Olympic Natural Resources Center | School of Environmental and Forest Sciences

ONRC prepares autonomous ocean drone to monitor harmful algal blooms

Posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2023 at 9:00 pm.

Written by mtank

Last month, researchers at the Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) launched a self-powered autonomous surface vehicle (ASV), called the Lightfish, off the coast of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula to improve our understanding and monitoring of harmful algal blooms (HAB) and resulting toxins. The project is funded by the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) through an ocean technology transfer award to the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory (John Mickett, PI) in collaboration with the ONRC. The solar-powered ASV, to be equipped with a custom water sampler designed and built by UW APL, will collect water samples and monitor environmental conditions such as chlorophyll levels, water and air temperature, barometric pressure, and wind speed, all while piloting itself through the often rough waters of the Pacific Northwest coastal ocean. Observations collected by this autonomous marine vessel will aid early warning systems that alert communities to marine biotoxins that impact shellfish harvest.

The ONRC, which is part of the University of Washington’s College of Environment and the School of Environment and Forest Science, conducts research across land and sea with the goal of integrating ecology and economics in the management of both forest and marine resources. Based in Forks, Washington, ONRC houses research labs, conference spaces, and lodging. The ONRC marine science program is led by Vera Trainer, who also directs the Olympic Region Harmful Algal Bloom (ORHAB). The regional observing system of IOOS, the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS) will serve the data collected by the Lightfish as a partner in ORHAB.

ORHAB was established in 1999 to protect public health on the Washington coast by building a comprehensive monitoring and research program to better understand the underlying dynamics of harmful algal blooms. The marine biotoxin domoic acid can be produced by an HAB that causes amnesic shellfish poisoning, including neurological symptoms and sometimes death in humans and wildlife that ingest shellfish. The ORHAB monitoring program provides weekly phytoplankton concentrations to the Washington State Dept of Health, with a focus on phytoplankton that can cause HABs, and contributes to a HAB bulletin that assists managers in scheduling safe shellfish harvest.

Tribes throughout the Olympic Peninsula are members of ORHAB, through the support of their own internal monitoring programs, and collaborate closely with state and academic ORHAB partners. IOOS funds some of the effort by tribes, ONRC, and others through ORHAB as part of the National HAB Observing Network. These tribal partners, which also are co-managers of shellfish resources, produce data used to protect their tribal members and to add spatial coverage to the ORHAB project on the Washington coast.

ONRC research analyst Anthony Odell and partners first launched the Lightfish on October 11th during a training workshop attended by ONRC researchers and Tribal water quality specialists from the Makah, Quinault, Hoh, and Quileute Tribes. Once programmed, the Lightfish will be set on a charted path through the HAB initiation sites in the Juan de Fuca eddy and Heceta Bank. It is designed by engineering company SeaSats to provide a reliable, affordable, and sustainable vehicle for ocean operations. Its robust construction allows the craft to operate in rough conditions unsuitable for researchers to collect samples, such as before and during storms.

Alumni Feature: ONRC graduate student Ally Kruper on research and community

Posted on Tuesday, September 19th, 2023 at 8:33 pm.

Written by mtank

Since transferring to the University of Washington in her junior year, SEFS alumna Ally Kruper has made the most of opportunities to get involved outside the classroom. Her passion for horticulture and working with communities led to an internship with the SER-UW Native Plant Nursery at the Center for Urban Horticulture.

“It was a transformative experience,” said Kruper. “I knew from previous volunteering experiences that I liked working with other students and groups, and feeling like I’d made an impact on our community. The SER-UW Native Plant Nursery was a great combination of those things,” said Kruper.

Working at the Nursery became a fixture for Kruper throughout her undergraduate studies, as she moved from intern to student assistant, to managing the nursery as an AmeriCorps member. From organizing work parties to seedling stratification, planning, potting, and pest management, Kruper expanded her knowledge of horticulture and began to find other ways to pursue her interests outside of the classroom.

Kruper participated in the Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) summer internship program, where she got involved with forest ecology and management research. Collecting data she would later use for her own capstone project, Kruper’s summer internship at ONRC offered an avenue into research, and eventually graduate school. Using skills from her coursework in GIS and remote sensing applications, she used airborne lidar, a remote sensing technology that maps the surface of the Earth, to identify red alder in a long-term ecosystem productivity experiment.

Now, as a graduate student at ONRC, Kruper helps lead the programs that inspired her own path into research. For her thesis, Kruper is using high resolution drone lidar data to map western redcedar populations on the Olympic Peninsula in order to monitor this declining species and understand the geographic distribution of this cultural keystone tree.

