Native plants are popular with gardeners, in part due to their purported benefits to pollinators. Studies have examined the relative attractiveness of regionally relevant native plants to wild bees in other areas of the United States, but no studies were available for plants native to the Pacific Northwest. We conducted...
Biological control (“Biocontrol”) is the use of living organisms to suppress pest populations. Insect predators and parasitoids are important biocontrol agents (also known as natural enemies) in garden systems. Studies have examined the relative attractiveness of garden plants to insect natural enemies in other areas of the United States, but...
Urban gardens are uniquely positioned to support bee conservation. Gardens, when managed for pollinators, can provide food sources (pollen and nectar), nesting sites, and mating sites. Some bees (like sweat bees in the family Halictidae), are known to thrive in urban areas, we wanted to understand what types of bees...
Bees, like humans, have food preferences. While there may be a diversity of plants to forage from in a landscape, bees may preferentially visit specific flowering plants. Nectar and pollen are the primary resources bees collect from flowers. Bees might collect nectar from many different plants, but they can be...
“Leafcutter bee” is the nickname for bees in the family Megachilidae. Like the name suggests, some bees in this family cut portions of leaves as nesting material. Leafcutters, however, are not limited to leaves alone! Some use mud, resin, sticks, pebbles, or petals in their nest construction. Megachile montivaga (the...
Bees, like humans, have three types of photoreceptors in their compound eyes that allow them to see color. Bees see ultraviolet (UV) light, blue light, and green light, whereas most humans see red, blue, and green. We developed a methodology1 to simulate bee vision that can be used to photograph...
Healthy soils are the basis for sustainable gardening. Although agricultural soils have been extensively studied, we know surprisingly little about residential and community garden soils. We studied the physical, biological, and chemical characteristics of soils from 67 vegetable garden in the Willamette Valley, and compared these to published recommendations for...
To understand how a garden’s characteristics influence the soil microbial community, we sampled bacterial microbes from 40 Oregon gardens. Half of the gardens were located in Central Oregon, and the other half were located in the Willamette Valley. Within each region, half of the gardeners reported that they only used...
To improve our understanding of the abundance and diversity of bacterial microbes in garden soils, we collected soil samples from 40 gardens across Central Oregon and the Willamette Valley. We included gardens with different management practices and, within a garden, we sampled soil from beds with different crops. We found...
Over three years (2017-2019), we surveyed 24 gardens in urban and peri-urban regions across Portland. The gardens varied in size, the types of plants grown, and in the landscapes that surrounded them. All gardens were privately owned, except for one demonstration garden managed by Master Gardeners. We collected bees three...
There is significant evidence that an increase in social media usage causes changes to mood and feelings about the self. It has also been found that there is a significant relationship between the extent of social media usage consumption and self-perception. Mimicking social media exposure, I focused on how participants...
The Elliott State Forest, created in 1930 and now the Elliott State Research Forest, is 33,700 ha of rainforest located 10–32 km inland from North America's Pacific Ocean coast. Its location in the central part of the Oregon Coast Range (Oregon, United States) places the Elliott Forest at lower elevations...
NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite, which launched in 2018, carries the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), a green-wavelength, photon-counting lidar. While ICESat-2’s primary mission focuses on measurement of elevation of ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice, and vegetation, ATLAS has also proven remarkably effective at measurement of bathymetry, or water depths. However,...
This paper explores the use of sonification, the conversion of data into sound, to convey the significance of SARS-COV-2 and its global impact. It emphasizes sonification as a valuable tool for making complex data accessible, particularly in high school education. Sonification, an interdisciplinary field, leverages the human auditory system's pattern...
Listeria monocytogenes is the third most deadly foodborne pathogen in the United States. The young and elderly, as well as pregnant and immunocompromised people are the population most susceptible to serious illness and death from listeriosis infections.
Unlike most foodborne pathogens, L. monocytogenes does not live a solely enteric lifestyle....