Outreach

Notice:  A lightning strike fire started on Saturday, August 5, within the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, between the base of Lookout cliff and the ridge dividing Lookout and Mack Creek drainages.  As of today, August 7, the fire is 2.5 acres. Two helicopters are traveling between the Blue River reservoir and the fire carrying water. The plan is to keep knocking back the fire until ground crews can get a line around it and contain it.  It is burning in steep terrain, in old growth with dense understory, which is making it a challenge for experienced ground crews.  In addition to the helicopters, a hotshot crew has been assigned to the fire, most likely starting August 8. 

Check the Eugene Interagency Communications Office for updates on size and containment.

Researchers and the public are advised to stay out of the area, including the Lookout Old Growth trail, to allow fire crews space and access. We are anticipating a fire closure on site.

Researchers and public should be ready to evacuate if we move to a level 1 evacuation level.  Anyone working on site should have a radio on at all times.

All further updates will be posted to https://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/about/news-events/lookout-fire-updates-2023 

Bill Robbins, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History Oregon State University, will present, “Sixty Years of Forestry: A Retrospective on the Douglas-fir Region” this Wednesday, January 25, LaSells Stewart Center C&E Hall. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for a reception 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Registration required: register HERE.  Robbins is the author of the book “A Place for Inquiry, A Place for Wonder: The Andrews Forest”.

Find out more about new discoveries and activites. The Fall 2022 issue of the Andrews Forest Newsletter is online at https://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/publications/newsletter

Photographer Nancy Floyd is using her 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship award to explore remote corners of the Andrews Forest with Marquette University ecology professor Joe Lamanna and his field crew and students. This art-science encounter is in early stages of development, but after weeks in the field together this summer, a theme of immersion seems to be taking shape – the literal immersion of everyone swimming in a sea of vegetation and the immersive attentiveness of artist and field ecologists pouring over a meter-square plot for hours or expanding a hectare-scale reference stands to many hectares.  

Nancy comments, "While the long days can be grueling, climbing over downed Douglas firs and through the impossible vine maples while battling bugs and sometimes heat and rain, what impressed me most was listening to them talk about the forest and their commitment to their work. To know that what they record today will be studied and then carried on in future studies gives me hope for our planet."  

BIO

Nancy Floyd is a visual artist whose interests include the aging female body, the passage of time, barren landscapes, and trees.   She uses photography, video, and mixed-media to address the ways in which lens-based media can connect deeply with experience and memory.

Floyd has received numerous grants and awards including a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship to carry out an exploration of trees in Oregon and the 2019 International Center of Photography / GOST Books First Photo Book Award for her 39-year self-portrait series, Weathering Time.  Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues including The High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, IL), Blue Sky Gallery (Portland, OR); CUE Art Foundation (New York, NY); and Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum (San Antonio, TX) and is in the collection of the Center for Creative Photography (Tucson, AZ), the High Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Lightwork (Syracuse, NY), and in numerous private collections. She lives in Bend, OR.

Sculpture artist John Grade is partnering with researchers with the Andrews Forest LTER program to create a public art installation on the campus of Oregon State University. "Emeritus" will be suspended between three large trees, and the trees will be fitted with sensors that record data on tree trunk expansion and contraction, DNA on organisms, and bioacoustics on birds. 

The piece is featured in an Oct 10 article in the Albany Democrat-Herald, "OSU's giant sequoia sculpture combines art and research to learn about climate change"

And on KGW News

The All Scientists Meeting of the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network convenes researchers and students from all 28 LTER sites across the country. The theme of this year’s meeting, Generations, “points to the dedication of researchers who may commit entire careers to understanding the mechanisms at work in ecosystem science.”  In line with that theme, the Andrews Forest LTER program sent 35 participants that spanned generations and career stage: undergraduate students, graduate students, post bac students, graduate students, post doctoral scholars, staff, faculty researchers, and emeritus faculty. Participants attended and led workshops on topics that included climate change, cultivating systemic change in DEIJ at LTER sites, data management, ecological forecasting, arts and humanities, and coordinated distributed experiments. The All Scientists Meeting offered an unparalleled opportunity to make connections with colleagues across the LTER Network and to work together, across sites and generations, to understand ecosystems in a changing world.  

The USDA Forest Service, Ecosystem Processes Research Program, Pacific Northwest
Research Station, is looking to fill a Program Specialist position for Site Manager for the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest. The Site Manager oversees the day-to-day operations of the Headquarters facilities. 

The position was open from September 2-12, 2022. now closed.

The Authentic Research Experience for Teachers at NSF’s Long Term Ecological Research sites project engages high-school teachers in conducting field and laboratory research focused on the impact of emerging environmental stressors such as floods, droughts, and heat waves, on local biodiversity across diverse ecosystems. The three included LTER sites span diverse critical habitat types on Earth including the Arctic (Arctic LTER), temperate montane forests (Andrews Forest LTER), and marine coastal ecosystems (Santa Barbara Coastal LTER).

Pairs of teachers will be recruited from schools with large populations of students from marginalized groups in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and stationed at each of the three LTER research locations. Teachers will work with faculty and graduate students to conduct research at one of the three LTER sites, and then will compare their experiences with colleagues stationed at other LTER sites through a data workshop at the LTER Network Office in Santa Barbara as well as virtual meetings. This cohort approach will allow teachers to support and learn from one another. Teachers will engage their students in authentic science learning activities and develop an online data product which can be used across K-12 and undergraduate classrooms. (See Data Nuggets, free classroom activities, co-designed by scientists and teachers, designed to bring contemporary research and authentic data into the classroom)

The goals of the project are to train teachers in the techniques involved in global change ecology and how scientists study and describe the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, and to explore ways for teachers to share this experience and these data with their students. The project is a collaboration between scientists and teachers, with both science and education enriched in the exchange of ideas and practice.