“The inspiration for my project came from talking to tribal natural resource department employees about what they wanted to see on the Olympic Peninsula, and they wanted to see more western redcedar planted in accessible places. It’s a culturally important species that the Quileute tribe use for bark harvesting ceremonies,” said Kruper. Western redcedar is a long-lived conifer with high value timber that has economic, recreational, and cultural value in the Pacific Northwest. Due to overharvesting in the 20th century, deer and elk grazing, and the impacts of climate change, western redcedar is far more scarce on the Olympic Peninsula than it was historically.

Reflecting on her experiences since joining SEFS, Kruper stressed the importance of getting involved in activities outside of class. “The connections I made were really useful. Getting hands-on field experience in such a supportive environment introduced me to the world of research, more than any class could have, and led me into graduate school,” said Kruper.

forest and person — Photo: Evan Gray, ONRC Intern

Employee Spotlight: Deric Kettel, ONRC Maintenance Mechanic

Posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2023 at 8:08 pm.

Written by mtank

Get to know SEFS staff! This series provides an opportunity to find out more about SEFS staff members — what they do in their daily job and how they spend their time outside the office.

What is your role at SEFS?
I’ve worked for the Olympic Natural Resources Center as the Maintenance Mechanic II for the past 28 years. I was hired three weeks before the ribbon cutting ceremony in July of 1995. Taking on a new facility was challenging but at the same time, exciting! There is a personal sort of ownership that I feel toward this facility. So, when asked what I do for work, this is what I say. I take care of all maintenance related work including electrical, plumbing, HVAC, security and fire systems, and a very complex water system out here. We are on 40 acres, mostly forested with an extensive trail system. I also help facilitate field projects for various researchers. I’ve also had the privilege of working with the SEFS It team as well as Campus IT folks over the years in troubleshooting issues out here at this remote site.

Tell us about your road to SEFS
The first question I usually get is “The University of Washington has a facility in Forks?” The second question either by people I meet here, or longtime friends is, “how did you end up working for the University of Washington?” The short answer is my wife is responsible for me getting this job, and she reminds me of that fact all the time, and then we laugh, but it’s true! She was hired on toward the end of construction to do a final cleaning of the buildings here and she let me know that the University was soon going to be looking for a Maintenance Mechanic for the facility. I had no idea this place was even being built right here in my own hometown! So, I applied for the Maintenance Mechanic II position and the rest is history. It was the first time in my life that I left a job to go to another one, I had mixed feelings about that, but looking back after 28 years it was one of the best decisions, I would end up making.

The longer answer is I grew up in a time period where the trades were still taught in school, things like carpentry, welding and auto shop class. As Mike Rowe says all the time, and I couldn’t agree more, when these types of classes were dropped from the school curriculum, less and less young people ended up in these types of jobs. By the time I was 14, I could wire an entire house, thanks to my stepdad letting me shadow him. I was welding and using all kinds of shop tools all before I even had my driver’s license. Everything I came across I would take apart to see how it was made. I was and am still curious about how things work.

Over the years before coming to the UW, I had several jobs in maintenance, local mills, the hospital here in town that all led me to being offered and accepting this job. The local staff here as well as folks at the U have been an absolute pleasure to work for.

Where did you grow up?
That is also interesting. I grew up right here in Forks Washington and graduated in 1982. Fast forward to 1995, when I was hired at the U, and here I am still, although 4 years ago my wife and I moved a bit farther away to the area of Agnew Wa. Working for the University in my hometown of Forks is the best of both worlds. It has that small town atmosphere without all the traffic and other challenges that can sometimes come with living in a big city. For 25 years I had a less than two-mile commute, some mornings I might even see another car on the road. That alone was worth a lot!

What are your favorite ways to spend time outside of work?
I grew up riding motorcycles and have had several over the years. Getting out exploring either on long road trips on my big bike to places like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and Glacier National Parks or just spending time in my own areas on the forest roads riding my dual sport motorcycle in an area where I grew up is one of my all-time favorite things to do. Of course, nothing beats time spent with family and friends sitting around the fire pit whether at home or camping, telling stories.

What inspires you?
This question is harder to nail down, mainly because there are so many things that move me. It’s also a question that can be different for each one of us. For me, it’s the simple things like watching a child play with a puppy, to the grace of seeing someone reach out to a total stranger in a simple act of kindness. When I see a couple in their 80’s holding hands, I want to know their story, and sometimes if the opportunity presents itself, I’ll strike up a conversation. It’s those conversations that inspire me every day.

Wildlife Research Techniques: Photos from the Field!

Posted on Tuesday, June 14th, 2016 at 5:17 pm.

