Focus on Forestry is published by Oregon State University College of Forestry. Our goal is to keep Forestry alumni, friends, faculty, staff, and students informed about the College of Forestry and its many activities and programs.
The growing season has come to an end and everyone is feverishly trying to harvest fruit before rain and/or frost, depending on the specific vineyard location throughout the state of Oregon. Here at OSU, we’ve been busy over the past few months providing programming to growers and winemakers. During August,...
The growing season is in full swing. As growers are busy doing canopy management in the vineyards and wine makers are preparing for the upcoming vintage, OSU faculty are working hard on their field research trials and extension programs to advance viticulture and enology research and education. We’ve been busy...
Predicting agronomic rates is important to derive optimum economic and environmental benefits from biosolids fertilizer applications. We conducted this research to 1) evaluate dryland wheat response to biosolids applications over a range of climate zones in the Pacific Northwest and 2) compare agronomic application rates predicted from yield curves with...
Computer simulation models provide insight into ammonia loss processes and the sensitivity of ammonia loss predictions to environmental and management variables.
As an example of how a simple computer simulation model can inform the Extension guideline development process, the ALFAM (Ammonia Volatilization from Field-Applied Animal Slurry) model was used to...
The Columbia River Gillnetter is the pilot of the Lower Columbia River commercial fishing industry, keeping fishermen and the public in touch with today's important issues.
The Columbia River Gillnetter is the pilot of the Lower Columbia River commercial fishing industry, keeping fishermen and the public in touch with today's important issues.
This report is intended to provide a foundation for eventually developing one module of the Michigan Rapid Assessment Method (MiRAM). Specifically, it provides information on specific attributes of wetlands that can be used, along with information on species ranges, to help predict the assemblage of wildlife species most likely to...
This document is primarily a review of Best Available Science applicable to Island County wetlands, as needed for categorizing wetlands for regulatory actions and determining widths for buffers (setbacks) that protect the functions of wetlands. The number of technical papers and reports published on these topics is enormous, and none...
A reflection on the significant personal cost incurred by Linus Pauling as a result of his anti-nuclear and anti-war activism. Specifically, this talk focuses on Pauling's harassment by the mainstream media and his receipt of death threats as a result of the public positions that he took as an activist.
This report documents vegetation monitoring and mapping conducted by Green Point Consulting during summer 2006 at six tidal wetland restoration and reference sites in the Siletz Bay National
Wildlife Refuge of Oregon, and the upper Yaquina River estuary (near Toledo, Oregon). Vegetation at all sites except one had been monitored...
A three‐dimensional primitive‐equation model for application to the nearshore surf zone has been developed. This model, an extension of the Princeton Ocean Model (POM), predicts the wave‐averaged circulation forced by breaking waves. All of the features of the original POM are retained in the extended model so that applications can...
The submarine Amsterdam-St. Paul (ASP) Plateau, bisected by the Southeast Indian Ridge (SEIR), is a bathymetric high rising ~2 km above the surrounding seafloor that includes the islands of Amsterdam and St. Paul; this excess volcanism is attributed to a mantle hot spot. We obtained new Sr, Nd, and Pb...
The Agulhas Current is the western boundary current of the South Indian Ocean and is thought to play an important role in the global overturning circulation. In this study, we investigate the contribution from the wind stress field over each ocean basin of the southern hemisphere to the variability of...
Sea surface temperature (SST) and salinity of the Western Pacific Warm Pool (WPWP) reflect global climate effects such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation phenomenon. However, reconstructions of past changes in the WPWP from the geologic record vary depending on the specific proxy record used. Here we develop a multiproxy record...
Paleoclimate records from glacial Indian and Pacific oceans sediments document millennial-scale fluctuations of subsurface dissolved oxygen levels and denitrification coherent with North Atlantic temperature oscillations. Yet the mechanism of this teleconnection between the remote ocean basins remains elusive. Here we present model simulations of the oxygen and nitrogen cycles that...
From July 16 to 20, 2007, international partners in a trans- Atlantic workshop series on coastal mapping and informatics, held a workshop on the campus of Oregon State University entitled “Coastal Atlas Interoperability.” The workshop engaged 27 participants from 6 countries, representing 17 organizations and multiple areas of scientific and...
