Focus 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.
Results from vegetation management trials involving horticultural crops conducted during the past year are compiled and reported by faculty members of the Oregon Agricultural Experiment Station, the Oregon State Extension Service, and colleagues who cooperated from adjacent states along with local enterprises. This work was conducted throughout Oregon and involved...
The Oregon Sea Grant Visitor Center at Hatfield Marine Science Center attracts 150,000 visitors a year and does not require an admission fee. Surveying visitors, 39% of all people indicated that half or more of their reason for coming to the Oregon coast was to visit the Visitor Center.
The Community Action Partnership of Oregon (CAPO) approached Oregon State University to assist in developing statewide indicators which help local agencies better utilize data for continuous improvement. The project was expanded to include Washington and Idaho. This report summarizes the project's findings.
Accurate estimates of soil nitrogen (N) mineralization rate and timing are needed for refining N management practices. This paper describes a buried bag method that has been successfully included within agronomic field trials in the Pacific Northwest, USA. We have found this method to be technically simple and reproducible, and...
In my view, ecocriticism needs a foundation in something akin to metaphysics. This work in progress began as an effort to find such a foundation. In the course of working on it, I discovered philosophers today, mostly young, clearly a new generation, philosophizing under the umbrella term “speculative realism” what...
Following the surface application of urea to soil, there is the potential for nitrogen (N) loss from ammonia (NH3) volatilization until sufficient rain or irrigation has moved it into the soil. Many studies measuring NH3 loss have used laboratory and microplot field studies. The limitation of these techniques is that...
Following the surface application of urea to soil, there is the potential for nitrogen (N) loss from ammonia (NH3) volatilization until sufficient rain or irrigation has moved it into the soil. Many studies measuring NH3 loss have used laboratory and microplot field studies. The limitation of these techniques is that...
Qualitative two-phase flow regime data are obtained from high-speed visualization of condensing flows of R-134a at mass fluxes from 75 to 150 kg m−2 s−1 and quality from 0.1 to 0.8 in square microchannels (DH = 0.84 mm) cooled from a single side. Superheated R-134a is distributed into multiple parallel microchannels and then partially condensed, using...
The nasal spray market is growing as rates of use are increasing, however, there has been little research on the topical of how the mechanical properties of nasal sprays affect loading, comfort, and usability. To gather to make these comparisons, the data of 20 participants were gathered by measuring muscle...
Energy recovery ventilators (ERVs) are an effective way to reduce energy consumption in buildings while satisfying ventilation standards. As membrane technology and manufacturing methods improve, membrane based ERVs are seeing increased market penetration. In the present study, the feasibility of membrane ERV designed to fit in a commercial building wall...
The Center for Research on Lifelong STEM Learning was invited by the Oregon State University Extension Service 4-H Youth Development and the Portland Metro STEM Partnership to evaluate Year 1 of the STEM Beyond School (SBS) project. The STEM Beyond School project seeks to improve underserved youth’s access to and...
The main research goal for this study was to describe how investment into the Hubs has influenced local STEM communities; that is, how STEM Hubs have begun to create opportunities for partnerships, collaboration, connected programing, improved program development or delivery, or improved communication within and outside the STEM teaching and...
Portal to the Public (PoP) has been operated with considerable funding from the National Science Foundation since 2007 under the leadership of the Pacific Science Center (PSC). The program uses a particular model to train and support science-based professionals (“scientists”) in outreach and engagement activities, based on the premise that...
The Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) and the Center for Research on Lifelong STEM Learning at Oregon State University (OSU) are collaborating on a yearlong capacity-building research project in order to better understand the common and unique features and strengths of Oregon’s STEM Hubs. The project is intended to examine...
This final evaluation report shares findings from the summative evaluation study of the Connected Science Learning: Linking In-School and Out-ofSchool STEM Learning (CSL) journal as well as themes that emerged across the broader three-year evaluation study. The ongoing study was conducted by researchers at the Center for Research on Lifelong...
