Coastal blue carbon ecosystems offer a variety of important ecosystem services, including exceptional rates of carbon sequestration and long-term carbon storage. Because these ecosystems disproportionately influence global carbon cycling, understanding their soil characteristics may help guide long-term climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Recently, Kauffman et al. (2020) observed the...
Forest vegetation management (FVM) is an important component of reforestation in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Several studies have demonstrated the benefits of vegetation management on planted conifer growth and survival. However, few reports have been published on the long-term effects of FVM treatments on total ecosystem biomass accumulation and aboveground...
Coastal foredunes protect lives, infrastructure, and ecosystems during severe winter storms. In the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW), coastal foredune geomorphology is determined by both physical and ecological mechanisms. Before the 1900's, the native plant Elymus mollis was the dominant dune grass and dune morphology was largely determined by sediment supply...
Both the structure and composition of naturally generated early-seral forests in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) can be profoundly different than that of more developed forest seres, especially in the period after a major disturbance but before conifers re-develop a closed canopy. While it is reasonable to suggest that the unique...
Wheat is a major agricultural product in the
Pacific Northwest (PNW). The market class primarily
grown in the region is Western White (WW) wheat. An
important export market for PNW wheat producers is the
Asian Pacific Rim (APR), due to its proximity and
economic growth.
Agronomic research has been conducted...
When wheat is exposed to rain in the period before harvest, it sometimes causes the problem of pre-harvest sprouting (PHS). Wheat that undergoes sprouting has poor end-use quality and is less valuable. In recent years, the U. S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) has experienced increased summer showers sometimes causing widespread PHS....
Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) has been cultivated for human consumption for thousands of years. However, most North Americans do not consume barley on a regular basis. In the last decade, there has been a renewed interest in barley production for human consumption. A number of quality traits estimate nutritional value...
Raspberry latent virus (RpLV) is a newly characterized reovirus found in commercial raspberry fields in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Thus far, all members of the plant reoviruses are transmitted in a replicative, persistent manner by several species of leafhoppers or planthoppers. After several failed attempts to transmit RpLV using leafhoppers,...
Understanding sandbar dynamics and variability is integral to developing a predictive
capacity for nearshore flows, sediment transport, morphological change, and
ultimately for determining coastline exposure to damaging storm waves. Along the
high-energy U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) coast, sandbars typically dominate the
bathymetry of the active zone. Here we report on...
An operational inner-shelf wave forecasting system was implemented for the Oregon and southwest Washington coast in the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW). High-resolution wave forecasts are useful for navigational planning, identifying wave energy resources, providing information for site-specific coastal flood models, and having an informed recreational beach user group, among other...
Interest is expanding for the potential role of estuaries, particularly seagrass and salt marsh habitats, to sequester carbon, mitigate ocean acidification, and support abundant fisheries. The important functions of estuaries are part of a broader set of ecosystem services, or benefits to humans, which are regulated by ocean and watershed...
Coastal communities in the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) are rapidly engaging with the idea that hazards and environmental pressures are changing and may be characteristically different in the near future. This has led to a need for scientific knowledge and tools that can help coastal communities prepare and build resilience...
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the production of poplar biomass grown under four management conditions in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the U.S.A. was conducted. While the extraction of fossil fuels and the subsequent generation of energy have environmental impacts, the alternative of extracting poplar biomass also has impacts...
Estimates of potential carbon (C) storage can be used to constrain predictions of future carbon sequestration and to understand the degree to which disturbances, both natural aid anthropogenic, affect C storage. An upper bound on C storage in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the United States was estimated using field...
The relative contributions of sea level rise (SLR) and increasing extra-tropical storminess to the frequency with which waves attack coastal features is assessed with a simple total water level (TWL) model. For the coast of the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) over the period of wave-buoy observations (~30 years) wave height...
Coastal flooding and erosion are major concerns for low lying coastal communities -- particularly in light of accelerated sea level rise and climate change. To improve quantitative understanding of the physical drivers of both flooding and coastal landscape change, this dissertation explores coastal morphodynamics bridging the land-sea interface on modally...
Understanding sandbar dynamics and variability is integral to developing a predictive capacity for nearshore flows, sediment transport, morphological change, and ultimately for determining coastline exposure to damaging storm waves. Here we report on a nearshore bathymetric data set from the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW) that stretches from Point Grenville, Washington...
The global cryosphere, defined as the world’s ice and snow covered regions, is a crucial water source for society and ecosystem functions, as well as an important regulator of the earth’s energy budget. Melt from glaciers and seasonal snow cover provides water for more than a sixth of the world’s...
