SEFS Director Search Launches!

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We are very pleased to announce that our search for a permanent director to replace Tom DeLuca is officially underway. The official posting is available online and below, and we encourage you to help us spread the word as widely as possible!

Position Details
The School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (SEFS) at the University of Washington (UW) seeks an innovative leader in the natural and/or human dimensions of environmental science and forest resources who, in the role of Director, will inspire faculty and students and enhance the School’s reputation and position as an international leader in learning, discovery and engagement. SEFS is a part of the UW’s College of the Environment, and our graduate and undergraduate programs are ranked among the very top environmental and forest science schools in the country.

The mission of SEFS is to generate and disseminate knowledge for the stewardship of natural and managed environments and the sustainable use of their products and services. Our students and faculty study everything from environmental restoration to wildlife science and conservation, sustainable forest management and silviculture to forest ecology and economics, human dimensions of natural resource management and planning to the production of biofuels and bioproducts, wildfires and disturbance ecology to hydrology and plant microbiology, and so much more. From urban to wilderness areas, forests to wetlands, deep soil to tree canopies, natural to social sciences, labs to field sites, our research explores ecosystems from every angle—and with partners from nonprofit, industry, government and tribal communities.

Our curriculum is fundamentally interdisciplinary with a heavy emphasis on field-based, hands-on learning supported by the School’s field sites and centers, including the Union Bay Natural Area, Pack Forest, the Olympic Natural Resources Center and the UW Botanic Gardens. The Director will play a vital role in guiding the school’s academic growth and developing new initiatives, providing school-level leadership and management of its programs, centers and research grants, allocating its revenues in a manner that supports its mission, and enhancing its sizable and growing endowment. The Director also sits on the Natural Resources Board of Washington State, which oversees the management of state lands.

The College of the Environment and SEFS are dedicated to creating a climate of engagement, actively enlarging the boundaries of diversity, and emphasizing the crucial roles that under-represented groups play in experiencing, documenting, understanding and solving environmental challenges. All applicants must, therefore, have a demonstrated willingness to work collaboratively with faculty from a wide range of disciplines, cultures and academic backgrounds; and to recruit, advise and teach a student body that is diverse with respect to socio-economic status, culture and career path.

Job qualifications include a Ph.D. or foreign equivalent in any field of natural resources or environmental science, human dimensions of the environment, conservation or management; substantial research, teaching and mentoring, as well as administrative and team leadership experience; and the ability to work productively with a variety of organizations and private donors. All UW faculty engage in teaching, research and service. The Director position is at the Professor level (0101), so the appointed person must qualify for the rank of Professor in SEFS. This is a tenured, 9-month, full-time (100% FTE), indefinite position.

Application Instructions
Applicants should submit a statement of interest and vision for the department addressing the qualifications listed above, a current CV, and the names and contact information of five references. These materials should be assembled into a single PDF document and emailed to sefsjobs@uw.edu.

Questions about this position can be directed to sefsjobs@uw.edu. Individuals requesting disability accommodation in the application process should contact SEFS at sefsjobs@uw.edu or 206-543-2730 for assistance. Review of applications will begin on March 15, 2017. and continue until the position is filled.

University of Washington is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, protected veteran or disabled status, or genetic information.

IFSA to Host Canadian-American Regional Meeting

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Starting this Saturday, February 18, and running through Sunday, February 26, our UW Local Committee of the International Forestry Students’ Association (IFSA) will be hosting the 2017 Canadian-American Regional Meeting (CARM). Organized entirely by our IFSA students, this international gathering will welcome around 40 students from universities across the United States and Canada to learn about sustainable forestry practices in Washington.

Throughout their visit, CARM attendees will enjoy a full slate of activities, from tours of the Washington Park Arboretum and Union Bay Natural Area, to an overnight field trip to Pack Forest and the Olympic Natural Resources Center in Forks, Wash. Other events include a Faculty Welcome Dinner and informal networking night on Wednesday, February 22, and one of IFSA’s annual Pecha Kucha nights on Thursday, February 23, at 5 p.m. in the Forest Club Room, where students will give lightning talks on a variety environmental topics (with a potluck dinner afterward). Then, at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 24, IFSA is throwing the Forester’s Ball in the Forest Club Room. The cost is $10 at the door or $8 in advance, which includes two drinks (for those of age with ID), and other snacks and beverages will be provided (tickets can be purchased starting this Thursday, February 16, in Anderson 116 or 107B). For more information, check out the event page on Facebook, and you can email IFSA with any questions.