An analysis on the work of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" and his ability to create powerful imagery and contextualize the unknown of war for the those who have never taken part.
--Vietnam Experience Final Paper
Background and objectives: One hard wheat and one semi-hard wheat were milled on commercial, laboratory, and household-scale flour mills with rotating elements ranging from 0.1 to 1.0 m in diameter and speeds ranging from 65 to 40,000 rpm. The aim of the study was to assess and compare the quality...
With the growth of Internet technologies, online-based foreign language curricula are being introduced at large numbers of institutions internationally. This peer-reviewed volume, geared towards a broad audience, presents innovative research on online language teaching, with chapters by highly engaged scholars and practitioners from the U.S. and Europe, with a strong...
The rise of digital scholarship within the humanities and social sciences presents new opportunities for stronger partnerships between librarians, scholars, students, and other campus units. While libraries and librarians can benefit digital scholarship projects throughout their lifecycle, researchers often seek library expertise when working with publishing platforms. As such, Oregon...
Conflicts can arise when the recovery of one protected species limits the recovery of another through competition or predation. The recovery of many marine mammal populations on the west coast of the United States has been viewed as a success; however, within Puget Sound in Washington State, the increased abundance...
Many marine mammal predators, particularly pinnipeds, have increased in abundance in recent decades, generating new challenges for balancing human uses with recovery goals via ecosystem-based management. We used a spatio-temporal bioenergetics model of the Northeast Pacific Ocean to quantify how predation by three species of pinnipeds and killer whales (Orcinus...
Is it better to have a select few people serve as representatives of a nation’s health and vitality, or to have the whole of a nation be active and healthy? The answer speaks volumes about a society’s values and long-term interests in its citizens and their prosperity. If the emphasis...
Many cultivars of table grapes (Vitis sp.) are grown in Oregon's Willamette Valley, but with the availability of several new cultivars, it is important to compare their performance to well-established standards in this region. Commonly grown cultivars ("established": Canadice, Interlaken, Jupiter, Lakemont, Neptune, Reliance, and Remaily Seedless) along with new...
Students will develop and apply reading, language arts, and science processes to analyze comics, and demonstrate writing skills in creating their own comic about a local invasive species.
Select an “Invader” species found in the Pacific Northwest. Research, design, publish and present a high quality informative Not Wanted Poster/Product.
In this fun activity, students guess answers to clues about invasive species on a bingo-like game-board, and serves as a great introduction for students and teachers alike.
Students pretend to be “invasion investigators” and investigate the appearance of a mysterious new snail in their local creek. Student research the identity and ecology of this new mysterious snail, and design experiments to understand its impact.
This lesson uses the image of a jumping Asian carp to use the physics of ballistics to calculate the speed at which a jumping carp will hit the water (or you! OUCH!)
Students use an online quarantine estimator to determine how long zebra mussels can survive out of water. By varying the settings, such as location in country and month of the year, students can observe how the time needed to dry a boat is related to the time of year and...
Students sharpen analytical, logic, and problem solving tools by thinking critically about how human activities spread invasive species and how to control them.
(Same lesson plan as Myocaster Multiplier but a more challenging student activity.)
This more advanced version of Myocastor multiplier asks students to take into account predation when calculating population growth rate.
How big can a nutria population get? In this activity, students calculate and graph the growth rate of a population of nutria based on a set of realistic assumptions.
Students practice geographical skills to map the routes of invasive species from their native habitat to some of the regions to which the exotics have spread.
Students conduct a "blitz" by quickly rotating through hands-on specimen stations and answering the BioBlitz questions. Then, students are assigned one invader to research more thoroughly and present to the class.
In Design the Ultimate Invader, students use their imagination to design the ultimate invasive species. This activity is a perfect way to launch a unit on invaders, and can serve as an assessment tool to help us learn the knowledge of our learners towards invasive species and invasion biology.
Hydrilla and Brazilian elodea are invasive aquatic plants that occupy freshwater habitats. While hydrilla is native to Asia, Africa, and eastern Australia, and Brazilian elodea is native to South America, both plants are invasive to North America. Because these plants are related and both have pointed green leaves that whorl...