The management of federal forest lands in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) region changed in early 1990s when the
Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) was adopted with the primary goal to protect old-growth forest and associated
species. A major decline in timber harvest followed, extending an earlier downward trend. The historic and...
Coastal sand dunes and beaches offer a variety of ecosystem services such as coastal protection, sand stabilization, species conservation, and recreation. However, the management and balance of ecosystem services offered by dunes and beaches is challenging when ecosystem services interact across the landscape. Management focusing only on one ecosystem service...
Wheat is a globally traded staple crop. Wheat is important in human diets because of its agronomic adaptability, physical characteristics, functionality for the production of leavened products and nutritional value. Two significant characteristics make wheat an important staple food-crop. First, the proteins present in wheat endosperm have attributes that enable...
Wheat is a staple food crop with many applications. The composition and quantity of major and minor flour components greatly influence functional dough properties, processing quality, and end-use suitability. Seven to 15% of the weight of wheat flour is protein and the gluten proteins comprise 80-85% of that. The gluten...
The U.S. Pacific Northwest is home to one of the most extreme wave climates in the world with waves of 10 m in height arriving to the coast approximately each year. With an average water temperature of 12℃, the beaches in the region are too cold to go on a...
Agricultural practices influence the nutrient dynamics of soil and plants, which may take more than a decade to be expressed in the drylands. The nutrient supplying capacity of soil is a crucial component of sustainable agriculture, and hence, this study can play an important role in policy making for the...
Some of the world's most productive timberland lies on the slopes of the coastal range in Oregon and Washington. More than one-half of the commercial forest land in that area is estimated as high site quality for Douglas-fir, with a site index of 140 or better. But much of this...
Policy regarding the management of public forests has undergone a drastic shift over the past couple of decades due to the loss old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the United States. For much of the 20th century, forest management on public lands emphasized timber production through the use...
Wheat (Tritium aestivum) is an extremely important crop worldwide. It accounts for almost one quarter of the calories consumed each day by more than one third of the world’s population, and is grown over more land area than any other crop. Wheat breeding programs constantly strive to increase or maintain...
Forest Vegetation Management (VM) is an important tool used in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) for reforestation. It has been well documented that VM increases seedling survival and crop tree volume growth. What is less understood, is how altering the plant community and successional trajectory affects the way the ecosystem uses...
Published December 1990. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
Published November 1991. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
Softwood plywood is one of the structural wood products studied in the CORRIM
II effort to document the environmental performance of wood product in residential
structures. Life-cycle inventory (LCI) models were developed to provide performance
data for plywood production by tracking all of its inputs and outputs in a gate-to-gate...
Published January 1990. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
As a homeowner in the Pacific Northwest, you have a unique opportunity to help maintain or improve the health of streams and riparian areas. A riparian area is the area of land adjacent to a stream, lake, or wetland. Most healthy, natural riparian areas
have moist, fertile soils that support...
High-resolution beach morphology data collected along much of the U.S. West Coast are synthesized to evaluate the coastal impacts of the 2009–10 El Niño. Coastal change observations were collected as part of five beach monitoring programs that span between 5 and 13 years in duration. In California, regional wave and...
We measured activity levels of cesium radioisotopes ¹³⁴Cs and ¹³⁷Cs in wild edible fungi, mineral soil, and surface litter of the west coast of North America from southern California to northern Vancouver Island after the Fukushima nuclear accident. All activity measurements were below governmental limits for human health. ¹³⁷Cs activity...
Basal area and height growth were analyzed for individual trees in uneven-aged ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa
Dougl. ex Laws.) and lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. ex. Loud.) stands in central Oregon. Basal area
growth was modeled as a function of other stand and tree variables to address three general objectives:...
Changes in climate caused by increased concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the Earth’s atmosphere have led land and ocean surface temperatures to increase by 0.85°C and sea level to increase by 19 cm relative to preindustrial times. Global climate change will lead to further alterations in mean temperature and...
A 20-year-old Douglas-fir [Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco] stand in the Oregon Coast Range was thinned from about 1,700 to about 350 trees/ac. Subsequent thinnings, under eight different regimes, occurred at ages 23, 27, 30, and 32. Average net periodic cubic-volume growth was strongly influenced by thinning regime, varying from about...
This dissertation consists of three essays on private landowners' response to incentives for carbon sequestration in forests. The first essay examines private landowner response to incentives for carbon sequestration through various combinations of intermediate management practices. The second essay focuses on agricultural landowners' willingness to participate in an incentive program...
The cereal cyst nematode Heterodera avenae suppresses wheat production in the western United States. A second species of cereal cyst nematode, H. filipjevi, was identified in eastern Oregon during 2008. This paper reports the discovery of H. filipjevi–infested fields in eastern Washington, thereby extending the known distribution of H. filipjevi...