A coupled ocean–atmosphere regional model suggests a mechanism for formation of a sharp sea surface temperature (SST) front north of the equator in the eastern Pacific Ocean in boreal summer and fall. Meridional convergence of Ekman transport at 5°N is forced by eastward turning of the southeasterly cross-equatorial wind, but...
The linear stability of a double-diffusively stratified, inflectional shear flow is investigated. Double-diffusive stratification has little effect on shear instability except when the density ratio R[subscript]ρ is close to unity. Double-diffusive instabilities have significant growth rates and can represent the fastest-growing mode even in the presence of inflectionally unstable shear...
Winter stratification on Oregon’s continental shelf often produces a near-bottom layer of dense fluid that acts as an internal waveguide upon which nonlinear internal waves propagate. Shipboard profiling and bottom lander observations capture disturbances that exhibit properties of internal solitary waves, bores, and gravity currents. Wavelike pulses are highly turbulent...
A single nonlinear internal wave tracked more than 100 wavelengths across Oregon’s continental shelf over a 12-h period exhibited nearly constant wave speed, c = 0.75 m s⁻¹, and amplitude, a = 15 m. The wavelength L gradually decreased from 220 m in 170-m water depth to 60 m in...
Using new and existing ice core CO₂ data from 65 ∼ 30 ka a new chronology for CO₂ is established and synchronized with Greenland ice core records to study how high latitude climate change and the carbon cycle were linked during the last glacial period. Atmospheric CO₂ rose several thousand...
Summertime wind stress along the coast of the northwestern United States typically exhibits intraseasonal oscillations (ISOs) with periods from ≈15 to 40 days, as well as fluctuations on the 2- to 6-day “weather-band” and 1-day diurnal time scales. Coastal upwelling of cool, nutrient-rich water is driven by extended periods of...
Satellite observations of wind stress and sea surface temperature (SST) are analyzed to investigate ocean–atmosphere interaction in the California Current System (CCS). As in regions of strong SST fronts elsewhere in the World Ocean, SST in the CCS region is positively correlated with surface wind stress when SST fronts are...
Calanoid copepod eggs have a robust, chitinous outer chorion, which makes field‐collected, formaldehydefixed eggs difficult to penetrate with stains or molecular probes. Egg development studies in copepods have involved physical, chemical, and enzymatic treatments to remove the chorion. We present an efficient, one‐step method for staining copepod eggs with the...
Shelf break conditions and alongshore flow off northwestern Australia are studied during the strongly evaporative conditions of austral winter 2003. Present results, along with those of previous authors, confirm that a poleward, fresh Leeuwin current core is normally found near the shelf break. Salinity increases alongshore toward the southwest. Although...
We report the intercalibration of paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV) and expanded postglacial sediment cores from geographically proximal, but sedimentologically contrasting settings. The objective is to improve relative what can be achieved with either method alone. Core MD99-2269 was taken from north Iceland shelf. Core MD99-2322 was collected from the Kangerlussuaq...
The majority of survival analyses focus on temporal scales. Consequently, there is a limited understanding of how species survival varies over space and, ultimately, how spatial variability in the environment affects the temporal dynamics of species abundance. Using data from the Barents Sea, we study the spatiotemporal variability of the...
Models for surface gravity wave propagation in the presence of currents often assume the current field to be quasi-stationary, which implies that the absolute wave frequency is time invariant. However, in the presence of unsteady currents or time-varying water depth, linear wave theory predicts a time variation of the absolute...
Accurately estimating the vertical flux of material reaching the seafloor from the overlying surface waters is essential for the paleoceanographic reconstruction of a wide variety of oceanic processes. Two approaches are currently being used. One consists of estimating mass accumulation rates (MAR) between dated horizons as the product of linear...
The target strength as a function of aspect angle were measured for four species of fish using dolphin-like and porpoise-like echolocation signals. The polar diagram of target strength values measured from an energy flux density perspective showed considerably less fluctuation with azimuth than would a pure tone pulse. Using detection...