IFSA heartily invites all faculty, staff and students to attend all of these events. Hosting CARM is a huge undertaking—from housing the many out-of-state guests, to pulling together a full slate of activities throughout the week—and they are eager to show off the incredible programs and community we have here at SEFS. So take a look at the schedule for this week-long event, and we hope you’ll join in as many events as you can!

How Do You Convince a Climate Change Skeptic?

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We are very excited to announce the launch of our third annual UW Climate Change Video Contest! Our first two contests inspired some incredibly thoughtful and creative videos, and this year we’re challenging high school students throughout Washington with a new prompt: Create a two-minute ad that will convince a climate change skeptic to take action.

2017_02_2017 FlyerYour ad can be targeted at anyone—the general public, voters, a friend, family member, local politician or world leader. What matters most is the power and effectiveness of your message, from your ability to engage viewers with opposing viewpoints, to the strength of your scientific reasoning. Your video can take on any format imaginable, and we encourage you to get creative (fake news satire, Claymation, sci-fi, music video, film noir mystery, ballet, stand-up comedy routine, rock opera, personal monologue, documentary…and everything else in between).

A top prize of $5,000 awaits the winner, $1,000 for second and $500 for third, and we’ll screen and celebrate the finalists at the UW Climate Change Video Awards at Town Hall Seattle this spring.

The deadline to submit a video is Sunday, April 30, 2017, and we can’t wait to see how students tackle this challenge. So learn more about the contest, and help us spread the word to as many high schools as possible across the state!

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Alaska Airlines Takes Flight Using Forest-Powered Biofuel

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This past November, Alaska Airlines made history by completing the first commercial flight using an alternative jet fuel made in part from forest residuals, the limbs and branches that remain after the harvesting of managed forests. The first-of-its-kind renewable biofuel comprised 20 percent of the jet fuel blend, and it helped power the demonstration flight on a Boeing 737-800—carrying several elected officials and a number of researchers involved in the project, including Professor Indroneil Ganguly and SEFS doctoral candidate Laurel James, among the 163 passengers—from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. This cross-country flight on November 14 provided a triumphant culmination to a five-year USDA-funded project, led by Washington State University (WSU).

The wood used in the jet fuel came from Washington, Oregon and Montana, including forests managed by Weyerhaeuser, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribe.
The wood used in the jet fuel came from Washington, Oregon and Montana, including forests managed by Weyerhaeuser, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribe. (© 2016 Washington State University)

Nearly lost in the press coverage and excitement, though, were some of the contributions SEFS researchers made as key partners in this bio-jet fuel development, including leading the overall environmental, community and deep soil carbon impact assessments of this bio-based alternative energy.

Guiding the cutting-edge research on this alternative jet fuel has been the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA), a partnership of public universities, government laboratories and private industry. NARA received a $40 million grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture in 2011 to develop bio-based alternatives to traditionally petroleum-based products such as jet fuel. Led by WSU, NARA organized a comprehensive approach to building a supply chain for aviation biofuel with the goal of increasing efficiency in everything from forestry operations to conversion processes. The project aimed to create a sustainable industry to produce aviation biofuels and valuable co-products, all while empowering rural economies, increasing America’s energy security, and reducing aviation’s environmental impact.

At SEFS, Indroneil and Dr. Francesca Pierobon led a team of researchers evaluating the overall environmental footprint of the bio-jet fuel using a cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment (LCA). To meet the U.S. Energy Independence and Securities Act standards, it was critical to be able to show that using this renewable biofuel could achieve at least a 60 percent lifecycle Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction threshold. Impressively, their LCA demonstrated the potential for as much as a 72-percent reduction in lifecycle GHG emissions using NARA’s jet fuel, which is chemically indistinguishable from regular jet fuel.

