The Institute of Forest Resources supported six grants in 2021 through the McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forestry Research program, totaling $1,386,426 in funding. These projects will wrap up by September 16, 2023.

Two other projects (#1 and #2) were awarded in 2022.

Awarded Projects

1. Production of Biodegradable Plastic Composites Using Forest Sourced Materials

PI: Professor Rick Gustafson, SEFS
Co-PI: Professor Anthony Dichiara, SEFS

Reinforcing fibers have been inserted into plastic matrices to produce composite materials with the necessary properties to be used in products ranging from biomedical prostheses to airplane wings. Today, a new challenge faces the plastic industry, its poor biodegradability and the buildup of plastic materials in the environment. Even biobased polymers such as polylactic acid (PLA) may not biodegrade unless treated with the conditions typically found in commercial composting facilitates – high temperatures and forced air composting bins [1]. New polymer formulations that are more biodegradable have been developed [2], but these have not achieved significant commercial scale mainly because of cost issues and the challenge of producing a polymer with necessary strength, in addition to biodegradability. Awarded March 2022.

Award Total: $123,515

2. Model-based Coupling of Winter Hardiness and Spring Phenology in Pacific Northwest Conifers 

PI: Professor Soo-Hyung Kim, SEFS
Co-PI: Professor Greg Ettl, SEFS

Climate change has impacted the phenology, or the timing of periodic life cycle events, in temperate forest trees. Major phenological features of tree species, cold hardiness in winter and bud burst timing in spring, are critical factors in forest health, productivity, and ecosystem resilience. The ability of trees and seedlings to survive cold exposure and to initiate vegetative growth in the spring can determine success or failure of reforestation, restoration, long term productivity, and survival. Spring phenology of trees in the Pacific Northwest is primarily controlled by seasonal temperatures and is correlated with spring cold hardiness. With increased uncertainties associated with climate change, it is important to understand and predict how spring phenology of key conifer species in forest ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest will respond to climate variability and extremes. A robust process-driven predictive model of tree phenology that couples cold hardiness and budburst through unified chilling-forcing relations will improve the understanding of the impact of climate change on these phenomena and inform critical decisions on species and genotype selection for ecological restoration, assisted migration, and reforestation for future land use. We will develop a robust data set of phenology data collected by multiple research groups, testing programs, and phenology networks over recent decades. These data will be completed by additional testing to fill in genetic and spatial gaps. A predictive process-driven model for Douglas-fir cold hardiness and budburst will be built, calibrated, and tested using the Cropbox modeling framework. The resulting model will be made available to other researchers and practitioners as an open-source package that can be applied to determine populations at high risk due to climate change. Awarded March 2022.

Award Total: $123,515

3. Leveraging Forest Resources in the Fight Against the COVID-19 Pandemic & Beyond

PI: Professor Anthony Dichiara, SEFS
Co-PI: Professor Renata Bura, SEFS

The whole world is going through a very critical and unprecedented situation since March 2020 when the World Health Organization (WHO) characterized the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) as a global pandemic. Since then, COVID-19 has spread over 216 countries and infected more than 51 million people worldwide, with an alarming number of confirmed deaths up to 1.3 million counts and rising. With the exponential increase in COVID-19 cases, healthcare systems get overcrowded and the development of wearable technology to monitor patients, assess the health risk, and forecast future conditions remotely during the quarantine or self-treatment period becomes crucial. Infected individuals are typically characterized by respiratory and pulse rates above 20 breaths/min and 100 beats/min, respectively, due to the severe effect of this virus on the lungs area. Hence, respiration and pulse rates are among the most essential parameters in COVID-19 infection detection. While technology exists to monitor respiratory efforts and cardiovascular activities, sensors are either expansive or bulky, making the current technology undesirable for real-time monitoring of large populations. Conventional silicon-based electronics can be made small enough for installation in wearable devices, but they are too stiff and brittle to be implemented on textile or human skin. Paper made from woody biomass is, however, ubiquitous, flexible, biocompatible, affordable, naturally degradable, environmentally friendly, and lightweight. Because of these numerous advantages, paper is an excellent platform for designing the next generation of wearable devices, whose market is anticipated to record a substantial valuation of $58 billion by 2023. The overarching goal of this project consists of developing a sustainable and cost-effective process to convert forest residues into fibrous nanocomposites capable of monitoring human respiration and pulse rates in real-time, over extended periods, and under various environmental conditions. Awarded 2021.

