Authentic Research Experience for Teachers at LTER sites
Lookout Landscape
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News and Events
Science Liaison Awardee Cheryl Friesen of the US Forest Service is recipient of the 2022 Oregon Wildlife Society Conservation Award. Friesen serves as the Science Liaison for the Willamette National Forest and is an important participant with the Andrews Forest program's research-management partnership. Read more...
Leadership Changes for the LTER The Andrews Forest LTER program welcomes Dr. Matthew Betts as the new Lead Principal Investigator. Read more...
Focus on Endophytes
Dr. Posy E. Busby, a new co-signatory Principal Investigator on the Andrews Forest LTER grant, is the recipient of an NSF CAREER grant. The project focuses on fungal endophytes, ubiquitous yet cryptic microbes found in the leaves of all plants. Read more...
Stream Temperature and Insect Emergence
If aquatic insects experience warmer water, do they emerge earlier? The answer, it turns out, is not so simple. Read more...
Plotting the Future by Monitoring the Past
A new digital story map explores the permanent vegetation plots program, established in 1910. The large-scale, long-term dataset enables scientists to answer questions about how forest dynamics vary across space and time. Read more...
Snow drought and water transit times
A new study measured the effects of the 2015 snow drought on water transit time, the time that water molecules spend moving through a basin. Read more...
Vegetation Response to Fire in a Young Forest
A recent study finds that pre-fire conditions and burn severity are strong predictors of vegetation response to fire, and distinct differences in the species composition of young and old stands can lead to very different post-fire outcomes. Read more...
Paige Becker
Paige Becker studies flow paths and residence times of water within the hyporheic zone of streams. Using salt and dyes, Paige studied the movement of water in Watershed 1 at the Andrews Forest. Paige is plugging her field data and findings into models to understand hyporheic exchange in mountain streams. Read more...
Education
Authentic Research Experience for Teachers at LTER sites
A new education program engages high-school teachers in field and laboratory research focused on global change ecology. The 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. Read more...
Undergraduate Field Experiences Research Network
A recent article makes a persuasive case that to truly attain diversity, equity, inclusion and access goals, field stations must make significant adaptations of programs and cultures; the article also highlights concrete and attainable measures that can have an impact in the short term. Read more...
Reflections
Catholic theologian Vince Miller and photographer David Paul Bayles paired their perspectives of the Andrews Forest before and after the Holiday Farm wildfires. Their work aims for "an apocalyptic hope." Read more...
The Lookout Landscape project aims to leverage the lookout tower as an architectural metaphor and reframe the iconic structure to both survey and reflect the critical relationships between forests and society past, present, and future. Read more...
The new ArtSci Student Fellowship offers OSU students the opportunity to explore the intersection of the arts and sciences. Fellows will develop a creative project informed by engagement with lab or field research. The program seeks students and research or artist mentors. Read more...
Letter from the Leadership
This is my final “letter from leadership.” I have enjoyed it all: the collegiality, the many programmatic victories, the successes of my colleagues, the way a strong community comes together in a time of crisis, so many jobs done so well and with such dedication and grace, the moving of a program forward into a new way of being, the lessons about leadership which revealed myself to me in new ways. At the end of my decade I would ask just one thing of you: consider what LTER really means or could mean, what role it might play in the world in this time of change and crisis, consider what it might teach you not only as a researcher but as a human being in this place and time, and work to bring into existence that meaning and purpose in the work that you do and the life that you choose to live.
One of my favorite contemporary voices is that of writer and poet Jarod K. Anderson. I give him the last word.
“As forsythia grows tall, its branches bend beneath their own weight, bowing to the ground in arches of yellow flowers. Wherever they touch the earth, the branches root again and send up new shoots, stitching gold across the landscape. Some new kinds of knowledge shift our center of gravity, staggering us, bending us low beneath the burden. If you think of your worldview as a stone tower, this shift is a cataclysm of splintered rock. If your worldview is forsythia, then every startling truth that bends you low becomes a new connection to the earth, a new way to stand, an invitation to grow. We live in a time of strong wind and sudden pressure. It is not an age for towers. It’s an age for stubborn flowers.”
--Michael Paul Nelson
Support the Andrews Forest
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.
Photos by Lina DiGregorio/Mark Schulze/David Paul Bayles/David Buckley Borden/Sherri Johnson/Ian Vorster/OSU/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) and LTER7 DEB-1440409 (2012-2020). 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.
