Authentic Research Experience for Teachers at LTER sites
Patterns of tree and forest mortality after wildfire
Reflections - Art and Humanities
Kids in the Woods
*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*
Research Highlights
40 years of ecological research mark effects of climate change
A cross-site synthesis marking the 40th anniversary of the LTER Network reveals how a long-term ecological research perspective facilitates insights into ecosystem response to climate change. Read more...
Old-growth forests provide climate relief for some bird species
Conservation of old-growth forests, or their characteristics in managed forests, could help slow the negative effects of climate warming on some breeding bird populations. Read more...
Patterns of tree and forest mortality after wildfire
Researchers describe the drivers behind patterns of high tree mortality in the five megafires in Oregon in 2020. Read more...
The Channel Source Hypothesis
The stream channel itself should be considered as a potential source of dissolved organic carbon to stream water during storms. Read more...
Nina Ferrari
Nina Ferrari is an MS student in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. She spent the last two summers at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest collecting data for the long-term monitoring of bird occupancy. Nina's own research investigates the abiotic and biotic drivers of vertical bird distributions in old growth and second growth forest stands. Nina’s project is one of the first to take monitoring of bird movement into the third dimension. Her findings will fill knowledge gaps by quantifying vertical microclimate gradients and bird species distributions and have implications for how changes in microclimate may result in birds shifting their vertical distributions. If you're visiting the Andrews Forest in the summer, look up and you may find Nina high in the canopy!
Education
Kids in the Woods
After two years of adapting K-12 education opportunities to pandemic exigencies for remote learning we were finally able to welcome middle school students back to the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in 2022 through our partnership with the Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) at the University of Oregon. ELP students guided middle schoolers through hands-on interdisciplinary inquiry into relationships between climate and microclimate and implications for forests and people, under the theme Climate Science Climate Justice. We look forward to a busy 2023 for onsite education and teacher professional development.
Research Experiences for Undergraduates
The Andrews Forest Program hosted five student participants in the NSF-sponsored Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. Student interns spent ten weeks working closely with faculty and graduate student mentors to create and execute a research project, from data collection, to analysis, to presentation of results. Research topics included leaf endophytes, tree mortality after wildfire, bird population dynamics, species interactions, and soil carbon cycling.
Data Literacy Using LTER Data Workshop Series
A series of online, interactive workshops unpacked what is involved in teaching with data. Teachers who attended networked with other data-interested educators to enhance their data literacy skills. They used current data from the Andrews Forest, Arctic, and Santa Barbara Coastal LTER sites. Read more...
Reflections - Art and Humanities
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. Nancy notes, "To know that what they record today will be studied and then carried on in future studies gives me hope for our planet." Read more...
Andrews Forest-inspired works of photographer David Paul Bayles and designer David Buckley Borden (and his U of Oregon landscape architecture students) have been featured in gallery shows across the US.
John Grade's monumental sculpture, "Emeritus," suspended in the middle of OSU's giant sequoias in the Memorial Union Quad, is inspired by the form of an absent tree. Alongside the sculpture are sensors, based on work of the Andrews Forest LTER program, that will measure the tree trunk expansion, bird sounds and bioacoustics, and eDNA of animals and plants that live on the trees. Read more...
News and Events
Celebrating 75 Years of Discovery
Next year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Stay tuned for special events and highlights of the decades-long program of research and discovery.
Opportunities We are hiring! 1) postdoctoral scholar to investigate species interactions and forest microclimates as drivers of community structure and ecosystem processes. 2) Maintenance position to be located on site at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest.
Forest Photos
Are you looking for a forest fix during the short days of winter? Explore our Photo Gallery!
In his most recent novel, “Cloud Cuckoo Land” Anthony Doerr (a Pulitzer Prize winner) chronicles the life of a small-town librarian—Zeno—who has taken a particular interest in translating ancient Greek texts. Kids visiting the library ask Zeno about his obscure hobby, and he explains “Try to imagine the epic battles these works have survived over the last two thousand years: floods, fires, earthquakes, failed governments, thieves, barbarians, zealots, who knows what else?” He goes on, “Erasure is always stalking us, you know? So to hold in your hands something that has evaded it for so long—”
Just like ancient texts, and the act of translating them, the process of collecting long-term data is an act of unabashed optimism and altruism. So why do we do it? I hypothesize that some of it has to do with the hope that future individuals may use the data to uncover some fundamental truth about the way our ecosystems function. Will it be used to chronicle the decline of Earth’s ecosystems, or perhaps to document resilience or recovery? Importantly, as Suzanne Remillard and Stephanie Schmidt (our indefatigable data managers) remind us, optimism about long-term research is for naught if the data are not sufficiently documented and well stored!
I’m honored to have the chance to lead such an unbridled act of optimism that is the H.J. Andrews Experimental Long-term Ecological Research Program. This year, we approach 75 years of ecological data collection at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, and 42 years of NSF-funded Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) inquiry. Our decades of discovery have been made possible by a partnership of optimism between Oregon State University, the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, and the Willamette National Forest. May we continue to work together to understand this complex forest ecosystem, and present future generations with the opportunity to hold in their hands something that has evaded erasure for so long…”
— Matthew G. Betts
Support the Andrews Forest Program
Long-term Ecological Research, Reflections, and outreach cannot happen without broad support. By donating to the Andrews Forest Program, you are supporting research, creative reflection, and education about forests, streams, watersheds, and our engagement with the land. Consider supporting Andrews Forest Program as part of your charitable giving.
Images by Lina DiGregorio/Hankyu Kim/Steve Wondzell/David Herasimtschuk/Nancy Floyd/David Paul Bayles/Andrews Forest LTER
This material is based upon work supported by the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest and Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, administered cooperatively by the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, Oregon State University, and the Willamette National Forest. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under the LTER Grants: LTER8 DEB-2025755 (2020-2026). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the US Forest Service.
The Andrews Forest Newsletter is a semi-annual publication of the Andrews Forest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program.
