- Seed Masting
- Stream Chemistry Response to Fire
- Migration Movements of Warblers
- Collaborative Futures
- New Book, "Born of Fire and Rain"
News and Events
For the Love of Trees
“Nancy Floyd: For the Love of Trees” exhibit. Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Dec 7, 2024 - June 21, 2025. 700 State Street, Salem, Oregon 97301. https://hfma.willamette.edu/exhibitions/library/2024-25/nancy-floyd.html
Following Fire
“Following Fire: A Resilient Forest/An Uncertain Future” exhibit by David Paul Bayles and Frederick J Swanson. November 1, 2024 – March 30, 2025 | Wed-Sun 11am-4pm, World Forestry Center, Portland, Oregon. https://worldforestry.org/followingfire/
Find more News and Events online
Research Highlights
Seed Masting Across Decades and Geography
Research conducted over decades can reveal patterns not visible in short-term studies, and research networks allow for comparisons across large geographic areas and a range of ecosystems. When both approaches are combined, opportunities arise to address ecological questions with conservation and management implications. A recent LTER synthesis working group effort brought together long-term datasets on woody plant reproduction to investigate drivers and patterns of seed masting (synchronous seed production across years) in plants across different ecosystems. The HJA was represented by our long-term conifer cone production dataset which was started by Jerry Franklin as a USFS scientist in the late 1950s and carried forward by many USFS and LTER personnel over the subsequent six decades, most notably John Moreau, who carried the load for decades. The harmonized cross-site dataset was published in Ecology, providing public access to all the data, metadata, and code needed for additional and new analyses. A working group has also been conducting analyses of masting, including a study of community synchrony in seed production in relation to environmental conditions and species functional trait similarity. In a recent paper, published in Ecology Letters, the authors found that cross-species masting synchrony is greatest for species pairs with high trait similarity and at sites with drier climates. As disturbances like fire and hurricanes increase in intensity and frequency, efforts like these to understand long-term drivers and patterns of tree regeneration help to inform efforts to restore and maintain productive ecosystems.
Stream Chemistry Response to Fire
Wildfires are increasingly affecting the wet forests of the Pacific Northwest, a trend expected to intensify with climate change. These fires disrupt water quality and streamflow, threatening aquatic ecosystems and drinking water supplies. While the impacts of high-severity wildfires on streams are relatively well-studied, less is known about low- and mixed-severity fires. To address this, researchers studied the mixed-severity 2020 Holiday Farm Fire in two watersheds within the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Watersheds 1 and 9 burned primarily at low to moderate severity, with only small patches of high burn severity. Researchers compared post-fire streamflow and stream chemistry, including samples collected during four post-fire rain events, to long-term pre-fire data from the site. Post-fire measurements of streamflow revealed slight increases in summer low flows, and increased nitrate, phosphate, and sulfate in both watersheds. Stream chemical response was more dynamic in WS1, particularly during the first rains after a prolonged dry summer. This study highlights the importance of monitoring post-fire streamflow and chemistry, even in low- and mixed-severity fires, to understand the transport of sediment, nutrients, and pollutants into streams, which can harm water resources. https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-02622-190206
Migration Movements of Warblers
Hermit Warblers (Setophaga occidentalis) are an endemic-breeding species in the Pacific Northwest that winters in Mexico and the Central Americas. This species faces threats from mature forest loss and climate change throughout its range; populations of this species are declining in landscapes that have warmed over the long term but have little mature forest. In contrast, mature forest seems to buffer populations against decline under climate warming. Although we have learned much about the population ecology of this migratory species on the breeding grounds, other parts of the annual cycle remain poorly known. A first step is to determine where this species overwinters as well as the migratory routes it takes to get to these wintering locations. One hypothesis is that habitat loss and climate change during the migratory and wintering periods could be further contributing to population