Award total: $120,742

4. High-value Chemicals and Gasoline Additives from Pyrolysis and Upgrade of Beetle-killed Trees

PI: Professor Brian Harvey, SEFS
Co-PI: Professor David Butman, SEFS

Forests in western Cascadia (west of the Cascade Crest in N Oregon and Washington) are among the most productive in the world, underpinning the regional economy and forming a core component of land-based carbon management. However, large, infrequent, and severe fires characterize such forests, and the impacts of these events on forest fuels and carbon dynamics are poorly understood. In addition, historical evidence suggests that western Cascadia fires have a propensity to reburn multiple times in the years and decades following the initial burn. The carbon consequences of western Cascadia fires, and the potential for short-interval reburns to accelerate changes in land-based carbon storage, are of critical concern for forest managers and policymakers. A particular uncertainty is how forests of different ages respond to fire when they burn, in terms of post-fire fuels and carbon. Nearly 1 million acres have burned in western Cascadia since 2017, representing a key opportunity to address managers’ needs to understand carbon consequences of fire and possible reburn risk. Addressing the likelihood of short-interval reburns will also inform management interest in the likely efficacy of fuel treatments in western Cascadia. To address this need, we will leverage an extensive array of existing and planned (already funded) field plots with ongoing efforts throughout recently burned forests in western Cascadia to answer two key questions: (Q1) How is above-ground woody C storage and (Q2) post-fire fuel profiles (and reburn likelihood) affected by pre-fire stand structure (e.g., stand age) and burn severity? By leveraging extant and planned field data with newly acquired field data in this project, we maximize efficiency and likelihood of project success within the scope of graduate student research. Awarded 2021.

Award total: $129,420

5. Bigleaf Maple Decline in Western Washington

PI: Professor Van Kane, SEFS
Co-PI: Professor L. Monika Moskal, SEFS

Following a century of fire suppression, California’s Sierra Nevada forests are ripe for catastrophic fires threatening human lives, rural communities and economies, habitat for numerous species, and forest persistence. This project will provide forest managers with new tools to help guide them in using wildfires to improve forest resilience and persistence. However, large areas of forests throughout the western United States are at risk of conversion to non-forest cover as the total area that burns at high severity continues to increase in a warmer and drier climate. In planning to use wildfire as a management tool, managers must balance the potential benefits of reintroduced fire against the risk that where high-severity patches inevitably occur, forests may not regenerate. While this risk is well documented through field studies, we lack large-scale studies using remote sensing data to assess these regeneration patterns across large areas of the Sierra Nevada. The integration of remote sensing and field-based information allow us to investigate the full scope of the problem, identify which conditions are most likely to lead to forest regeneration failure, and provide managers with guidelines on how to mitigate this risk. This study will enable us to monitor regeneration failure across a range of fires with differing high-severity burn patterns and biophysical patterns to provide managers and communities with a better understanding of when fires are likely to enable regeneration success or cause regeneration failure. This study also will deepen our ecological understanding of how fires – burning in a changing climate following fire suppression – reshape forests. Awarded 2021.

Award total: $131,081

6. Developing a Web-Based Financial Analytical Tool for Small Forest Landowners Facing Swiss Needle Cast-Associated Growth Losses in Coastal Washington State

PI: Professor Sandor Toth, SEFS
Co-PI: Professor Bernard Bormann, SEFS.

Small forest landowners (SFLs) and tribes with Douglas fir plantations in Coastal Washington State face a new risk of growth loss due to Swiss Needle Cast (SNC) infestations caused by a native fungus (Phaeocryptopus gaeumannii). The projected growth losses in Douglas fir dominated stands are well-documented in Oregon (Shaw et al. 2011, Macguire et al. 2011) and feared to be expanding in Washington State, driven in part by climate change (Ritóková et al. 2016, Lee et al. 2017). The associated economic impact has the potential to be significant for already impoverished rural communities that depend on timber revenues and jobs along the Coast of Western Washington (Kanaskie et al. 2015, Daniels et al. In Prep.). One of the barriers to finding and recommending countermeasures to SNC-related risk of growth loss is lack of information about who exactly these SFLs are, where they hold land parcels with Douglas fir plantations, how they manage these lands, what constraints they face and how they view risk. The goal of this project is therefore to reach out to this community via a web-based cash flow calculator, designed to account for SNC risk, and learn about their management choices and constraints by observing their use of the tool (subject to human subjects review). We would then use this confidential, aggregate information to adjust the calculator to improve its design and performance for the community’s maximum benefit. Awarded 2021.

Award total: $64,940