Crayfish are one of the most threatened groups of animals in the world. About 45 percent of North American crayfish species are considered to be at risk of extinction. However, a few crayfish species are among the world's most invasive freshwater organisms. Taking into consideration that invasive crayfish are the...
New Zealand mudsnails are a highly invasive species of freshwater mollusk of the family Hydrobiidae, also known as spring snails. Their ability to clone themselves and maintain high reproductive rates allows them to rapidly spread throughout the western United States. Some estimates indicate that one female can clone and produce...
The Chinese mitten crab was first identified in the south San Francisco Bay in 1992 by commercial shrimp trawlers, and quickly spread to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. The Chinese mitten crab threatens ecosystems, earthen structures, and fisheries by preying on and competing with many species, including fish eggs,...
The American Bullfrogs are a highly reproductive aquatic species that are native in central, eastern United States and Southeastern Canada. This species was first introduced to western America as a food source (frog legs!); since then it escaped aquaculture ponds and have spread widely. Bullfrogs lay up to 20,000 eggs...
The nutria is a large, semi-aquatic rodent native to South America. Nutria were introduced to the United States for their fur. After a boom in nutria ranches during the 1930s, the animals escaped or were released from fur farms in the Pacific Northwest, Louisiana and other states, where theyare now...
Colonies of millions of quagga and zebra mussels foul and clog pipes, water treatment plants, and dam turbines and give a competitive boost to toxic algae. It takes only one contaminated boat and the right conditions for zebra and quagga mussels to infest a new watershed; once they have been...
Asian carps—fish in the Cyprinid family—have been part of our culture for centuries. We use them as ornamental aquarium fish (goldfish and koi) and food fish, and to help keep aquaculture ponds clean. However, when Asian carps escape into natural waterways, they can cause big problems for human health, the...
Knotweeds are a group of closely related invasive plants from Asia. Knotweeds are very tall plants that can grow to over three meters with bamboo-like hollow stems and heart-shaped or lance-shaped leaves. They spread quickly and form tall, dense thickets. They dominate stream banks, sides of roads, gardens, and other...
What ancient animal in modern times has a primitave spinal cord that may resemble the first vertebrates on earth, spends most of its life stuck to a boat or rock, produces an exoskeleton made of cellulose and is more associated with plants than animals? Tunicates are marine invertebrate filter feeders...
The Red-Eared Slider, also called the red-eared terrapin, is an American breed of turtle widely spread across the USA, and is quickly becoming an invasive species in many parts of the world. It is also the most popular breed of pet turtle in the US and is widely kept as...
Understanding of hydroclimatic processes in Africa has been hindered by the lack of in situ precipitation measurements. Satellite-based observations, in particular, the TRMM Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) have been pivotal to filling this void. The recently released Integrated Multisatellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) project aims to continue the legacy of...
Predator outbreaks are predicted to increasingly decimate economically and ecologically important prey populations because global climate change and food-web modifications frequently facilitate predators and stress prey. Natural systems are organized hierarchically, with processes operating at multiple scales giving rise to patterns of biodiversity, so predicting and managing outbreaks requires a...
A new species belonging to the lichen genus Physconia is described from Alaska and the Canadian and American Rocky Mountains and adjacent forested regions. It is also reported from China, Nepal, India and Siberia. The new species, Physconia labrata, is superficially similar to P. perisidiosa, but can be distinguished by...
A long-standing debate concerns how functional responses are best described. Theory suggests that ratio dependence is consistent with many food web patterns left unexplained by the simplest prey-dependent models. However, for logistical reasons, ratio dependence and predator dependence more generally have seen infrequent empirical evaluation and then only so in...
1. Genetic tools are commonly used for conservation and management of at-risk species. Individuals are often sampled from mixtures that are composed of many populations, which creates a need to assign individuals to their source. This can be problematic when the genetic divergence among source populations is weak but can...