“If Alaska Airlines were able to replace 20 percent of its entire fuel supply at Sea-Tac Airport, it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 142,000 metric tons of CO2,” said Joe Sprague, Alaska Airlines senior vice president of communications and external relations. “This is equivalent to taking approximately 30,000 passenger vehicles off the road for one year.”
“If Alaska Airlines were able to replace 20 percent of its entire fuel supply at Sea-Tac Airport, it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 142,000 metric tons of CO2,” said Joe Sprague, Alaska Airlines senior vice president of communications and external relations. “This is equivalent to taking approximately 30,000 passenger vehicles off the road for one year.” (© 2016 Washington State University)

Typical forest harvest operations in the Pacific Northwest, after all, leave behind a considerable volume of unused residual woody biomass, most of which is collected into piles in the forest and burned. “So in my opinion,” says Indroneil, “the most important environmental benefit associated with producing this bio-jet fuel is the avoided slash pile burns, which improves local air quality and reduces the local health impacts caused by the harmful pollutants generated from burning.”

Through a community impact assessment (CIA), Professor Ivan Eastin—who led SEFS’ overall involvement in the project—and Research Associate Daisuke Sasatani evaluated the potential economic impacts, including job creation, of a bio-jet fuel production facility located in the Pacific Northwest. They found that establishing a commercial-sized bio-jet fuel production plant, located in southwestern Washington and producing 35 million gallons of woody biomass-based jet fuel per year, could generate approximately $650 million in industrial output while directly creating 173 jobs within the production facility—and indirectly leading to the creation of an additional 1,200 jobs within the supply chain.

For the soil carbon impacts assessment, Professor Rob Harrison led stump decomposition, deep soil carbon retention and nutrient sustainability studies. He and his team concluded that Pacific Northwest forests—particularly moist coastal coniferous forests—are highly productive due partly to high belowground resource stocks and availability. They further concluded that these resource stocks are likely to be resilient to additional biomass harvest removals that would provide feedstock for a biofuels and biochemical industry.

These findings, coupled with the successful demonstration flight, highlighted some of the enormous potential of viable alternatives to replace conventional fossil fuels for aviation.

“By creating an advanced drop-in biofuel from residual woody biomass, which is generally disposed of by open burning,” says Indroneil, “we are not only addressing the global warming issue by displacing fossil fuel, we are also presenting an economic alternative for forest-dependent communities.”

Photo below © USDA/Lance Cheung/USDA.

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Society of American Foresters Accredits Three SEFS Degree Programs

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Since 2006, the Society of American Foresters (SAF) has accredited our Master of Forest Resources – Forest Management (MFR) as the sole professional forestry program at our school. In 2015, we sought continued accreditation for this program, as well as accreditation for two options within our undergraduate Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Environmental Science and Resource Management: Sustainable Forest Management, and Natural Resource and Environmental Management.

2017_01_SAF AccreditationAs of January 1, 2017, the SAF Committee on Accreditation granted continued accreditation to our MFR program, initial accreditation to the Sustainable Forest Management option, and provisional accreditation to the Natural Resource and Environmental Management option! Accreditation for the two professional forestry programs, under the SAF Forestry Standard, is for 10 years, and the provisional accreditation of the Natural Resource and Environmental Management option—under the SAF Natural Resources and Ecosystem Management Standard—extends through 2019. These options are now the only SAF-accredited B.S. programs in Washington!

Gaining accreditation for these programs is great news for prospective and currently enrolled students, their families, our alumni and employers, and it further strengthens our ability to recruit and train the next generation of forestry and natural resource leaders. It also allows us to strengthen our long-time association with SAF, which began its accreditation of forestry programs more than 80 years ago!

Interim Director’s Welcome: Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh

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On January 3, 2017, I began my nine-month appointment as interim director of the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. It has been a dizzying—and infinitely fascinating—first month settling into my new role and office here in Anderson Hall, and I’m gradually feeling my way through the complex world of our school after more than 30 years as a professor of biology at the University of Washington. My calendar has been packed as I’ve tried to connect with as many folks as possible, but until I get a chance to meet everyone face to face, I wanted to share a little more about my background and what brought me to SEFS.

My family includes B Lippitt, an educator working at the Institute for Systems Biology, our daughter Alice, who teaches 2nd and 3rd grade in the Seattle Public Schools, and our son Will, who is a construction manager with Venture Construction, his partner Ashley and their brand-new baby Wiley. B and I live in south Seattle, where we raise vegetables, bees and other art forms on our property.
My family includes B Lippitt, an educator working at the Institute for Systems Biology, our daughter Alice, who teaches 2nd and 3rd grade in the Seattle Public Schools, and our son Will, who is a construction manager with Venture Construction, his partner Ashley and their brand-new baby Wiley. B and I live in south Seattle, where we raise vegetables, bees and other art forms on our property.

