By Norma Kline, OSU Extension Forester for Coos and Curry Counties and Alicia Christiansen, OSU Extension Forester for Douglas County

In our first article of this series (available here) we gave an introduction to a few digital mapping applications (map apps). We will continue our discussion of digital map resources and applications in future articles, but we first want to give a shout out to the value of paper maps and how you can print out a topographic map from a digital source.

Many woodland owners, hikers, and forest professionals are familiar with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps (also referred to as 7.5 minute quadrangles, or, “quads”) and use them to navigate their woodlands, hiking trails, or work locations. Either rolled up and kept in bin in the corner for future reference, tacked to the wall, or carefully folded up and carried in your backpack, USGS maps were once the standard navigational tool. This is due to their high quality of mapping and standardized symbols, which represent a wide variety of landscape features including hydrology, vegetation, geologic features, and human-made structures. These symbols and contour lines can give you an indication of the lay of the land and can also be used to estimate slope.

The National Integrated Drought Information System has launched a redesigned U.S. Drought Portal (www.drought.gov). The portal has some new features:

• Drought conditions down to the city and county level where you can see current conditions, key indicators of drought, outlooks and forecasts, and historical drought conditions. 
• Historical data and maps, including U.S. Drought Monitor data going back 20 years, standardized precipitation index (SPI) data going back 125 years, and paleoclimate data (e.g., from tree-ring analysis) going back 2,000 years.

The Oregon Wildlife Conservation iNaturalist Project allows you to share your wildlife observation data directly with biologists. Even if you can’t identify what species you are looking at, odds are that someone in the iNaturalist community can. Participation in this project helps to enhance our understanding of wildlife in our state, and your data can help improve wildlife conservation efforts in Oregon. Oregon Wildlife Conservation iNaturalist Project

Free-to use Timberaid website. Wood science students at OSU developed a free-to-use website https://www.timberaid.com/ to help with your woodworking projects. Tools include calculators for wood shrinkage, moisture content, specific gravity and density.

Article by Kym Pokorny, Public Service Communications Specialist. Story Source: Alicia Christiansen, Forestry & Natural Resources

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The majestic redwood tree – iconic to California’s northern coast – is becoming more prevalent in Oregon. “We have landowners in western Oregon growing redwood trees for one reason or another,” said Alicia Christiansen, Oregon State University Extension Service forestry specialist. “There’s everything from something that’s cool in the yard to small woodland owners who plant several acres.”

Christiansen and her colleagues started to notice a possible trend and decided it was time to do a needs assessment in order to identify who is planting redwoods and why. She, along with OSU Extension forestry specialists Dan Stark, Norma Kline, Dave Shaw, Lauren Grand, Glenn Ahrens, Steve Fitzgerald and Jon Souder, formed a Growing Redwoods Group and plan a survey in February.

Once they collect information, the foresters will determine where to put energy as they work with landowners. Christiansen stressed that the group is responding to the needs of a growing number of Oregonians interested in redwoods, not promoting the planting of this species outside its native range in Oregon.

Many landowners are motivated right now to improve and maintain the defensible space around their homes. Fall and winter are great seasons to accomplish some of this work. OSU Extension has resources to help you get started. Start by reviewing The Home Ignition Zone: Protecting Your Property from Wildfire, EM9247. Use this publication to review the defensible space around your home. Print out the worksheet located at the end of the publication, grab a pencil and assess the condition of your property, jot down the areas that need improvement in the follow-up actions list. Use this list to help you prioritize your tasks. Consider taking some before and after photos to help you see how much you accomplished. https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/catalog/files/project/pdf/em9247.pdf

By Norma Kline, OSU Extension Forester for Coos and Curry Counties and Alicia Christiansen, OSU Extension Forester for Douglas County

Are you interested in digital mapping tools for your smart phone or tablet? Here are a few resources to help you get started or improve your skills. First, let’s make sure you are getting the most out of the map app that came with your smart phone or tablet. When you open your map app you will see a dot showing your present location, which is determined using a combination of GPS satellites and cell phone towers (this technology is called Assisted GPS). This location dot shows up on a basic map layer displaying roads and waterways.

You also have the option of switching the base layer to satellite imagery by using the small icon in the top right of the screen. In Apple Maps this is an “i” symbol and in Google Maps it is a little box-like symbol. Satellite imagery is a great tool for looking at landscape features on your property. Zoom in to see the difference between conifers and hardwoods and even different sizes of trees.

By Norma Kline, Oregon State University Extension Forester for Coos and Curry Counties

Have you encountered the various terms used to characterize the vegetation on your woodland? You might have read about ecoregions, forest types or stand types and wondered how they relate to your ownership. Or perhaps these terms seem confusing because your property is classified within the Douglas-fir forest type but your trees consist of bigleaf maple and western redcedar. Foresters, ecologists and land managers group vegetation into units so they can describe and understand how forests develop and grow in a given area. One of the broadest classification approaches is the ecoregion which is used to describe portions of the state with similar climate and vegetation. Oregon only has eight terrestrial ecoregions, so these are pretty broad and expansive ways to describe vegetation areas. For the most part, our coastal counties fall entirely within the Coast Range ecoregion, an important exception is Curry County, which also includes the Klamath Mountains ecoregion. If you live in Curry County I bet you already know that your forests are pretty unique! The other nearby ecoregions are the Willamette Valley and West Cascades. Figure 1 shows the eight terrestrial ecoregions in Oregon. There is also a ninth ecoregion, the nearshore marine area.

Is Acting Like a Predator Low Stress Cattle Handling?

Progressive ranchers and feedlot operators work hard to reduce stress on cattle during handling. They may wonder how mimicking the initial stalking movements of a predator can be a low stress way to gather cattle on large pastures. The methods are described in my article “Low Stress Methods for Moving and Herding Cattle on Pastures” that appears on my webpage at http://www.grandin.com (GREAT article!). What people don’t realize is that the animal common low stress cattle handling principles such as entering the flight zone to make an animal move and using the point of balance to control the animal’s direction of movement are all based on instinctual behavior patterns that the animals use to escape from predators.

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Weaning is considered one of the most stressful periods in the productive life of a beef calf. During the weening process, calves are exposed to various stressors that include removal from their dam, physiological changes (actively developing lean tissue or muscle), castration, vaccination, dehorning, exposure to novel pen or pasture environments, possible changes in feed and water sources, and for many spring-born calves, exposure to season climate changes.

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Fall is a good time to control many weeds. Here are several that are good candidates for treatment in the fall.

Do you like being outdoors and the idea of contributing to scientific research? If so, become a community-based citizen scientist volunteer with the OSU Extension Oregon Season Tracker Program that connects local community volunteers with state and national researchers studying weather and the effects on native plant vegetation.