The potential of methane production in a continuously stirred tank reactor (CSTR) was investigated using dairy manure as inoculum at pH 6.8 and 37 degrees C temperature in this study. Two identical anaerobic bioreactors namely CSTR1 and CSTR2 filled with palm oil mill effluent (POME) as a carbon source were...
Thiamin is essential for human health. While plants are the ultimate source of thiamin in most human diets, staple foods like white rice have low thiamin content. Therefore, populations whose diets are mainly based on low-thiamin staple crops suffer from thiamin deficiency. Biofortification of rice grain by engineering the thiamin...
Potato virus Y (PVY) is a major potato pathogen affecting potato yields worldwide. Thiamin, a water-soluble B vitamin (vitamin B1) has been shown to boost the plant’s immunity, thereby increasing resistance against pathogens. In this study, we tested different concentrations of thiamin (1 mM, 10 mM, 50 mM, 100 mM)...
Micronutrient malnutrition, also known as the hidden hunger, affects over two billion people worldwide. Potato is the third most consumed food crop in the world, and is therefore a fundamental element of food security for millions of people. Increasing the amount of micronutrients in potatoes could help alleviate worldwide micronutrient...
Many marine mammal predators, particularly pinnipeds, have increased in abundance in recent decades, generating new challenges for balancing human uses with recovery goals via ecosystem-based management. We used a spatio-temporal bioenergetics model of the Northeast Pacific Ocean to quantify how predation by three species of pinnipeds and killer whales (Orcinus...
This report assesses climate change impacts and associated community and ecosystem vulnerability. It was compiled by a group of Oregon State University researchers and students, outreach specialists, and coastal community members in Tillamook County, Oregon (OR). Through sustained engagement with the Tillamook County Coastal Futures Knowledge to Action Network (TCCF...
This report and its companion study, Assessment of Registered Oregon Coast Outfitters and Guides, reviews the online marketing effectiveness, pricing, and amenities of guided fishing and tour businesses in Oregon, specifically coastal Oregon.
This report and its companion study, Survey of Online Marketing Success and Pricing for Oregon Coast Fishing Guides and Tour Operators, reviews the online marketing effectiveness, pricing, and amenities of guided fishing and tour businesses in Oregon, specifically coastal Oregon.
Fishermen Lead Injury Prevention Program (FLIPP) factsheet on what to include in a fisherman's first aid kit, plus flashcards with more details on the supplies to include.
Factsheet discribes the Fisherman Led Injury Prevention Program (FLIPP), a innovative project that includes commercial fishermen, researchers, extension agents, and coastal community members directly involved in the design of the project, collecting data and in testing injury prevention strategies. The project combines occupational saftey research with experience in working directly...
Educational poster of invasive Koi fish. The spread of these fish is often traced to pet owners who release them into wild habitats when they no longer want to care for them. The poster is on display at Hatfield Marine Science Center Visitor Center is Newport, Oregon.
Educational poster on the invasive red-eared slider turtle. The spread of these turtles is often traced to pet owners who release them into wild habitats when they no longer want to care for them. The poster is on display at Hatfield Marine Science Center Visitors Center is Newport, Oregon.
This information sheet educates professional crabbers on best practices to avoid whale entanglement and reduce and recover derelict gear. It also provides information on how and when to report an entanglement.
This brochure educates international travelers about the risks associated with bringing certain types of food, plants, and agricultural items in passenger luggage into the United States.
This publication provides information about transient lodging taxes (TLTs) to tourism-industry stakeholders and community decision-makers such as hotels, restaurants, tour operators, resource managers, county commissioners, city councils, chambers of commerce, visitor centers, and local citizens and elected officials. TLTs are one form of local revenue generated through the tourism industry...
A growing number of agricultural enterprises across the country are entering the arena of agritourism to diversify their operations and generate additional income. Agritourism is defined as any commercial enterprise at a working farm or ranch conducted for the enjoyment of visitors that generates supplemental income for the owner. Understanding...