declines. To understand the annual movements of Hermit Warblers, researchers captured and tracked 22 adult male Hermit Warblers from the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest (HJA) and across their breeding range. Most Hermit Warblers from the Cascade mountains (e.g., HJA) moved south to the Klamath mountains and northern California’s Sierra Nevada, then to the Central Valley, and finally moved southeast toward Arizona and New Mexico to reach Mexico. This contrasts with Coast Range birds that tended to move south toward California’s Coast range then migrated across Nevada and Arizona to Mexico. A high degree of mixing on the wintering grounds among Hermit Warblers from different breeding locations indicated low “migratory connectivity”; there is no single landscape on the wintering grounds that serves as non-breeding habitat for HJA birds. To understand the effects of non-breeding habitat loss and climate change on the species, researchers will next quantify these changes across large areas on the wintering grounds. https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-02622-19020
Residual canopy cover provides buffering of near-surface temperatures, but benefits are limited under extreme conditions
In response to recent extreme heat events, such as the 2021 heat dome over the Pacific Northwest, researchers have been examining how heat waves and other future climate conditions might affect forest canopy cover’s influence on temperatures near the ground in recently thinned stands. In a recent study, scientists measured temperature-induced stress to conifer seedlings and germinating seeds under different canopy conditions. The results of this study show that while overstory canopy cover may help buffer temperature stress experienced by seedlings, extreme heat events and climate change still pose significant challenges. For example, during the 2021 heat dome, the highest temperature recorded near the soil surface, under the forest canopy, was 57.4 degrees Celsius, or just over 135 degrees Fahrenheit—temperatures which can be fatal to seedlings. They also found that wildfire smoke reduced near surface temperatures by roughly 2oC, which is equivalent to an additional 15% canopy cover. Widespread smoke from wildfires can lead to unanticipated beneficial effects by reducing sunlight at the surface and thus lowering the temperatures experienced by vulnerable tree seedlings. This work highlights that climate adaptation tools need to address impacts of extreme events like heat waves as well as general warming, and that as disturbance regimes and regional climate conditions shift under global change, new dynamics and interactions will arise. doi:https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2023-0268
Explore our Research Highlights and Recent Publications online.
Student Spotlight
Abbey Neat
Abbey Neat is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University working with Dr. Posy Busby. Abbey uses Douglas-fir as a model system to understand how plant-fungal interactions vary in different climates. One goal of her PhD is to characterize the foliar and soil fungal communities found across the HJ Andrews elevation gradient. Using DNA sequencing techniques, she found over 3,000 species of fungi associated with three of the dominant tree hosts (Douglas-fir, Western Hemlock, Pacific Yew)! Another goal of her PhD is to understand the role of fungal symbionts in mitigating Douglas-fir seedling response to drought, and how this role might change when seedlings are sourced from different climates. This was accomplished through a large greenhouse experiment in which over 1,000 Douglas-fir seedlings were exposed to drought. Abbey’s initial results indicate that microbes influence plant response to drought in trees sourced from the drier, high elevations, and that microbes may influence other aspects of plant physiology including germination timing, growth, and budburst timing. Abbey's findings inform how the plant microbiome could be harnessed in reforestation efforts and efforts working to improve forest resiliency.
Education
New Book: "Born of Fire and Rain"
“Born of Fire and Rain”, written and illustrated by M.L. (Peg) Herring, explores the heights and depths of the coastal Douglas-fir region. Peg shares, "Needless to say, this book could not have been written without the work of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. This is where the scientific study of coastal Douglas-fir forests first took root. For more than 75 years, researchers here have questioned the forest, and themselves, and listened for new knowledge about what it means to be a forest. As a result, this forest is one of the most studied ecosystems in the world. And it continues to offer wonder and surprise.”