This report presents a nested gauging study of streamflow variability from three sub-catchments (150-200 ha in area) of the Burns Creek catchment (565 ha) in the Entiat Experimental Forest of central Washington State. We test and reject the hypothesis that headwater catchments of this size are composed of physically and...
New seafloor mapping and sampling demonstrates that the eruption of the high-Ca boninites is clearly associated with rifting of the northern Tonga ridge and the northern Lau Basin at the northern termination of the Tonga Trench. There is very strong evidence for OIB plume related mantle sources involved in the...
Scientists seek to create a method of tracking logs from stand to product using scent. In addition to developing the chemicals needed for "aroma tagging," scientists work to create an "electronic nose" to recognize the scents. Featuring Dr. Glen Murphy.
Scientists use sound wave techniques as well as NIR (near infra-red light) to determine the stiffness through density of logs. Featuring Dr. Glen Murphy.
In this paper, we describe a fusion approach to finding opinionated blog postings. Our approach to opinion blog retrieval consisted of first applying traditional IR methods to retrieve on-topic blogs and then boosting the ranks of opinionated blogs based on combined opinion scores generated by multiple assessment methods. Our opinion...
In TREC-2007, Indiana University‟s WIDIT Lab1 participated in the Blog track‟s opinion task and the polarity subtask. For the opinion task, whose goal is to "uncover the public sentiment towards a given entity/target", we focused on combining multiple sources of evidence to detect opinionated blog postings. Since detecting opinionated blogs...
Competition between ‘Pinot noir’ grapevines and alleyway cover crops
was evaluated in two commercial vineyards in western Oregon. Seven
cover crop treatments including a clean-cultivated control were applied
in the fall of 2003 and their impact on vines was monitored in 2004
and 2005. Competition with grapevines was assessed by...
We conducted this 2-year study to determine if lesser prairie-chickens Tympanuchus pallidicinctus and ring-necked pheasants Phasianus colchicus used the same habitats where their ranges overlapped in southwestern Kansas. Telemetry locations of 50 transmitter-equipped lesser prairie-chickens and 28 pheasants were used to monitor habitat use by the two species. Additionally, vegetation...
The distribution and range of the greater sage-grouse Centrocercus urophasianus have been reduced by 56% since the European settlement of western North America. Although there is an unprecedented effort to conserve the species, there is still considerable debate about the vegetation composition and structure required for nesting and brood-rearing habitat....
Mortality due to infectious diseases is seldom reported in the Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). A case of necrotic enteritis associated with Clostridium perfringens type A is described in a free-ranging adult male sage-grouse in eastern Oregon. Clostridial enteritis is known to cause outbreaks of mortality in various domestic and wild...
In this paper, we describe a fusion approach to finding opinion about a given target in blog postings. We tackled the opinion blog retrieval task by breaking it down to two sequential subtasks: on- topic retrieval followed by opinion classification. Our opinion retrieval approach was to first apply traditional IR...
An upscaled elliptic-parabolic system of partial differential equations
describing the multiscale flow of a single-phase incompressible fluid and
transport of a dissolved chemical by advection and diffusion through a heterogeneous
porous medium is developed without the usual assumptions of scale
separation. After a review of homogenization results for the traditional...
One of the most important problems facing any distributed application over a heterogeneous network is the protection of private
sensitive information in local terminals. A subfield of cryptography called secure multiparty computation (SMC) is the study
of such distributed computation protocols that allow distrusted parties to perform joint computation without...
Formal description of plant phenotypes and standardized annotation of gene expression and protein localization data require
uniform terminology that accurately describes plant anatomy and morphology. This facilitates cross species comparative
studies and quantitative comparison of phenotypes and expression patterns. A major drawback is variable terminology that is
used to describe...
Gramene (www.gramene.org) is a curated resource
for genetic, genomic and comparative genomics
data for the major crop species, including rice,
maize, wheat and many other plant (mainly grass)
species. Gramene is an open-source project.
All data and software are freely downloadable
through the ftp site (ftp.gramene.org/pub/gramene)
and available for use...