Alumni and Students

Starker Tests Remedy for Swiss Needle Cast

A little "cowboy science" may be paying off for Starker Forests, says Mark Gourley ('78), a professional forester with Starker. Since 1995, he and dozens of other members of the Swiss Needle Cast Cooperative have been trying everything they can think of to find an antidote to Swiss needle cast, a disease affecting thousands of acres of Douglas-fir trees in the Oregon Coast Range. "We tried every fungicide out there— stuff that wasn't even on the market yet," he says. "None of them would work."

After years of trying various combinations of manual and chemical weed control, fertilizers, and soil amendments, Gourley is cautiously optimistic about the promise of micronized sulfur as part of a possible treatment prescription they've been seeking.

He says it's a challenge to get the element into the trees, which must be doused twice a year. Since Swiss needle cast affects only newly growing foliage, application must be made right after the buds break.

So far, the treated trees are showing encouraging signs of healthy growth. But there are still a lot of unknowns. "We don't know the economics of this type of treatment, and we don't know what the growth differences will to be," says Gourley. "We don't know how many years in a row we need to do this or how large an area we need to treat. How long does treatment last? How fast will the fungus reinvade from the edges?" While the Swiss needle cast scientists may be on to something, it will take several more years of experimentation to answer the many questions.

Three hundred elementary students and their parents descended on Starker Forest land in January, along with over 70 volunteers from the OSU SAF chapter, Philomath and Corvallis High Schools, Boy Scout Troop 142, and Explorer Post 122. Starker Forests hosts the event not only to educate the community about reforestation, but "to get people out in the woods in a fun way," said Starker employee Dick Powell. By the end of the day, the students had planted 3,000 Douglas-fir, hemlock, grand fir, and western redcedar seedlings and had their fill of hot dogs and hot chocolate served up by Boy Scout troop 142.

One thing is crystal clear, though: the deer and elk love the effects of sulfur on grass and other forage. According to Gourley, it makes the understory grow greener and three times as tall. He says the deer and elk mow it down as quickly as it grows.

New Hispanic Liaison for Student Services

José Diéguez has been named Hispanic Liaison for College of Forestry Student Services, a position that is jointly funded by Weyerhaeuser Corporation and the College of Forestry. Diéguez will be working with the Hispanic/Latino communities in and around the Salem area, involving youth in forest resource activities and recruiting future students and professionals into forest resources fields.

This recruitment effort is designed to prepare prospective hires at Weyerhaeuser. Students will attend Chemeketa Community College and OSU. Weyerhaeuser will provide job shadows, internships, scholarships, and other resources.

Diéguez has more than 15 years of experience working in Forestry and was most recently with the BLM as a surveying technician. He holds a bachelor's in forestry and a master's in forest resources conservation from the Universidad Naçional Agraria in Peru.

Fernhopper Day 2003 was wet, bright, fun

The 60 Fernhoppers who gathered for the Fernhopper Day 2003 tour (May 17) got a taste of this year's long, wet western Oregon spring as they toured the College Forest in sunshine, rain, and hail.

This year's Fernhopper Day theme was "The College of Forestry—Past, Present, and Future." Tour participants visited a seven-year-old forest thinning study and then stopped at the Peavy Arboretum "post farm," a monument to 76 years of wood preservation research at the College of Forestry.

Then it was sandwiches and coffee at the Forestry Club cabin, where Bob Zybach '91 spoke and showed slides of the history and prehistory of McDonald-Dunn Forest. Dean Emeritus George Brown talked about the history of watershed research at the College, and Dean Hal Salwasser spoke about current conditions in the world of forestry and at the College, and of the College's goals for the future.

The sun came out a few times at the George W. Brown Logging Sports Arena as students and visitors threw axes and bucked logs. Long-time College Forest manager and '50 alumnus Marv Rowley, 79 and going strong, performed the single buck, pausing only once to catch his breath. About 210 Fernhoppers, faculty, staff, and students attended the banquet. Ninety-two students (23 graduate students and 69 undergrads) received scholarships and fellowships totaling approximately $270,000.

The College honored its top students, faculty, and alumni with the following awards: Paul and Neva Dunn Outstanding Senior Award: Paul Betts, Forest Engineering/Civil Engineering, and Brad Eckert, Forest Management; Harold Bowerman Leadership Award: Alex Dunn, Forest Engineering/Civil Engineering, and Kate Pryor, Forest Recreation Resources; Kelly Axe Award: Kate Pryor; Julie Kliewer Mentoring Award and Aufderheide Award for Excellence in Teaching: Brian Kramer, Senior Instructor in Forest Engineering; College of Forestry Outstanding Alumnus Award: Marvin Rowley '50; Pack Essay Awards: Jessica Adine, Forest Engineering, Carrie Heisler, Natural Resources, and Paul Betts, Forest Engineering/Civil Engineering.

In addition, the student chapter of Xi Sigma Pi conferred an honorary membership on Jack Walstad, head of the Department of Forest Resources, whose alma mater, Duke University, didn't have a Xi Sigma Pi chapter when he was a student.

Lewis & Clark Meet GIS

Andrea Laliberte is bringing Lewis & Clark back to the future. She believes these explorers have a lot to teach us about conservation and ecology, and she's using today's technology to prove it. For her dissertation, Laliberte used daily entries in Lewis & Clark's journals, which contain detailed records of animals hunted or spotted along the trail, to develop a GIS.

She mapped nine species of mammals, recording the number seen and killed by the expedition in a spatial database. She also mapped Lewis & Clark's encounters with Native Americans. The purpose was to examine the spatial relationships between wildlife and human settlements. She created an interactive map that allows users to click on each campsite and get information on the number of species encountered on a particular day.

"I was surprised at the detail and consistency of reporting by Lewis & Clark," LaLiberte says, "I believe the journals contain valuable information about historical ecological conditions, and that this knowledge can be applied to issues in conservation biology and ecological restoration." Laliberte received an award for best student presentation at the 2003 annual meeting of the Northwest Section of the Wildlife Society, and her work has recently been accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Bioscience. The map is available at www.cof.orst.edu/lewis&clark.

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