Discovery Trail
Since it was first completed in 2014, the Discovery Trail Learning Experience has supported middle and high school students to engage with the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest from an interdisciplinary perspective. Discovery Trail winds through old-growth forest and Douglas-fir plantation, within walking distance from HJA Headquarters. The curriculum introduces students to forest, stream, wildlife, and humanities topics. Creation of the curriculum was part of a research project investigating students’ development of sense of place in a short-term interdisciplinary field trip experience. Students worked in small groups to do self-guided learning on ipads that supported experiencing the forest through guided observations, stories of research through videos of Andrews researchers, visualizations of long-term data, and readings recorded by Andrews writers-in-residence. Now with that research project complete and Covid pandemic (hopefully) behind us, the Discovery Trail Learning Experience is receiving a face-lift based on feedback from teachers and students who have used the trail. Funding from the Andrews Forest Fund supported OSU College of Education Ph.D. student Amanda Morrison to make changes to the field trip curriculum. The new curriculum includes many of the elements of the original version but in a shorter format that makes it easier for teachers to guide their students on the trail and to follow up on the experience back in the classroom. Local science teacher, Nate Day, and his 7th-grade students piloted the updated curriculum in May of 2024; additional classes will use the updated curriculum in spring of 2025. https://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/outreach/education/k12
Research-Management Partnership
Links to Willamette National ForestDarren Cross, District Ranger of the McKenzie Ranger District on the Willamette National Forest, Oregon, has been a leader and an important partner in prioritizing protection for the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest during the Ore Fire in 2024 and in finding ways for research to continue on site. In a video on the Willamette Complex Fires-North Facebook page, Darren Cross talks about the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest LTER program and how research following the Lookout and Holiday Farm fires can inform future fire management and postfire recovery efforts. Darren highlighted the potential for our long-term vegetation studies to provide critical data on postfire tree mortality needed for refining postfire hazard tree mitigation strategies across the Willamette National Forest.
Collaborative Futures
The NSF-Funded Collaborative Futures project seeks to advance community-informed research. The project connects the HJA scientific community and the local geographic community through conversations about wildfire, forest, and stream research. Discussions are ongoing with local community members, taking their perspectives and values into account in research planning and enactment, listening to their suggestions and concerns, and creating transparency throughout the research planning process so local communities know what to expect and how to impact local science. So far the project has talked to a group of woodlot owners, the McKenzie Watershed Council, and individual steering committee members. Initial themes that were discussed by community members were: (1) competing land management strategies, (2) a desire for more education and outreach and relationships with the HJA, (3) having to navigate post-fire disturbances in their communities or work, and (4) strong desires to visit the HJA. Small Woodlot Owners highlighted their specific interests such as land management and forest resilience. The Collaborative Futures project aligns with the Advancing Public Engagement Across LTER’s (APEAL) which seeks to understand and advance the development of evidence-based, community-informed public engagement strategies or research agenda setting at STEM research institutions, using the LTER Network as a model.
NEW Managers' Corner
The goal of the Managers’ Corner is to help managers make informed decisions through sharing science and its applications from research occurring at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. To this end, we provide management-relevant synopses of research publications with key words to help manager’s search for topics of interest. A collection of downloadable PDFs is available through our website:
https://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/outreach/research-management/managers-corner
Long- Term Ecological Reflections
David Herasimtschuk has photographed forests across the Pacific Northwest, documenting the inhabitants of these last remaining old-growth ecosystems. From salamanders and salmon to bears and mountain lions, his images illustrate not only the beauty of the forests and their creatures but the symbiotic relationships which are vital to the forests’ health and the planet’s welfare. Full article and photographs.
The new Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx) on the Oregon State University campus features a sculpture by Refik Anadol. The artist used bioacoustics data from the long-term bird population project at HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Long-Term Ecological Research Program and the Pacific Northwest bioacoustics dataset to create his work.
Fireline Fellows are part of a community that, for two and a half years, will explore issues related to wildfire at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Fellows receive a stipend, opportunities to learn alongside scientists in the field, and up to four weeks of residency time at the Andrews. Fellows meet both in-person and online and they are developing new projects for a public audience or involving public engagement. At the conclusion of the fellowship, projects will be presented in collaboration with the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx).