This thesis contains a manuscript describing the implementation of a high resolution wave forecasting model for the coasts of Washington and Oregon. The purpose of this project was to advance the wave predictive capabilities of the states of Oregon and the southwest part of Washington by including the effects of...
Estuaries represent the confluence of land and ocean environments and encompass a number of complex interactions amongst tides, winds, offshore waves and the riverine contributions, all of which contribute to total water levels (TWLs). The study of TWLs and the relative weight of its components can assist local communities in...
Climate change impacts on extreme water levels (WLs) at two United States Pacific Northwest estuaries are investigated using a multicomponent process-based modeling framework. The integrated impact of climate change on estuarine forcing is considered using a series of sub-models that track changes to oceanic, atmospheric, and hydrologic controls on hydrodynamics....
Coastal flood hazard zones and the design of coastal defenses are often devised using either the maximum recorded total water level (TWL) or a 'design' event such as the 100-year return-level flood, usually projected from observed extreme events. Despite technological advances driving more consistent instrumental records of wave heights and...
Published January 1993. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
Ecosystem process models are important tools for determining the interactive effects of global change and disturbance on forest carbon dynamics. Here we evaluated and improved terrestrial carbon cycling simulated by the Community Land Model (CLM4), the land model portion of the Community Earth System Model (CESM1.0.4). Our analysis was conducted...
Total water levels (TWLs) within estuaries are influenced by tides, wind, offshore waves, and streamflow, all of which are uniquely affected by climate change. The magnitude of TWL associated with various return periods is relevant to understanding how the hydrodynamics of a bay or estuary may evolve under distinct climate...
Dual-axis accelerometer global positioning system collars can be used to remotely record the activity level and behavior of free-ranging animals, but inter- and intraspecific variations in motion among behaviors necessitate calibration for each species of interest. To date, little work has been done to determine the best duration for sampling...
Ungulates exert a strong influence on the composition and diversity of vegetation communities. However, little is known about how ungulate browsing pressure interacts with episodic disturbances such as fire and stand thinning. We assessed shrub responses to variable browsing pressure by cattle and elk in fuels treated (mechanical removal of...
In this study, the effects of implementing different wind input or physics packages in a numerical wave model to recreate large wave conditions are explored. Three large wave events are simulated with WaveWatch III. The wind inputs which are compared are NCEP's Global Forecasting System (GFS) with 0.5 degree resolution...
Most sweet cherries produced in the US Pacific Northwest and shipped to distant markets are often in storage and transit for over 3 weeks. The objectives of this research were to study the effects of sweet cherry storage O2 and CO2 concentrations on the respiratory physiology and the efficacy of...
Soil solarization is a pre-planting practice to reduce weed pressure by trapping solar energy using a transparent polyethylene film to heat soil. Soil solarization has been successfully used in regions with high solar radiation. The purpose of this research was to determine if soil solarization under Pacific Northwest conditions could...
To improve storage/shipping quality of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.), the effect of calcium chloride (CaCl₂) added to hydro-cooling water on physiological and biochemical processes related to fruit and pedicel quality was investigated on two major cultivars. The fruit tissue Ca content increased up to 29% to 85% logarithmically for...
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‘Sweetheart’) growing in the US Pacific Northwest (PNW). 91
92
5
2. Materials and methods 93
2.1
Knowledge about the relationship between habitat structure and abundance of a target species
facilitates biodiversity conservation in managed forests. However, modeling the relationship
for infrequent small mammal species in silvicultural experiments introduces the challenge of
excessive zero counts and complex hierarchical sampling. A common solution has been to
ignore infrequent...
Published April 1979. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
Responses of juvenile steelhead trout to changes in stream habitat resulting from an instream habitat rehabilitation project in Meadow Creek, Oregon were measured from 1991 through 1992 and compared to pre-treatment data from 1987 through 1990. Sixty nine pool-forming, and 59 channel-stabilizing log structures were constructed by the U.S. Forest...
The cereal cyst nematode Heterodera avenae reduces wheat yield in the Pacific Northwest. Resistance and tolerance traits among spring wheat cultivars were poorly defined. Screening trials were conducted with 39 cultivars over a 2-yr period in irrigated commercial fields that were infested by H. avenae. Comparisons were made between drill...
Three studies were conducted to evaluate different grazing systems on mixed conifer rangelands in eastern Oregon, and photo points and aerial photography was used to determine effects of 25 years of cattle grazing on stream channel changes and vegetation responses. The first study was designed to determine if grazing treatment...