My interest in biology began in high school. I remember two remarkable teachers, in chemistry and in biology, and learning to pith a frog. Forevermore I was a plant biologist, interested in physiology and biochemical function.

I went on to earn a bachelor’s in botany from Duke University and a Ph.D. in plant physiology from the University of Washington. Following postdoctoral appointments at the University of Illinois and as a NATO Fellow at Lancaster University in England, I returned to the UW Botany Department and began postdoctoral/research faculty work, including with the poplar research program led by Professor Emeritus Reinhard Stettler from the College of Forest Resources (now our school). I worked closely then with Tom Hinckley and Toby Bradshaw (then a member of CFR, now chair of Biology), and soon I was hired as an assistant professor in botany in 1987. I continued my collaboration with CFR by joining graduate supervisory committees and serving on the Center for Urban Horticulture Advisory Committee with Professor Emeritus Harold Tukey, and later David Mabberly and Sarah Reichard.

In my own career as a plant biologist, my research has focused on the physiological regulation of leaf expansion in crop plants, including beans, corn, poplar and tomato. I am most known for my work on leaf growth with respect to photobiology and drought stress, and I have explored how genetic variation in activity of growth control affects yield. One of these projects was funded by Pioneer Hi-Bred seed company, a collaboration with Professor Emeritus David Ford on corn canopies. With poplar, it became clear that the rate of leaf expansion predicted stem volume at the end of a one-year growth season. Recent experiments show that the rate of bean leaf expansion predicts yield of bean plants grown in greenhouse conditions. Students currently working in my Plant Growth Lab are exploring how blue light controls the growth mechanism, what influence leaf shape has on function, and how drought tolerance develops in growing bean plants.

Greenhouse beans.
Greenhouse beans, part of an experiment in Liz’s Plant Growth Lab.

From the beginning, I’ve been interested in how plants work, focusing on physiology and adaptation. A little more than 10 years ago, I was invited to join an international group of researchers forming the Society for Plant Neurobiology. It seemed a natural progression, especially since leaf growth physiology has many similarities to neurophysiology. I became president of this society, which later changed its name to Plant Signaling and Behavior (to match its journal), and I’m also a longstanding member of the American Society of Plant Biology, Sigma Xi and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where I am a AAAS Fellow.

Which brings me to this new chapter as interim director of SEFS. When I first considered this opportunity—after the surprise of being asked—I saw a tremendous opportunity to work with old colleagues and new partners on a mission that’s vitally important to the health of our global environment. The complexity of leading a school is new to me, but also appealing. So I look forward to understanding better the whole of the SEFS community, and getting to know all of the people and projects that make it work!

Sincerely,

Liz Van Volkenburgh
School of Environmental and Forest Sciences

Alumni Spotlight: Ellen Lois Hooven (1924-2016)

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by Karl Wirsing/SEFS

Seventy-two years ago, a young woman named Ellen Lois Johnson arrived on the University of Washington (UW) campus to begin her undergraduate studies. She didn’t realize it when she applied, but Ellen would be one of the first two women ever enrolled in the College of Forestry—now the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences—and four years later, in 1948, she would become the very first to earn an undergraduate forestry degree from UW.

2017_01_Hooven1
Ellen attended Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, where she first learned about the College of Forestry. “I had read about [the forestry program],” she said. “They had books on different professions, and forestry sounded like it was very interesting, so that’s what I decided to do.”
After she finished school, Ellen ended up marrying and having five children with one of her forestry classmates, Ed Hooven. They eventually settled in Corvallis, Ore., and both worked for many years at Oregon State University—Ed as a professor and forest wildlife ecologist until he passed away in 1978, and Ellen as an assistant to the manager of the College of Forestry’s McDonald-Dunn Research Forest.

Last month, on December 5, 2016, Ellen passed away a couple weeks shy of her 92nd birthday. We were enormously grateful to have had a chance to catch up with her the previous year, and some of her memories of college—nearly 70 years after graduation—were still as poignant as the day she got tossed into Frosh Pond on Garb Day.

