A McIntire-Stennis supported project

PROJECT
The development of modern engineered wood products has presented an opportunity to use more sustainable building materials in construction projects. Products like cross-laminated panels (CLT) and glulam (GL) have proven to be a more environmentally-friendly option than traditional construction materials like steel and concrete – and global demand for these products has increased as people look for ways to mitigate climate change.

However, in order to seize the opportunity to leverage these products on a larger-scale, it is crucial to evaluate their performance and their suitability for use in buildings. This assessment should involve observing their behavior in full-scale scenarios and real-world buildings to evaluate their durability and structural integrity over time.

Oregon State University Associate Professor Mariapaola Riggio is researching the constructive features and environmental performance of mass timber products to gain a deeper understanding of their effective use in constructing durable and eco-friendly buildings.

Riggio is specifically looking at how mass timber systems handle a variety of hydrothermal conditions, like wood moisture content, air humidity, and temperature, to see whether the long-term behavior of the materials and buildings is affected by different conditions. For this purpose, Riggio has been monitoring crucial parameters such as the wetting and drying behavior of mass timber products, time-dependent deformations of mass timber systems under varying climatic conditions, and vibrational behavior of mass timber floors, during various stages of a building’s life, from construction to occupancy. Riggio uses case-study sites in the U.S., alongside laboratory work, to conduct this research.

This research equips wood products manufacturers and designers with key data and information that they can use to design and produce innovative, high-performing mass timber buildings.

IMPACT
There’s a huge economic opportunity in mass timber – but there needs to be greater confidence in the use of these products to fully explore that opportunity. This research project helps provide valuable insights about the safe, durable, and efficient use of emerging mass timber systems so there is a better understanding and greater confidence about the long-term performance of CLT panels and mass timber buildings.

About McIntire-Stennis
The McIntire-Stennis program, a unique federal-state partnership, cultivates and delivers forestry and natural resource innovations for a better future. By advancing research and education that increases the understanding of emerging challenges and fosters the development of relevant solutions, the McIntire-Stennis program has ensured healthy resilient forests and communities and an exceptional natural resources workforce since 1962.

A McIntire-Stennis supported project

PROJECT
Landslides can have major environmental, societal, and economic impacts – and they often occur in conjunction with extreme events, like heavy precipitation, wildfires and earthquakes.

In mountainous, forested terrain across the West, like in Oregon, shallow landslides often remain a persistent hazard that can impact things like aquatic ecosystems and the structure of a forest. But despite the prevalence of this hazard, much remains unknown about the interplay between a landslide disturbance and the forest structure and events like heavy rainfall and wildfires.

Oregon State University Professor of Forest Engineering Ben Leshchinsky is leading a team to uncover more information about landslides in forested environments – which will help provide new insights into how the dynamics of a forest and its vegetation affects the size and rate of landslides. This group is developing models to predict the susceptibility of future slides in mountainous, forested regions – and to understand how the structure of a forest in these areas impacts the size and rate of landslides. Their model will evaluate the importance of forest vegetation on landslide size and rate.

The team is also creating an inventory of historic landslide activity, which will include data about how a range of conditions and triggering events have affected each slide. The researchers will use this data to better understand how factors like slope vegetation influence the likelihood of a slide and the amount of sediment transported in a landslide. Understanding more about slope stability and susceptibility will also provide valuable insights into how extreme events like wildfire and heavy rainfall might initiate slope failure – especially through their impact on the root strength of the vegetation that holds a slope together.

IMPACT
This research will provide valuable insights into how vegetation influences landslide hazard and sediment transport in forested environments, and how events like storms and wildfires may influence these rates. The team is analyzing data from 7,000 landslides in Oregon to examine how the landslide was affected by rainfall conditions, topographic factors, and vegetation conditions. The new model will provide insights into when vegetation helps control the size of a landslide – and when it does not.

COLLABORATION
Oregon State University researchers are collaborating with a number of agencies on this project including the Oregon Department of Forestry, the United States Forest Service, the United States Geological Survey, Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, and Oregon Department of Transportation.

About McIntire-Stennis
The McIntire-Stennis program, a unique federal-state partnership, cultivates and delivers forestry and natural resource innovations for a better future. By advancing research and education that increases the understanding of emerging challenges and fosters the development of relevant solutions, the McIntire-Stennis program has ensured healthy resilient forests and communities and an exceptional natural resources workforce since 1962.