Internal browning (IB) can be a serious problem with the use of modified atmosphere packaging
(MAP) for 'Bartlett' pears (Pyrus communis L.) grown in the Pacific Northwest during storage
and transit to distant markets. To investigate this disorder, 'Bartlett' pears harvested at
commercial maturity were packed in a commercial MAP...
Comparisons were made to determine how the uncertainty of initial inventories and projected yields affect harvest schedules for Douglas-fir. Results indicate that short-run harvests are most affected by errors in initial inventory, with the effect being less than the size of the error. Long-run harvests are most affected by yield...
Regression models of height growth and survival were fitted to aggregate data for trees, protected and not protected from animal damage, that had been surveyed on Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine plantations in Oregon and Washington. Animal damage significantly affected both height and survival. Dynamic programming analysis-using both soil expectation (Se)...
Documented trends in rising sea levels, storminess, and extreme wave heights have the potential to increase the frequency and magnitude of coastal change hazards, increasing risks to coastal infrastructure and environmental resources. Coastal planners and decision makers need information about the impacts of future hazards in order to apply mitigation...
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...
Published January 1984. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
Biological invasions provide a unique opportunity to study the mechanisms that regulate community composition and ecosystem function. Invasive species that are also ecosystem engineers can substantially alter physical features in an environment, and this can lead to cascading effects on the biological community. Aquatic-terrestrial interface ecosystems are excellent systems to...
The effect of disturbance on the resistant propagule community (RPC) of ectomycorrhizal
fungi has been given relatively little attention. In this study we investigate the effects of
heat, one important factor of fire disturbances, on the ability of ectomycorrhizal RPC fungi
to colonize Pinus jeffreyi seedlings in greenhouse bioassays. Prior...
The coast of Oregon is highly dynamic, with beach and dune morphodynamics constantly evolving in response to physical and ecological forcing at scales ranging from seconds to decades and meters to tens of kilometers. Evaluating spatial and temporal trends in shoreline evolution is paramount in understanding and eventually developing a...
Coastal flood hazard zones and the design of coastal defenses are often devised using the maximum
recorded water level or a ‘‘design’’ event such as the 100 year return level, usually projected from
observed extremes. Despite technological advances driving more consistent instrumental records of waves
and water levels, the observational...
Black bears (Ursus americanus) in western Oregon and Washington peel bark from conifers in early spring to forage on the sugar-rich phloem and cambial tissues. This provides important energy at a time when similarly attractive forage is scarce. Bears often damage Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) trees in stands that are intensively...
As regional climates warm in the Pacific Northwest, USA, flow minima and temperature maxima may become more synchronous in headwater streams over time. The dual stresses from lower flows and warmer temperatures will be energetically costly for cold-water species such as Coastal Cutthroat Trout and Coastal Giant Salamander. Individual fates...
Ectomycorrhizal fungi (EmF) form symbioses with trees. These symbioses profoundly influence forest ecology. Certain EmF form specialized profusions of hyphae, known as ectomycorrhizal fungal mats (mats) which are visible to the naked eye, alter forest soil biogeochemistry, substantially contribute to soil microbial biomass/respiration and support unique microbial communities. Piloderma and...
Ungulate behavior has been studied extensively but direct observation of free-ranging animals over long periods of time and large geographic areas is often prohibitively difficult. Improved technology, such as GPS collars fitted with motion-sensitive activity monitors, provides researchers with a potential tool to remotely collect fine scale activity and location...
Hazards threaten coastal communities and ecosystems over a wide range of spatiotemporal scales. One of the most pressing concerns for coastal property owners, decision makers, and researchers is the uncertain role that a changing climate will have on the intensity and frequency of these hazards. The significant uncertainties associated with...
As human impacts and demands for ocean space increase (fisheries, aquaculture, marine reserves, renewable energy), identification of marine habitats hosting sensitive biological assemblages has become a priority. Epifaunal invertebrates, especially the structure-forming species, are an increasing conservation concern as many traditional (bottom-contact fishing) and novel (marine renewable energy) ocean uses...
Forward pricing is a marketing tool available to Pacific
Northwest white wheat growers for reducing price risk.
The cash forward contract is the traditional pricing mechanism
used for this purpose. In September 1984, another option
for forward pricing was made available through the introduction
of a new futures market for...
Nutrient limitation constrains tree growth in many managed forests. Nitrogen (N) is the most common limiting nutrient, but high N supply can shift limitation to other nutrients, particularly phosphorus (P) and the base cations calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and potassium (K). As different soil minerals have different capacities to supply...