Written by Communication Staff

This past spring, Professor Laura Prugh took her first turn teaching ESRM 351: Wildlife Research Techniques, a field-intensive course that involves several weekend trips to sites around the state.

Professor Prugh handling a garter snake.

Through a combination of classroom time and field excursions, the course introduces students to common techniques used to assess wildlife populations and their habitat, and also how to communicate observations through field journals. Students gain hands-on experience with species identification, non-lethal methods of capturing and handling a variety of wildlife species, and non-invasive methods of wildlife research that do not involve capturing animals. By the end of the quarter, they should be able to identify a host of regional birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and plants, and they should be proficient at keeping detailed field notes and have a basic understanding of the scientific writing and the publication process.

The four primary field trips included overnights at Friday Harbor Labs on San Juan Island and the Olympic Natural Resource Center in Forks, Wash., as well as camping at Teanaway and Mount Rainier. While at these field sites, students get to experiment with all sorts of skills and techniques, including radiotelemetry, learning regional birds by sight and sound (call/song), conducting rabbit burrow counts and small mammal trapping, field identification and capture methods for birds, amphibian surveys in terrestrial and aquatic habitats, and much more.

It’s an incredibly popular and memorable course, and one of the students in this year’s class, Kacy Hardin, set up a public Facebook group to capture scenes from their trips. The page offers a fun photo journal of their various research endeavors, with loads of great shots and clips, so check it out!

Photo of Laura Prugh with snake © Laura Prugh; photo of Laurel Peelle handling a Keen’s mouse (below) © Andrew Wang.

Director’s Message: Summer 2015

Posted on Monday, July 20th, 2015 at 3:39 pm.

Written by Communication Staff

In mid-June, on a visit to the Olympic Natural Resources Center out in Forks, Wash., I had the opportunity to tour the Hoh River Trust lands on the Olympic Peninsula. The Trust purchased and set aside these lands, which cover about 7,000 acres, during the last 20 years. The goal was to preserve the beauty of the 56-mile Hoh River that runs through the heart of the property, and create a zone of ecological integrity along the watershed.

Much of the area had been heavily managed in the previous 80 years, passing from small landowners to timber companies and ultimately to the Trust, and the forest is still managed today. In general, timber is being harvested at a sustainable rate and in a manner that supports continuous cover and habitat between harvest entries—and with an eye toward long-term habitat restoration and improvement. You have to marvel at the sheer size of some of the older stumps, and while I know it will take many, many years to restore the forest to the grandeur of those historical stands, I also know that much of that potential hinges on how we manage the forest today.

So the forest isn’t ‘idle,’ and neither is the land. It is an intense and ever-changing ecosystem driven by the hydraulic power of the Hoh River and the forces of fire and wind. One of the original European homesteads on the land has been lost to bank erosion from the river shifting across the floodplain at an average rate of about 20 feet per year, drawing rocks, trees, house and soil into the river, and leaving behind fresh-cut bank with exposed roots and burrow holes—all to be washed away in the next large runoff event. Amazingly, a day before our tour, two fires had broken out in this wet part of Washington in June, and one was still burning more than 20 days later. The lesson: Landscapes are incredibly dynamic, whether they experience constant human intervention or none at all. Such dynamism is found everywhere in nature, and our ability to address and work with these forces requires us to explore and understand ecological systems in their entirety.

Rural communities, with their interdependency on nearby forests and links to regional cities and international markets, also display complex dynamism. In those environments, creating a more integrated ecological and community system adds an additional layer of complexity—and also risk. Matching timber maturity and harvest scheduling with ecological objectives, for instance, can lead to cash flow challenges that cripple an organization or a company.

But that’s what makes this human ecosystem along the Hoh such an ideal test ground, and why I’m excited for the opportunity to partner with the Hoh River Trust, as well as the neighboring Olympic Experimental State Forest and Olympic National Forest, to conduct research involving faculty and students from our School. Natural laboratories like these lands, which share elements of the wild and of human management, are essential to sustainable forestry and the forest products industry. They give us a chance to integrate research across multiple disciplines, combining the expertise of our foresters, social scientists, ecologists, microbiologists, engineers, hydrologists and economists, among others.

Using these lands as an open research laboratory would allow us to conduct long-term studies experimenting with new approaches to silviculture, timber harvest and wood utilization that emphasize habitat objectives and continuous cover—all while achieving a sustainable flow of timber and revenue that supports regional demand and community well-being. I can envision us developing alternative strategies for restoration and conservation along the Hoh that will help increase the resilience of our ecosystems, economies and social networks throughout the Pacific Northwest.