Bucking Tradition
Ellen grew up in Spokane, Wash., and started school during an era of tremendous change. The country had been at war for several years, and many of her new classmates were World War II soldiers taking advantage of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the G.I. Bill. It provided, among other benefits, cash payments for tuition and living expenses for returning veterans. “All those fellows coming back from the service were quite a shock to the professors,” said Ellen. “They were used to having classes full of little high school graduates, but here were these seasoned veterans. In one of my classes, the professor came in and started talking about the weather, and a voice came from the back of the room, ‘Cut out the baloney and start teaching.’ Those veterans wanted to get in there and get going and get on with their lives!”

2015_04_Hooven3The professors and students in the College of Forestry were also adjusting to the first two women among their ranks. Ellen had enrolled at the same time as one other female student, but her classmate later transferred to a different school. The next year, though, another young woman, Priscilla Lewis, joined the program, and it took a little while to integrate them fully into the system. Priscilla, for instance, had to lobby to be allowed to participate on a field trip with her male classmates (“Coed Wins Equality; Will Accompany Boys on Trip,” wrote The Daily), and she would later join Ellen as a charter member of a women’s group (“Forestry and Engineering Fems Unite”) that formed to provide support to women in male-dominated fields.

Some challenges of being a female student were less curricular in nature. While studying down at Pack Forest one quarter, Ellen remembers a brazen professor who actually propositioned her, offering her a good grade if she’d spend the night with him. “I was so flabbergasted, so I said the first thing that popped into my head, which was to say that would be too hard.”

That kind of behavior was definitely the anomaly, says Ellen, and she survived the class without further incident—though maybe not without penalty. “I had been getting A’s and B’s, but I got a C out of the course. That was pretty nasty.”

Scraps of History
Throughout her time as an undergrad, Ellen kept a scrapbook and collected scores of handwritten notes, programs, flyers and newspaper clippings from The Daily, including the headlines quoted above. One of her daughters, Louisa Hooven, recently scanned and made digital records of those pages, and the photos and headlines capture powerful scenes from campus life in the mid-1940s—frozen moments that feel as fresh and immediate as the day they were published.

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Lois, above, experiences some of the ‘rough’ treatment of Garb Day festivities. Though men showed their stuff by growing a beard that week, the “Coed Beardless,” one article advertised, “will have a chance to show their skill when they take part in the cigarette rolling contest.”

Ellen saved articles that cover everything from news from the war (“Jap Attack on U.S. Not Wanted”) to a humorous campus advice column (“Cleo’s Campus Clinic: for problems of the heart, mind and conscience”); and from school activities (“650 Coeds Pledged in Record Rushing Week”) to social news (“Jeanne Simmons, Navy Man Engaged”). There are scribbled notes, including invites to pledge at several sororities (Ellen accepted at Delta Zeta), and a program for a local production, “Khyber Pass,” a “dramatic operetta” staged by the Associated Students of the University of Washington in cooperation with the School of Music and School of Drama.

Also prominently featured are campus stories about the annual Garb Day festivities and shenanigans, which Ellen and Priscilla experienced firsthand. Back then, the celebration lasted a full week and included several notorious events and traditions, from logger sports and logrolling in Frosh Pond (now Drumheller Foundation), to the culminating dance—known as the “Loggers’ Brawl”—in the Forest Club Room of Anderson Hall. During the week, forestry students were required to grow a beard by the time of the dance or risk getting tossed into Frosh Pond. Ellen, of course, had a rather unfair disadvantage, but that didn’t spare her a dunking. “It was a beard-growing contest,” she said, “and of course I lost that one, so I got thrown into the pond. All in good fun!”

She didn’t go down alone, though. Ellen grabbed onto the wrist of the boy who pushed her in and dragged him right in with her. Priscilla wasn’t quite so lucky when she arrived the next year. The Daily was on hand for her dip into Frosh Pond and recorded the moment—and the annoyance in her expression (captured below)—with a big photo and story, “College of Forestry Girl Student Pays Penalty for No Beard.”

2015_04_Hooven4Captured among Ellen’s clippings, as well, is her budding romance with Ed. They met on the first day of class when Ed sat a row in front of her, and soon their names started appearing together in print.