In coastal forests of the Pacific Northwest, young coniferous plantations typically contain a mixture of planted and natural Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla). Swiss needle cast (SNC) disease inhibits the growth of Douglas-fir to varying degrees in these stands, depending on SNC severity. In addition to the...
Euro-American settlement and organized fire suppression have been associated with structural and compositional changes in many upland forests of the western United States, but little is known about the impacts on riparian forests, portions of the landscape protected for habitat and water quality. In this study, we used dendro-ecological methods...
White and grand fir are both valuable components of the mixed-conifer stand structure managed for late-successional reserves in central Oregon. However, they are often short-lived species because of high susceptibility to root diseases, defoliating insects, bark beetles, and wildfire. This study focuses on the effects of root diseases caused by...
A substantial fraction of estuarine tidal wetlands have been lost to development or other human uses in the Pacific Northwest since the 1800s. Wetland restoration, typically through tidal re-connection, can restore normal tidal hydrology to these areas and improve estuarine capacity to support ecosystem functions and services. Restoration may initiate...
Oregon’s foredunes are part of a dynamic coastal environment that constantly evolves in response to both ecological and physical forces. Invasive beachgrasses have outcompeted native dune grass in the region and have influenced the shape of Oregon’s foredunes via species-specific biophysical feedback mechanisms. As climate change induced sea-level rise will...
Mitigation strategies for reducing CO2 emissions include substitution of fossil fuel with bioenergy from forests, where carbon emitted is expected to be re-captured in the growth of new biomass to achieve zero net emissions, and forest thinning to reduce wildfire emissions. Here we use forest inventory data to show that...
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(http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/ppet/). ‘Emissions’ include release of carbon
from woody biomass combustion
Findings from nearly two decades of research focused on the Columbia River littoral cell (CRLC), a set of rapidly prograding coastal barriers and strand-plains in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, are synthesized to investigate the morphodynamics associated with prograding beaches. Due to a large sediment supply from the Columbia River, the...
Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. murrayana) forests of south-central Oregon have been extensively researched over the last century. However, little information has been reported on overstory composition and stand structure shifts associated with fire exclusion within inter-mixed ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine stands of the...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been steadily increasing from anthropogenic energy production, development and use. Carbon cycling in the terrestrial biosphere, particularly forest ecosystems, has an important role in regulating atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. US West coast forest management policies are being developed to implement forest bioenergy production while...
Debris flow initiation is controlled by a complex interaction of geology, geomorphology, climate, and weather. In the Cascade Range of Pacific Northwest and mountainous areas globally, patterns of temperature and precipitation are being altered by climate change, which may in turn impact debris flow initiation. Temperature has increased and patterns...
The use of fungicides for the control of foot rot of winter
wheat, caused by Pseudocercosporella herpotrichoides (Fron) Dei.,
requires a forecast of disease risk to optimize this management
practice ecologically and economically. Foot rot occurs in both
the mild, wet (100+ cm, ppt./year) annual cropped areas in western
Oregon,...
Coastal hazards are the result of numerous physical processes cumulatively causing water levels to flood and erode the land. The waves, storm surges, tides, and run-off contributing to elevated water levels are each the product of chaotic and random weather patterns. These stochastic weather patterns dissipate energy in Earth's climate...
The relative influences of trans-Pacific and regional atmospheric transport on measured concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), PAH derivatives [Nitro- (NPAH) and Oxy-(OPAH)], organic carbon (OC), and Particulate Matter (PM) less than 2.5 μm in diameter (PM₂.₅) were investigated in the Pacific Northwest, USA in 2010-2011. Ambient high volume PM₂.₅...
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clean 56
background areas of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) and approximately 36% - 50% in urban areas 57
Previous research has shown that afforestation of agricultural land is a relatively low-cost option compared to energy-based approaches for mitigating net carbon dioxide emissions, and that financial incentives affect landowner behavior and can be used to increase carbon sequestration on private land. In this paper we use stated preference data...
This study quantifies how leakage behavior from afforesting agricultural land affects the intensification of agricultural production. In particular, we examine the leakage percentage from carbon offset allowance at specific southern regions in the United States as a part of a carbon market. We use the Forest and Agriculture Sector Optimization...
Documented and forecasted trends in rising sea levels and changes in storminess patterns have the potential to increase the frequency, magnitude, and spatial extent of coastal change hazards. To develop realistic adaptation strategies, coastal planners need information about coastal change hazards that recognizes the dynamic temporal and spatial scales of...
The period between 1971 and 1992 will mark the transformation
of the region' s hydro based electrical system into one
dependent on a mix of hydro and thermal generation. Through a
review and compilation of current literature it has been determined
that the program ushering in thermal generation is really...