This March, the Institute of Forest Resources awarded four grants through the McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forestry Research program, totaling $374,877 in funding. After final approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, these projects will begin during the 2016 Fall Quarter and last two years, wrapping up by September 30, 2018.
Read more about the funded projects below!
Awarded Projects
1. Sustainable Development of Nanosorbents by Catalytic Graphitization of Woody Biomass for Water Remediation
PI: Professor Anthony Dichiara, SEFS
Co-PI: Professor Renata Bura, SEFS
The present research proposes the development of a simple, sustainable and scalable method to produce high-value carbon nanomaterials from woody biomass. As-prepared carbon products will be employed as adsorbents of large capacity and high binding affinity to remove pesticides from hydrological environments. This project will (i) help mitigate forest fires by limiting the accumulation of dry residues in forest lands, (ii) create new market opportunities to transform the wood manufacturing industry and reinvigorate rural communities, and (iii) minimize potential exposure to hazardous contaminants.
Award total: $109,869
2. Trophic Relationships of Reintroduced Fishers in the South Cascades
PI: Professor Laura Prugh, SEFS
In 2015, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) began reintroducing fishers (Pekania pennanti) to the South Cascades. The west coast fisher population has been proposed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (decision due by April 2016), and fisher recovery is thus a high priority in Washington. Fisher habitat use has been studied with respect to denning and rest site characteristics, but effects of forest management and stand characteristics on establishment success of reintroduced fishers remains unknown. In collaboration with agency partners, we propose to study how forest structure and management impact prey availability, competitor abundance and fisher establishment in the South Cascades.
Award total: $99,679
3. High-value Chemicals and Gasoline Additives from Pyrolysis and Upgrade of Beetle-killed Trees
PI: Professor Fernando Resende, SEFS
Co-PI: Professor Anthony Dichiara, SEFS
In this project, we will convert beetle-killed lodgepole pine into fuel additives and valuable chemicals (hydrocarbons) using a technique called ablative pyrolysis combined with an upgrading step. We developed a novel and unique system for pyrolysis of wood that has the capability of converting entire wood chips into bio-oil. This characteristic is important for mobile pyrolysis units, because it eliminates the need of grinding wood chips prior to pyrolysis.
Award total: $109,861
4. Bigleaf Maple Decline in Western Washington
PI: Professor Patrick Tobin, SEFS
Co-PI: Professor Greg Ettl, SEFS
We propose to investigate the extent and severity of a recently reported decline in bigleaf maple, Acer macrophyllum, in the urban and suburban forests of Western Washington, and to differentiate between possible abiotic and biotic drivers of the decline. Specifically, we propose to (1) survey the spatial extent of bigleaf maple decline (BLMD) and record associated environmental, anthropogenic, and weather conditions that are associated with BLMD presence and absence; (2) use dendrochronological techniques to analyze and compare growth rates of healthy and symptomatic trees to further differentiate the potential roles of abiotic and biotic drivers of the decline; and (3) to link the data collected under Objectives 1 and 2 with previous records of BLMD collected by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources to ascertain the spatial-temporal pattern associated with BLMD in Western Washington.
Last month, Professor Patrick Tobin and a team of researchers were awarded an innovative grant from the John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis in Fort Collins, Colo.: “Predicting the next high-impact insect invasion: Elucidating traits and factors determining the risk of introduced herbivorous insects on North American native plants.”
This fall, entering his second full year on the SEFS faculty, Tobin welcomed four new grad students to his newly refurbished “Disturbance Ecology Lab.”
Powell grants are somewhat unique in that they don’t fund new data collection and research, but rather “Working Groups” that mine and synthesize existing data sets to discover overarching trends and insights. For Tobin’s group, they wanted to search for broad patterns in what drives invasiveness on a continental scale. All non-native species initially lack natural predators, he says, and they all generally feed on host plants that haven’t adapted to them. Yet out of 100 introduced insects, there are probably only three or four that become high-impact pests—like the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis)—that are dangerous enough to cause cascading changes to ecosystems. So what’s different about the other 90 to 95 percent of non-native species? What separates the really bad invasive species from the basically benign?
“I’ve dedicated my professional career to this question,” says Tobin, “so I’m excited to have this working group and the resources to really dive into it.”
The ultimate goal of this research is to develop a framework to help predict and prioritize strategies against future insect threats in the United States—with direct applications to invasive species management and risk assessment around the country and world.
The Working Group
When you submit a proposal to the Powell Center, you pitch a project and also a proposed participant list to make up a working group of about 15 scientists. The idea is to bring together a diverse set of specialties and backgrounds to explore an issue as comprehensively as possible. So Tobin’s group includes three co-investigators—Professor Daniel Herms from Ohio State University, Professor Travis Marsico from Arkansas State University, and Dr. Kathryn Thomas, a plant ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey—along with a host of other experts from 12 different universities, ranging from chemical ecologists to population geneticists to forest ecologists.