There’s so much potential in this dynamic environment, and I heartily welcome the opportunity for us to help study, understand, manage, restore and sustain these rural landscapes.

Tom DeLuca
School of Environmental and Forest Sciences

New Faculty Intro: Bernard Bormann

Posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2015 at 9:23 pm.

Written by Communication Staff

We are extremely pleased to welcome Dr. Bernard Bormann as the new director of the Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) in Forks, Wash., and as a professor of forest ecology and physiology for SEFS! His first official day in the office was April 1, and we hope you’ll join us in welcoming him to our community.

Professor Bormann spent most of his childhood in New England, including Hanover, N.H., and near New Haven, Conn., and he joins ONRC after a 34-year career as a scientist with the U.S. Forest Service. Since 1989, he has led the Long-Term Ecosystem Productivity Program for the Pacific Northwest Research Station, and he brings a strong interest in adaptive management. He is looking forward to upholding the original intent of ONRC to serve as a hub of collaborative research—a neutral forum that unites researchers, students, professionals and the public to solve critical issues in forestry and marine management throughout the Olympic Peninsula. He is also excited to develop and study multiple creative, win-win solutions that can reverse declines in both ecological resilience and rural community well-being across the region.

Professor Bormann has a long history in the Puget Sound region. He received his B.S. in plant ecology from Evergreen State College in 1976, his M.S. in plant ecology from the University of Washington in 1978, and then his Ph.D. in forest physiology from Oregon State University in 1981.

You can reach him at his ONRC office at 206.685.9477 and by email at bormann@uw.edu.

Welcome, Bernard!

Photo © Bernard Bormann.

Pileated Woodpeckers in Suburban Seattle?

Posted on Monday, October 14th, 2013 at 6:57 pm.

Written by Communication Staff

This Friday, October 18, the Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) in Forks, Wash., will be hosting the second presentation as part of its new monthly speaker series, “Evening Talks at ONRC.”

Each month, a graduate student or other regional expert will give a public talk to engage members of the Forks and surrounding communities in exciting research projects throughout the state. SEFS graduate student Laurel Peelle kicked off the speaker series on Saturday, September 21, to great success—and an enthusiastic round of questions afterward!

This next event, which will begin at the ONRC campus at 7 p.m., features Jorge Tomasevic for his talk, “A New Neighbor on the Block: Pileated Woodpeckers in Seattle’s Suburban Areas.”

Part of the Wildlife Science Group at SEFS—and currently working toward his Ph.D.—Tomasevic originally came to the United States as a Fulbright Fellow from Chile. From the cold forests of Patagonia to the arid desert of Atacama, from the native forests and struggling exotic pine plantations to the heights of an island in the Pacific Ocean or up high in the Andes, Tomasevic has participated in several research projects dealing with the ecology and conservation of forest birds and endangered species in Chile—and now in the Pacific Northwest.

“Most of us think of the Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) as a mature or even old-growth forest species, right?” says Tomasevic. “That’s why we use them as indicators of forest health. However, they are also using suburban areas in the Greater Seattle region. Why is this? How are they doing? Are they successful, or it is just the remains of a past population that are using what is left of the forest not taken over by housing development?”

Come out this Friday to learn more about what this woodpecker is doing in such an unusual environment!

“Evening Talks at ONRC” is open to the public and is supported by the Rosmond Forestry Education Fund endowment. For more information about the program, contact Ellen Matheny at ematheny@uw.edu or 360.374.4556.

About the Speaker Series
In addition to bringing speakers and interesting research out to ONRC, the speaker series also provides a great opportunity for graduate students to gain experience presenting their research to the public, and to a generally non-scientific audience. For participating speakers, ONRC will cover travel expenses and provide lodging for the night, as well as a stipend of $200. The specific days of the events are flexible, and there will be openings coming up for January, March and May. If you are interested in giving a talk or know someone who would be a great fit for this series, please contact Karl Wirsing!

Photo © Ross Furbush.

Rosmond Family Expands Commitment to ONRC

Posted on Wednesday, August 21st, 2013 at 3:13 pm.

Written by Communication Staff

In 2007, the three daughters of Fred Rosmond—a local forester and longtime mill owner/operator in Forks, Wash.—provided the initial funding for an endowment, the Rosmond Forestry Education Fund, to honor their late father. Distributions from the endowment provide the Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) a steady stream of funds to bring speakers and programs to Forks that are of interest to the community, including the extremely popular astronomy program ONRC hosted in May with UW doctoral students (more than 175 people attended!).

This past week, the Rosmond family agreed to expand the endowment’s original focus on forestry and forest management to include a wider spectrum of topics in science, natural resources, technology, medicine and mathematics.

