Features

Paul Anderson, director of the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, will retire on June 28 after a 29-year career with the agency. He has been serving as station director since 2017.

What’s growing in the forests of Palau? And what’s it like to survey those forests? Julian Dendy, the lead author of a recently published report on forest resources in the Republic of Palau, shares his experiences and some key findings.

Formed a decade ago, the North American Bsal Task Force, which includes USDA Forest Service researchers, is helping to keep an infectious amphibian disease at bay. What the team is learning may also help do the same for other emerging wildlife diseases.

What makes an ideal outdoor experience? Monika Derrien, a research social scientist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station, and colleagues crowdsourced 70,000 trip reports to find out—and their findings just might make for even happier camping.

Reforestation efforts in the Western United States are complicated by climate change, which creates uncertainty about what seed sources to use, and how seedlings can be planted to support tree survival in the short and long term. Scientists at the USDA Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest and Pacific Southwest Research Stations formed a network of landowners who are evaluating future-adapted seed sources and silvicultural practices to support reforestation success.

Research wildlife biologist Philip Manlick used a novel technique to trace the movement of carbon through Arctic and boreal forest food webs and found that climate warming resulted in a shift from plant-based food webs to fungal-based food webs for several high-latitude species, with potential indirect effects on nutrient cycling and ecosystem function.

Freshwater biodiversity is declining at a faster rate than in any other environment, and biodiversity is a buffer for ecosystem function as environments change. If freshwater ecosystems are to continue providing clean water and food, biodiversity needs protection. This diversity equals resiliency for ecosystems and people. Biodiversity is the resilience needed as climate change intensifies.

Richard Haynes, a former PNW Research Station research forester and program manager, received the 2023 Marcus Wallenberg Prize. Awarded annually, the international prize is bestowed by the King of Sweden in recognition of scientific achievements that contribute to forestry and forest industries. Haynes was recognized for his work developing the Timber Assessment Market Model.

Sim Larkin, a climate scientist and lead for the station’s AirFire Team wants you to breathe easier—and more knowledgably. To that end, he helped develop the interactive online AirNow Fire and Smoke Map to inform the public—now also in Spanish and ColorVision.

Some Fusarium fungi are commonly associated with conifer seedling mortality, yet they are challenging for nursery managers to identify. Researchers have successfully used a DNA-sequencing method to assist in identifying Fusarioid species in nurseries.