Emerald ash borer larva.
Their group had submitted this concept two times previously before finally securing the grant—one of four awarded out of 50 proposals in 2015. “We almost didn’t pitch it the third year,” he says, “but we decided to try one more time. You have to be persistent and keep improving your proposal, and you can’t get frustrated. Last year, we had the dubious honor of being the top-ranked proposal not funded. This year we’re the top-ranked proposal overall. Sometimes in the grant process, it’s just a matter of convincing them it’s a good idea, and it can take a couple years to do that.”
The award will cover travel expenses for the researchers to make three weeklong visits to meet as a group at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Fort Collins Science Center, where they will have full access to the facility’s computational, data manipulation and data management resources. They will have plenty of homework in-between these visits, as well, and the grant also includes up to $100,000 for a postdoc to help guide the project for two years.
Tobin says the postdoc, who will be working directly with him and based at SEFS, will be crucial to the success of the project. “The beauty of these working groups is that they really want you to get things done,” he says. “It’s a great opportunity for a postdoc to work with this diverse group of people, and they really get to pump out a lot of papers.”
The group’s plan is to meet this coming June for the first time, and Tobin will start looking this fall for a quantitative ecologist to fill the postpoc position. He has also recruited an undergrad at SEFS to help as part of a capstone project.
With three new faculty members joining SEFS this fall—Professors David Butman, Peter Kahn and Patrick Tobin—we’re excited to introduce our new colleagues and welcome them to the community!
First up for introductions is Tobin, who joins us as an assistant professor after spending more than 11 years with the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station in Morgantown, W.Va. He spent most of the summer back in West Virginia selling his home and preparing for a cross-country drive to Seattle, where his family—Ahnya Redman and two “very energetic boys”—have been living since May. Ahnya, in fact, is also working at the University of Washington, just up Rainier Vista in Mary Gates Hall. It’s been about 20 years, says Tobin, since he and Ahnya worked close enough to have lunch together. That was back in graduate school at Penn State, and they feel lucky to be campus neighbors once again.
As for his background, Tobin earned a bachelor’s in environmental health sciences from the University of Georgia in 1991 (occasionally bumping into Michael Stipe around Athens), a master’s in entomology from Penn State in 1997, and then a Ph.D. in entomology from Penn State in 2002 (with minors in statistics and operations research). His interest areas broadly approach different aspects of forest health, including entomology, invasion ecology and population ecology. A big part of what inspired his transition to university life, as well, was the chance to partner with other faculty on a wider range of research projects. “I think there’s a greater opportunity for different kinds of collaborations,” he says.
Tobin is also excited to have closer engagement with students. With the Forest Service, he was able to serve on some graduate committees and give guest lectures, but he never had the opportunity to lead his own courses. “I’m really looking forward to teaching, and also student mentorship,” he says. “I think I’ve sort of missed out on that the last 12 years.”
Though he won’t be teaching his first quarter, Tobin says he’ll be taking on a quantitative science course this winter, an entomology/pathology course for spring, and then likely a graduate-level course on entomology next fall. “I’ve always been interested in insects,” he says. “It’s a personal bias of mine, but I think insects rule the world, and studying them just opens up so many opportunities.”
Whether you’re researching insects as vectors of disease, or how they interact with plants and animals, or how they affect humans, Tobin says there’s no limit to the kinds of questions you can ask and investigate. “I’m surprised more people don’t work with insects. There are so many different directions you can go.”
A “magnificent creature”? Only to an entomologist!
In terms of favorite study species, Tobin says he’s always been partial to moths and butterflies, and he’s had a long fascination with mosquitoes—not an affection, to be sure, so much as a tip of the hat to their evolutionary success and historical impact. He even contracted malaria years ago while serving in the Peace Corps in West Africa, yet he still can’t help but respect and admire them.
“We can hate them because they annoy us and give us diseases and keep us up at night,” he says, “but you have to appreciate the sophistication of the mosquito. They are magnificent creatures.”
By moving to Seattle, Tobin will have to forgo the pleasure of swatting away swarms of mosquitoes all summer, but he and his family otherwise feel enormous excitement about life in the Pacific Northwest. Ahnya is originally from Chelan, Wash., where most of her family still lives, and Tobin is originally from southern California, so they feel very much at home on the West Coast. They’re also looking forward to the local coffee culture—including finding unroasted coffee beans for their roaster—and taking advantage of the countless outdoor opportunities throughout the year.
Tobin is now on campus full-time, and you can stop by his office in Anderson 123B or catch him by email at pctobin@uw.edu. He’s also giving the first talk in the SEFS Seminar Series this fall, so come out and welcome Professor Tobin on Wednesday, Sept. 24, at 3:30 p.m. in Anderson 223!