A McIntire-Stennis supported project

PROJECT
Across the West, forests and communities interact with and are affected by issues that emerge from wildfires, state policies, and rural economic conditions.

This research project, led by Oregon State University Assistant Professor Mindy Crandall, aims to better understand the dynamic relationships that exist between forests and communities in the West – and uncover more information about active forest management. Generating more knowledge about these connections will help support decisions related to how we might best manage forests to provide ecosystem services, like carbon sequestration, and economic value to rural communities while dealing with wildfire risks.

Crandall is investigating how wildfires are affecting rural communities, inspired by large, catastrophic wildfires that have decimated human and forest communities. Crandall and collaborators with the U.S. Forest Service are looking into the relationship between socioeconomic factors and wildfire occurrence – and mapping the risk of wildfire to vulnerable communities.

Crandall is also looking into how the state regulates private forest practices and how forest landowners and stakeholders are impacted by and involved in, these decisions. She is examining how citizens’ involvement on advisory committees led to the development of political identity and she is documenting the state-level policies that affect private landowners across the United States.

Lastly, Crandall is examining the relationships between the forest industry and rural communities, where forests have been a major source of income and jobs for decades. Crandall wants to better understand the future of the forest industry and how it may play a role in supporting viable rural communities – especially as forests are increasingly managed for things like carbon sequestration. Along with collaborators, she is investigating how work in the new forest economy is distributed spatially and to disadvantaged populations, and how rural communities may be affected by transitions in forest management practices.

IMPACT
This research project will help inform forest management practices and policy decisions in the face of competing demands and increasing wildfire risk.

COLLABORATION
Crandall is collaborating with other groups, institutions and agencies including the United States Forest Service, Humboldt State University, University of Maine, University of Connecticut, James Madison University, University of Oregon, the Western Rural Development Center, and the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition.

About McIntire-Stennis
The McIntire-Stennis program, a unique federal-state partnership, cultivates and delivers forestry and natural resource innovations for a better future. By advancing research and education that increases the understanding of emerging challenges and fosters the development of relevant solutions, the McIntire-Stennis program has ensured healthy resilient forests and communities and an exceptional natural resources workforce since 1962.

A McIntire-Stennis supported project

PROJECT
Early seral, or young forests are an important part of the landscape and ecological makeup of the Pacific Northwest. Understanding how contemporary post-fire forest management on federal lands and the intensification of forest management on private lands affects young forests is critical for characterizing their biodiversity. Recent fire years and a growing demand for wood and fiber amplify the need to understand variability in early seral forest biodiversity in the region.

Oregon State University Associate Professor Meg Krawchuk and Doctoral student Graham Frank are researching what happens to biodiversity in young forests as a result of different types of stand-replacing events, including intensive forest management, high-severity wildfire, and post-fire salvage logging.

Krawchuk and Frank are using a suite of biodiversity indicators including pollinator bees, carabid ground beetles, bird communities, plant communities, and forest conditions to compare biodiversity at various sites in young Douglas-fir forests in southwestern Oregon. They are quantifying how biodiversity changes over time in the three disturbance treatments – by looking at stands of different ages, from under six years old up to 20 years old. Recent years of extensive fire in the Pacific Northwest underscore that forest industry professionals must increasingly make decisions about early seral forest management in the context of post-fire environments, in addition to green tree harvesting. These decisions are relevant to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative certification, which requires managers to demonstrate how practices contribute to maintaining biological diversity. This project will help inform forest practitioners and decision-makers about biodiversity in young forests, with a particular focus on understanding the degree to which plantation forestry emulates its nearest natural counterpart – wildland fire.

IMPACT
This research project will provide forest managers with information about how different types of stand-replacing disturbances affect biodiversity in young forests. This will offer valuable insights for making decisions about how to manage both industrial and federal lands.

COLLABORATION
Oregon State University is collaborating with forest industry partners in the region, the United States Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, and The National Council for Air and Stream Improvement.

About McIntire-Stennis
The McIntire-Stennis program, a unique federal-state partnership, cultivates and delivers forestry and natural resource innovations for a better future. By advancing research and education that increases the understanding of emerging challenges and fosters the development of relevant solutions, the McIntire-Stennis program has ensured healthy resilient forests and communities and an exceptional natural resources workforce since 1962.