COF News & Events
Branch Out
Designs are finalized and construction of the Oregon Forest Science Complex (OFSC) is underway. Comprised of a new and improved Peavy Hall and the Red Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Laboratory, the complex will feature state-of-the-art teaching and laboratory space including 20,000 square-feet dedicated to the creation of wood products like cross laminated timber. When completed in March 2018, the complex, designed by Michael Green Architecture with the Miller Hull Partnership, will feature advanced wood products and reclaimed materials from the old Peavy Hall.
“For me personally, the new building represents a rebirth of the profession of forestry,” says Dean Thomas Maness, who spearheaded the effort to create the OFSC, including raising funds to cover its nearly $60 million cost. “The way we thought about forestry in the past is very different from how we think about forestry now. We understand things like the impact that forests have on mitigation of climate change, and the total ecosystem value of forest systems in Oregon and throughout the world, along with so many other critically important ideas.”
Read more in the Fall 2016 Focus!
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Swiss needle cast disease intensifies among Douglas-fir forests in Oregon Coast Range
Results from aerial analyses in 2015 indicate a slight expansion – 0.6 percent – in the affected area over 2014. However, the disease remains the most significant threat to Douglas-fir plantations in western Oregon, said David Shaw, Oregon State University forest health specialist in the College of Forestry. Shaw is director of the Swiss Needle Cast Cooperative at Oregon State, which leads efforts to understand the disease and determine how best to manage it.
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Workers dismantle Peavy Hall
The longtime home of the Oregon State University College of Forestry, located at the corner of Southwest 30th Street and Jefferson Way, is being torn down to make way for a new classroom and laboratory building that will be part of OSU’s $65 million Oregon Forest Science Complex.
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Old Growth May Help Protect Northwest Forest Birds from the Impacts of Climate Change
“I expected to see a difference, but I was surprised by how big it actually was,” says Sarah Frey, a Northwest Climate Science Center graduate fellow at Oregon State University, and lead researcher on the project. “We compared old growth to other closed forest types rather than to clear-cuts, so we didn’t expect the difference to be so dramatic.” Under the supervision of her advisor, Matthew Betts, Frey logs temperature at 183 sites across the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, a National Science Foundation Long-Term Ecological Research site on the west side of Oregon's Cascade Mountains.
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Turning back the clock
“We want to leave some Douglas firs on site because they do have habitat value,” said Fehrenbacher, an Oregon State University forest management graduate, “but we want it to primarily be an oak forest."
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Conservationists warn endangered species will vanish forever unless we act now
Ripple is William J. Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University who has been studying gray wolves, cougars, and other top predators for decades. Last year, he and his colleagues reviewed the status of the planet’s 31 largest carnivores—a list that includes lions, tigers, and bears, but also sea otters, dingoes, and lynxes. They found that 24 of these animals are in decline, and 17 have been confined to less than half of their original ranges. “They are some of the world’s most admired mammals and, ironically, some of the most imperilled,” the team wrote. Read more at the Huffington Post or National Geographic, or read the studies:
Prey depletion as a threat to the world’s large carnivores
Saving the world’s terrestrial megafauna
Forestry and Natural Resources Extension receives stewardship award
In recognition of the good work that the Oregon State University Forestry & Natural Resources (FNR) Extension Program does to support forest landowners in Oregon, the American Forest Foundation and the Oregon Tree Farm System presented the FNR Extension Program with the Valued Forest Stewardship Partner Award.
The award was presented last month to FNR Extension Program Leader Jim Johnson during the awards dinner of the Oregon Small Woodlands Association’s annual conference in Baker City. Presenting the award were Scott Hayes, President of the Oregon Tree Farm System, and Tom Martin, President and CEO of the American Forest Foundation, headquartered in Washington, D.C.
College awards 228 degrees at annual OSU Commencement Ceremony
In June 2016, the Oregon State University College of Forestry was thrilled to confer a total of 228 degrees to undergraduate and graduate students at OSU’s annual Commencement Ceremony. At the ceremony, the college awarded 176 bachelor’s degrees to students across eight majors while conferring 45 master’s degrees and seven doctorates to students from four programs.
Prior to the Commencement festivities on Saturday, June 11, the college held its annual Graduation Dinner to recognize forestry students graduating from OSU. During the dinner, the College honored several graduating seniors by announcing the recipients of the Kelly Axe, Paul and Neva Dunn Outstanding Student, Harold Bowerman Leadership, and Outstanding Student by Program awards. Check out the awardees below and congratulations to all of our graduates as they leave OSU to enter fields where they will create healthy people and communities, produce competitive and innovate products, manage our forest landscapes and design resilient ecosystems to form a healthy working forest landscape.
Awards:
Kelly Axe Award (awarded to the graduating senior who helps most behind the scenes with teachers, with club projects, and with fellow students): Jake Putney - Forestry
Paul and Neva Dunn Outstanding Student Award (awarded to the College’s outstanding graduating senior, based on high scholastic achievement combined with potential for professional ability): Anna Stewart – Forest Engineering/Civil Engineering
Harold Bowerman Leadership Award (recognizes a senior who has demonstrated outstanding service to the college or University): Tiffany Netz – Forest Engineering/Civil Engineering
Outstanding Students by Program Awards:
Recreation Resource Management - William Osmer
Natural Resources - Lucia Hadella
Forest Operations Management - Alex Pancoast
Forest Management - Vince Ferguson
Forest Engineering/Civil Engineering - Anna Stewart
Renewable Materials - Maya Giddings
Oregon Best, Oregon State and University of Oregon announce CLT design contest winners
Oregon BEST and its collaborators at the National Center for Advanced Wood Products Manufacturing and Design today announced the winner and runner-up in its Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) Design Contest that awarded $200,000 in funding and research support to fast-track the use of CLT as a new green construction material in the U.S.
The funding will support additional design, research and testing to help advance the two winning Oregon CLT projects – a parking garage in Springfield and a condominium building in northeast Portland, as well as CLT construction projects across the country. Research and testing will be conducted by the new National Center for Advanced Wood Products Manufacturing and Design, a collaboration between Oregon State University and the University of Oregon.
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Microclimate predicts within-season distribution dynamics of montane forest birds
A new study published by Sarah Frey, a Forest Ecosystems and Society researcher, explores how birds in moist forests respond to climate change.
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