That’s wonderful news for ONRC, because this endowment makes a big impact on funding outreach activities for local residents and UW students!

To learn more about the fund, contact Ellen Matheny.

Mobile Planetarium Draws Stargazers to ONRC

Posted on Friday, May 17th, 2013 at 5:20 pm.

Written by Communication Staff

On Saturday, May 4, the Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) hosted an astronomy program for the local community, including an afternoon session for families and younger children, and then an evening session for youth and adults.

The main attraction was a mobile planetarium, which looked like a big black igloo from the outside. Three doctoral students from the University of Washington’s Astronomy Department brought the instrument out to the ONRC campus to offer an immersive experience to participants, who were able to view galaxies billions of light years from Earth.

About 175 people attended the program throughout the day, and the afternoon session included five rotations in the planetarium. While one group was in the planetarium, another group walked a graphical representation of the solar system on the sidewalk outside the administration building, giving folks a tangible sense of the distances between planets.

Later, the evening program kicked off with a one-hour presentation about current thinking in astronomy and a capsule look at cutting-edge research at UW. The doctoral students offered an opportunity for each person to be a citizen scientist and provide help with sorting through the images coming from the Hubble Space Telescope they use in their research. Planetarium showings and solar system walks followed until dark. Then the students set up a high-grade telescope that allowed folks to view planets, including Saturn, up close and personal.

“The enthusiasm of the three students was infectious and inspired people to think very differently and more expansively as they gazed at the heavens,” says Ellen Matheny, education and outreach director for ONRC.

Astronomy Presentation — One of the evening astronomy presentations.

This month is particularly rich with chances to view other planets, and Jupiter, Venus and Mercury will all be visible at various times. In fact, on May 26, those three planets will form a compact cluster in the sky, all visible through binoculars or a telescope about a half-hour after sunset—so mark your calendars for a planetary bonanza!

Funding for the event was provided by the Rosmond Forestry Education Fund, an endowment established at ONRC to provide quality programs on forestry and other scientific topics for the regional community. The astronomy students enjoyed the program so much they said they’d like to organize a similar event next spring. Community members seemed equally impressed.

“Many people approached me during the day with thanks to ONRC for putting this program together,” says Matheny. “The most common comment was, ‘Let’s have more of these events!’”

Photo of mobile planetarium © Mary Levin; photo of astronomy presentation © Ellen Matheny.

ONRC Hosts Community Program on Tsunami Debris

Posted on Monday, March 25th, 2013 at 5:53 pm.

Written by Communication Staff

Dock Removal — This dock, set adrift from Misawa, Japan, by the tsunami in March 2011, beached on a remote shore of the Olympic Peninsula this past December.

On Tuesday evening, March 19, the Olympic Natural Resources Center (ONRC) invited members of the Forks, Wash., community to a program about the marine debris washing up on nearby coastal beaches.

Some of the debris is a result of the devastating tsunami in Japan two years ago in March 2011, and speakers at the event addressed various angles of the disaster and its ongoing effects. Nir Barnea, regional lead for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Marine Debris Program, provided an overview of the tsunami’s physical impacts and efforts to track and respond to tsunami debris as it is dispersed across the Pacific Ocean. Coastal biologist Steve Fradkin from Olympic National Park, along with resource protection specialist Liam Antrim from NOAA’s Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, then shared updates on the removal of a large dock that beached last December on a remote shore within the boundaries of both Olympic National Park and the sanctuary.

The dock—which measured 65’x20’x7.5’ and was kept afloat by 200 cubic yards of a Styrofoam-like material in its concrete holds—is currently being sawed up into manageable sections and removed by helicopter. It was one of three docks set adrift from Misawa, Japan, says Rainey McKenna, a public information officer with Olympic National Park.

The Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary is overseeing the removal project, and they are collaborating closely with Olympic National Park. A subcontractor, Undersea Company of Port Townsend, is handling the actual dismantling and removal of the dock.

Among those who attended the hour-long program were about 35 members of the Port Angeles and Forks communities, including Forks Mayor Bryon Monohon. In addition to learning more about the tsunami debris and removal efforts, attendees also got a chance to connect with the local work and research at ONRC.

Located on the Olympic Peninsula in Forks, ONRC is a research center with the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. The facility provides scientific information to address critical issues and solve problems concerning forestry and marine sciences in the region. It serves as a catalyst for interdisciplinary and collaborative work, bringing together expertise from forest resources and ocean and fishery sciences. By integrating research with education and outreach, it unites researchers, students, professionals and the public.

If you’d like to learn more about ONRC or the tsunamis debris event, please contact Ellen Matheny at 360.374.4556, or visit the ONRC site.