In one short article, “Forestry Club Holds Elections,” the new officers of the Forestry Club—now the Forest Club—are announced, including Ellen as secretary and Ed as treasurer. Then, when Garb Day rolled around, a story noted that the two had teamed up for the double bucking contest. “My husband-to-be was on the other end of a crosscut saw, and the contest was to see who could saw through a log the fastest,” she said. “We didn’t do all that well.”

For the History Books
“That’s been a long time ago,” said Ellen, yet her story is still as vibrant and important as the day she first stepped onto campus. She helped open a door through which thousands of women have since followed, and today more than 50 percent of students at the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences are now women.

That’s quite a change—and quite a legacy—for Ellen’s pioneering role in our history.

Photos and clippings © Courtesy of Louisa Hooven and The Daily.

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Photography Exhibition: An Intimate View of Wild Lands

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This month, from January 4 through 30, the Elisabeth C. Miller Library at the UW Botanic Gardens is hosting a photography exhibition, “An Intimate View of Wild Lands,” featuring Richard Dunford, the son of SEFS alumnus Earl Gerald Dunford (’35, B.S.).

Richard started as a large-format film photographer 45 years ago and just recently converted to digital. His primary photographic interest has always been in Pacific Northwest landscapes, particularly public forest lands, trees and moving water. He is retired from a career in medicine and science and is currently living in Bellevue, Wash., with his wife of 28 years and two corgis.

Read more about his exhibition below, and we hope you get a chance to explore his wonderful photographs!

2017_01_richard-dunford1Artist Statement
My father, a graduate of the University of Washington College of Forestry, was career U.S. Forest Service. With him I’ve lived in and walked through some of our country’s finest remote wild lands, including the national forests of the Smoky Mountains, Rocky Mountains, Sierras and Cascades. My mother was from Oklahoma and not a forest person, but she was a determined amateur painter. This sentiment for forests and artistic DNA merged some 45 years ago when I picked up Ansel Adams’ book, The Range of Light. It was a new day for me and I went looking for a 4×5 camera.

This exhibition is mostly about trees, and I want you to see them differently from how you may have looked at them before. We mostly think of tree color at peak in autumn—full of color and beautiful to behold, but commonplace photographically and easily overdone. I only nibble at the edges of autumn because there is so much more out there. My best photographic time is from late autumn into late spring. Summers are best early morning and late afternoon even for backlit subjects.

These are primarily digital capture photos from the western and eastern Cascade slopes, Puget Sound and central Washington scablands. Many are from the soggy forest in overcast and rain where winter light is subdued and color vibrant and saturated. Others are from the dry eastern side where there is surprisingly expansive color. There you have to look for it in nooks and crannies and it can be unruly and difficult to control. In each region, there is a uniqueness that requires a customized approach for weather, time of year, time of day. One constant, though, is midday on a sunny summer afternoon. Those are best for a nap.

Forests are a confused and disordered visual experience. When we walk in a deep forest, we rarely focus on a single tree, there is also the environment. Where the tree lives is sometimes more important than the tree itself. Without an environment, one tree is not much different from the next. This is why my images rarely show a single focal point of interest. They are often an assortment of spaces in what might be called a “tableau” or “mosaic” effect. The tree must share visual interest with its cluttered surround. It is messy, to be sure, but it is my job as an artist and a quiet personal victory to be able to use color, light and shape to make order out of this landscape.

Photographs © Richard Dunford.

Richard Dunford

SEFS Researchers Partner with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and four researchers from SEFS—including Professors Josh Lawler (PI) and Aaron Wirsing, Affiliate Professor Peter Dunwiddie and postdoc Michael Case—have teamed up on a new research project, “Evaluating Flora and Fauna Diversity in the John Day/Willow Creek Project for Special Status Species Protection.”

2016_12_army-corps-of-engineersWith $284,968 in funding, the project in northwest Oregon aims to:

1)   Inventory and identify terrestrial animal and plant species and their habitats. This comprehensive inventory will include native and non-native and invasive, threatened and endangered, noxious and nuisance plants and wildlife on 13,600 acres of project lands;
2)   Delineate and identify dominant ecological communities, including abiotic components;
3)   Assess the status, health and viability of resident wildlife and plant populations and their habitats, including special status species, as well as biological diversity and environmental health of ecological communities;
4)   Provide qualitative and quantitative information about the identity, location and abundance of state and federal classified invasive and noxious species within dominant ecological communities;
5)   Develop an integrated pest management plan.

