Heidi J. Albers (also known as Jo), associate professor of Forest Resources, came to Oregon State University in order to get outside. Her move from Washington DC to the West Coast was spurred by various things, one of them she describes as a “need to have a connection” to the environment. “I knew from a very early age that I needed a job where I could be outdoors. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City, but I was always sort of an outdoorsy girl who loved camping trips and hiking more than trips to Manhattan.”
While her job in DC involved working at a prestigious think tank, ultimately it didn’t provide the satisfaction she was looking for in her career. “Being in DC, I was removed from fieldwork, not visiting other countries, and not hiking through temperate and tropical forests,” Albers says. “On weekends with my family, it was depressing to have to drive an hour and a half through suburban sprawl in order to see even a fairly degraded forest. In moving here, I feel like I’m able to raise my kids to be the kind of people who appreciate being out in the woods. And, because I get out in nature more often, my work reflects questions that arise from that experience rather than questions that arise from reading other people’s work. Being here gives me a satisfying connection, both personal and professional, to the land.”
Albers has certainly had a good deal of field experience. After receiving her B.S. in Geology and Economics at Duke in 1985, Masters in Forestry and Environmental studies at Yale in 1987, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, she went to the tropical forests of China, India, and Thailand to study, among other things, how shifting cultivation affects invasive species takeover. “What they’re seeing in some Asian countries is that invasive species are coming into the small, abandoned farm plots and preventing the forest from re-growing,” she says. “I looked at how agricultural policy interferes with the forest recovery process, and sustainable subsistence agriculture, in those settings.”
At present, Albers is taking the principles she learned in Thailand and applying them to the problem of invasive species in areas within the United States. “I’m working with some people now to develop policies that consider how cheat grass moves through the Great Basin,” she says. It takes over after a fire burns through an area and it threatens the natural and ranching systems.
Issues surrounding wildfire are an increasingly prominent aspect of Albers’ work. “As I grow to love Oregon and Oregon’s forests more and more, I find it all the more compelling to work on the issues that put those forests at risk,” she says.
Currently, Albers is working on projects concerning fire risk reduction on forest landscapes and the determining whether risk mitigating activities and fuels management should occur in the wildland-urban interface or in more remote forests. Other projects motivated in part by a love of all-things PNW include some work on protecting salmon with riparian forests and on encouraging interaction between public and private land conservation organizations.
Additionally, Albers worked in Mexico on a project that looked at the dual problems of poverty and deforestation by examining the difficulties faced by shade-grown coffee farmers on the coast of Oaxaca. Due to a decline in coffee prices, farmers who previously had practiced environmentally friendly, shade-grown farming techniques can no longer afford to maintain their farms. Many men migrate to cities to find work while the people remaining at home resort to small-scale timber harvests and subsistence farming in areas they clear of forest. “Not only is coastal Oaxacan forest very important for various rare birds, but they are essential to protecting local tourism and fishing industries, which would be disrupted by sediment that is released when forest is eliminated,” she explains. “If these shade-coffee farmers received a price premium for this ‘green’ production process or received sizeable payments for the ecosystem services they protect, the environment, the local economy, and the rural communities would be better off.”
Although her research stretches across the globe, she really appreciates OSU’s proximity to local treasures, which she shares with her 5- and 8-year-old sons. “We love going to the mountains, the beach, and Macdonald Forest. One of my kids is really interested in birds of prey, so now I’m learning all about birds! Who knows where that will move my research, we’ll have to see.”
Bio of Heidi Albers written by Bryan Bernart, Editorial Assistant, Forestry Communications Group, College of Forestry
