environmental impacts on the planet – and the College of Forestry’s Mariapaola Riggio is researching ways to mitigate that impact through more sustainable building practices. She’s currently working on projects that take a more environmentally-friendly approach to building through the use of mass timber technologies and what’s known as a “circular economy” model.
Riggio, associate professor of wood design and architecture in the department of wood science and engineering, describes the concept of “circular economy” as a necessary shift in the construction industry, which will help extend the life of buildings and promote more sustainable building practices.
“The current linear consumption model of raw material extraction, production, use, and disposal, which dominates the global economy, is no longer sustainable,” she explains. “In contrast to this model, circular economy aims to slow the consumption loop by designing products that can last longer, be reused, remanufactured or recycled. It also looks at narrowing resource flows, using for instance waste or underutilized materials.”
She describes how these approaches are applied in some of her recent projects:
The first project focuses on how to use an underutilized forest resource to construct affordable, reusable shelters. The material that Riggio’s team worked with is ponderosa pine. Specifically, ponderosa pine taken from restoration programs that harvest trees in order to prevent or mitigate wildfires. These smaller ponderosa pines are removed from forests to preserve larger trees.
Ponderosa pines harvested from restoration programs are generally not considered very marketable for construction as they’re small, knotty, and the resulting boards are often warped or twisted. Riggio wanted to investigate whether they could actually be useful building material, if they were directed at the right type of structure.
She looked into building low-rise modular homes with cross-laminated timber panels made of ponderosa pine lumber. Through working on a prototype, she found that this could be an effective way to utilize this low-value lumber. The smaller dimensions of the structure are more suitable to ponderosa pine’s characteristics and the structure itself is sustainable, as it can be broken down and reconstructed as needed.
One potential use for such structures would be to house populations displaced by disasters or conflicts, as there’s often a need to provide quick and affordable shelter in the wake of disruptive and catastrophic events. Using ponderosa pine from restoration projects adds value to costly wildfire prevention and mitigation work.
“This is a promising way to use waste to engineer wood products – and build structures with a long service life,” she said. She explains that this project is an example of what is called a “narrow-close loop” in the building process, because it optimizes use of resources and reuses materials disrupting the need to demolish and dispose of buildings.
In another project, Riggio transformed the College of Forestry’s Peavy Forest Science Center (PFSC) into a living laboratory to examine the long-term performance of mass timber buildings. She installed structural health monitoring systems around the PFSC to track different factors that could affect the life of the building, like moisture levels that could lead to rot or decay.
“This project will help us understand how a building performs over time,” she said. “And, it will help us make informed decisions about how to extend the service life of the building, through preventative or remedial actions, thus “slowing the loop” of a building life”
The monitoring project proved its usefulness already during the building construction stage, and helped the building team to make informed decisions, such as ventilating roof panels to avoid mold growth and revising the installation procedure of the building shear walls to ensure proper behavior of the structure during an earthquake. Riggio plans to continue monitoring the PFSC for issues and she plans to publish takeaways from the project that can be applied to future mass timber building projects.
Riggio also teaches the concept of a circular economy and offers students hands-on experience in this model through a collaborative course with the University of Oregon’s department of architecture. This course challenges a multi-disciplinary group of students to design small-scale timber structures using materials like recycled mass timber panels. They work together to assume the roles of manufacturer, engineer, and architect to create buildings that maximize future re-use of materials. In one recent class, students designed a Nomadic Hospitality Suite, which is a portable space that can be easily disassembled and reused.
Riggio will continue to build upon her research and academic work focusing on the circular economy and how to manufacture smarter buildings. “We hope to keep learning more and contribute to the conversation about how to build better for a more sustainable future,” she said.
College of Forestry professor Gerald Presley is working to develop a new method to clean up agricultural plastic pollution
The use of a plastic film in agriculture is increasingly being considered as an option for water conservation. The use of plastic films comes with the risk of contamination of soil with non-biodegradable plastics and threatens the long-term fertility of farmlands. College of Forestry’s Gerald Presley is investigating whether fungi could help clean up this environmental issue.
“Remediation methods must be developed to efficiently remove these materials from land and we believe fungi can help,” he said.
Presley, assistant professor in the department of wood science and engineering, just launched a new four-year project to explore the possibility of using fungi to help decompose agricultural plastics pollution. The project is a joint venture with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, which supports the development of new work that can contribute to natural resource conservation.
Presley’s lab specializes in wood durability and applied mycology and he saw this as opportunity to build on that work and explore a new use of fungi. Fungi are known for being biodegrading powerhouses. There are many different species of fungi with really diverse metabolic capabilities, so there’s a fungi available to break down most any natural, organic material, he explains.
Ph.D. student Leon Rogers working in the lab
“It’s their job in the global ecosystem to degrade stuff,” he said. “We’re always interested in looking more deeply into the capabilities of fungal metabolism and finding fungal processes that can be advantageous for human use.”
Presley has worked with fungi to break down other challenging material and he saw potential for it to be helpful with polyethylene mulch. The plastic pollution he’s working with comes from polyethylene film residue, which is getting used more and more for water conservation on agricultural lands around the globe.
Plastic is notoriously difficult to turn into biodegradable material, so cleaning it up won’t be as easy as planting some extra fungi on the land, he explains. The key will be pre-treating the plastic material with another process to help break it down into something the fungi can handle.
“We’re working to develop a one-two punch to knock out agricultural plastics pollution using ultrasonic chemistry and fungi,” he said. “The plan is to develop pre-treatments for plastics that will cook up a readily digestible snack for decay fungi, who will then turn the treated plastic into innocuous and biodegradable material.”
Presley is working with Ph.D. student Leon Rogers to experiment with different combinations of ultrasonic chemistry and fungi processes in the lab to see what works best – before testing them in the field. The researchers have partnered with landowners that have a ranch outside of Stayton, Oregon for the field work side of the project. The ranch was rented out for hemp farming a few years ago, and returned to the landowners with heavy plastic pollution that must be cleaned up if the land is going to be restored to its original productive capacity. Presley and Rogers will work with the landowners to develop tools and processes to tackle the pollution on the ranch – with the hope of being able to translate their findings into a broader application for agricultural pollution and environmental cleanup.
“Our long-term goal is to develop technology that can enable farmers to pull polyethylene contaminants out of their soil and dispose of it on-site in an environmentally friendly manner,” said Presley.