The relevant data will be entered into a GIS database and generate a series of maps to show a detailed, scaled overview of ecological communities, species habitats, and general habitat conditions.

Funding for the project is made available through a cooperative agreement (W912HZ-16-2-0031) under the Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (PNW CESU), a partnership for research, technical assistance and education to enhance understanding and management of natural and cultural resources.

Director’s Message: Winter 2017

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The hardest professional decision I’ve ever faced came last spring when I accepted an offer to take over as dean of the College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana. I struggled enormously with knowing how much I loved my job here, yet also feeling an irresistible pull to return to the University of Montana—to be closer to family, closer to where I started my career, and closer to the mountains I learned to call home. I still feel, without contradiction or cliché, the tremendous fortune of moving from one dream job to another, and as I look back on my four years here, I can hardly process all of the incredible experiences with students, faculty, staff and friends. As I prepare to leave next week, I’ve tried to pinpoint a few poignant memories, and I’ve realized how many of them involve field trips—precisely the hands-on experiences that make this school and our programs so special.

Three trips in particular stand out in my mind. They capture what I’ve enjoyed so much about my time at SEFS, and also what I hope to accomplish at Montana.

2016_12_tomdeluca_winter-2017During my second year here, I asked Professor Susan Bolton to take over as the sole instructor for ESRM 201 (our intro ecosystems course), and in return I offered to help with the soils sections and the weekend field trip.  For that excursion, we headed out over Snoqualmie Pass in a caravan of six Suburbans, stopping at several locations along the way to highlight the diversity, sensitivity and complexity of everything from wet coniferous forests to desert. The students were responsive and engaged, and I’ll never forget the power of the natural laboratory we have here in the Pacific Northwest. It gives our students a nearly infinite range of ecosystems to study and explore, as well as the practical experiences—and inspiration—to continue on in their research and careers. I also never forgot that we had grad students and even undergrads drive some of the vehicles, which sparked my crusade to find a safer, more effective and sustainable way to get our students to the field. (The result, of course, was a small fleet of 30-passenger buses, each with a huge ‘W’ on the back and driven by professional drivers!).

The next year, in the autumn of 2014, I got to participate in a Yakama field course with Professor Emeritus Tom Hinckley and Professor Ernesto Alvarado. During this trip, we visited the Yakama Nation and were generously hosted by our friends and alumni on the reservation, including brothers Phil and Steve Rigdon. It was an amazing experience. The students explored some of the knowledge and traditions of Yakama tribal members, and they got a sense of their deep commitment to sustainable resource management—built on a combination of practical savvy, traditional knowledge and cultural devotion. I was struck by the close relationships between our faculty and tribal members, and the depth of knowledge, willingness to share, and the importance of such exposure to our students. I hope to create similar relationships with the many tribes that populate the inland Northwest, and to provide similar opportunities for students at UM.

Then, in 2015 I spent a day touring forest management sites at Pack Forest and with our friends at Port Blakely tree farms. At Pack, we focused on some of the alternative silvicultural practices that Professor Greg Ettl and his students were studying. We also spent time talking with John Hayes about the Mount Rainier Institute, and the crucial work they are doing to cultivate a love of science and the natural world in underrepresented middle school students across Washington. Court Stanley and his colleagues at Port Blakely proudly explained some of the innovative work they were doing on their lands, and the importance of planning 100 years ahead for when their kids’ kids might benefit from the efforts they implemented today. The goal of the trip had simply been to update one another and share ongoing efforts in sustainable forest management, yet I was again overwhelmed by the positive and supportive relationships between our faculty and our partners in industry. I left that day with a profound sense of optimism and pride in the work we were doing, and in our role training the next generation of environmental leaders and stewards. That feeling has thoroughly defined my time at SEFS.

So it’s been hard to take full stock of what I’m leaving behind, and I know many of my experiences at SEFS will continue to shape and influence me for the rest of my life. I’ve been hugely proud to be part of this school, from the Arboretum and Center for Urban Horticulture, to Pack Forest and the Olympic Natural Resources Center, to all of our wonderful students, alumni, staff and faculty, and everyone I’ve had the the privilege of meeting and working with since I arrived. To all of you, please know I’ll never forget my time in Washington, and that you will always have a friend in Montana.

Tom DeLuca
School of Environmental and Forest Sciences