Letter from the Leadership
The Importance of Social LegaciesEarly research at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest on the importance of biological legacies resulted in a paradigm shift in the field of forest ecology. Before work by folks like Jerry Franklin, Fred Swanson, and Stan Gregory, it was often thought that forests moved through deterministic stages, from early seral, or disturbed, forest, to old growth. In the 1980s — during work at Mount St. Helens and the HJ Andrews — researchers began to realize that what is left behind after disturbances (e.g., dead wood, residual live seed trees, below-ground mycorrhizal networks) can have profound influences on how forest stands develop over time. As Peg Herring writes in her excellent new book Born of Fire and Rain, “The lesson of biological legacies is that whatever survives the cataclysm, no matter how small, is the beginning of a new start. It matters what you leave behind.”
In the past four years, the HJ Andrews community has been affected profoundly by disturbances that are unexpected and unprecedented. In the spring of 2020, the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest was closed due to Covid-19 restrictions, creating a major disruption to our long-term field data collection and ongoing research. In the midst of the pandemic, on Labor Day, the Holiday Farm fire broke out, shattering local communities and burning into the southwest corner of the HJA. Just as our community began to rebuild, the Lookout Fire ignited in August of 2023 within the Andrews Forest, and burned through a whopping 70% of the HJ Andrews. Much of our instrumentation literally went up in smoke, and the old-growth forest we had grown to love was irrevocably changed — in the short and medium terms at least. Most recently, in 2024, the Ore Fire, though not in the HJA itself, precluded researcher entry from mid July until October.
These disturbances had casualties. Chief among these were the massive losses to the McKenzie River community inflicted by the Holiday Farm fire. Hundreds of homes were destroyed, including those of some HJA and WNF personnel. Long-planned research projects were massively set back or cancelled, graduate student plans were often void or pivoted, priorities shuffled — much like the components of ecosystems after disturbance. With so many disruptions, a potential avenue for our community was despondency. Indeed, in initial community meetings, held as the Lookout Fire still blazed, morale was low.
Remarkably though, the deep social legacies that have been built over the 75 years of the Experimental Forest enabled a resiliency in our human system. The decades-long partnership of the USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station, Willamette National Forest, and Oregon State University provided a much-needed safety net and system of support. Andrews personnel provided fire fighters with much-needed data during the Lookout Fire and advised on resources and strategies to protect the research infrastructure of the HJA. Teams of volunteers traveled to HJA to salvage hard-copy data, archives and precious specimens. There has been extraordinary turnout to our frequent meetings focusing on brainstorming productive ways to continue with research, as well as approaches to render the Andrews even more relevant to future forest and fire policy on federal lands. Andrews researchers and staff worked long hours to ensure that the community was kept up to date on fire behavior, safety, and the potential for reentry to the Andrews. Support for rebuilding has come from OSU insurance, the National Science Funding, the OSU College of Forestry and the Center for Future Forests and Society, and through private donations to our Andrews Forest Funds. Donations, both in time and money, have been made that help to support those hardest hit. As detailed by Marina Ritchie in her recent article for the National Wildlife Magazine, graduate students have rallied and sometimes pivoted to test ecosystem and population responses to fire.
Akin to the importance of biological legacies “discovered” by early Andrews researchers, social legacies are having, and will continue to have, an outsized effect on the direction of future research, scientific understanding, education, and policy. We’re all tremendously grateful for the social foundation that our program has built over 75 years. Social legacies, “no matter how small, are the beginning of a new start. It matters what you leave behind.”
—Matthew G. Betts
Lead PI, Long-Term Ecological Research Program at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest
Professor, College of Forestry, Oregon State University
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Andrews Forest Newsletter, Winter 2025
Photos by Lina DiGregorio/Mark Schulze/Matthew Betts/David Herasimtschuk/Steve Mooney/Posy Busby/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). 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 publication of the Andrews Forest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program.
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