Global Warming in Oregon
Oregon fighting global warming - 04/25/08
Bill Bradbury, the Oregon Secretary of State, came to the MU Lounge to speak about global warming to a crowd of about 40 people. The presentation, which echoed Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and even used the cartoon featured in the film, ran from 6:30 to 8 p.m., after which Bradbury opened up to the audience for questions.
Bradbury noted that many people have the misconception that the atmosphere is a lot thicker than it is, but that if you covered an orange with a coat of varnish, this would be a relative example of the thickness of Earth's atmosphere.
According to Bradbury's presentation, nine out of 10 of the hottest years on record have occurred in the last decade, with the hottest year being 2005. Flash foods, extreme droughts and tropical storms with 50 percent higher intensity and duration than before have also been documented effects of climate change.
Bradbury said these climate changes will also positively affect the economy of the Pacific Northwest and negatively influence the economy of California. Because pinot noir grapes like to be in environments with cool nights, as temperatures increase wineries are having to move further north and toward coastal regions.
Dead zones off Oregon and Washington likely tied to global warming - 02/15/08
Peering into the murky depths, Jane Lubchenco searched for sea life, but all she saw were signs of death. "We couldn't believe our eyes," Lubchenco said, recalling her initial impression of the carnage brought about by oxygen-starved waters. "It was so overwhelming and depressing. It appeared that everything that couldn't swim or scuttle away had died."
Upon further study, Lubchenco and other marine ecologists at Oregon State University concluded that that the undersea plague appears to be a symptom of global warming. In a study released today in the journal Science, the researchers note how these low-oxygen waters have expanded north into Washington and crept south as far as the California state line.
And, they appear to be as regular as the tides, a lethal cycle that has repeated itself every summer and fall since 2002. "We seem to have crossed a tipping point," Lubchenco said. "Low-oxygen zones off the Northwest coast appear to be the new normal."
Although scientists continue to amass data and tease out the details, all signs in the search for a cause point to stronger winds associated with a warming planet.
Effects Of Forest Management In Oregon's Coast Range - 04/17/07
One of the challenges of managing forests is deciding among management practices, particularly when the landscape effects these practices will have are not fully known.
Since 1995, Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station scientists and their colleagues from Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Forestry have been conducting research that provides managers with a better idea of the effects--both intended and unintended--that forest management practices can have on landscapes.
Findings from this research were published recently in a series of six invited papers in Ecological Applications, a peer-reviewed journal of the Ecological Society of America.
"This research is one of the first and most integrated studies of the 'big picture' of forest management across ownerships anywhere in the world," said Gordon Reeves, a coauthor on several of the invited papers and one of the Station's lead investigators with the research project, known as the Coastal Landscape Analysis and Modeling Study (CLAMS).
CLAMS examines the ecological, economic, and social consequences of forest policies in Oregon's Coast Range, which spans eastward from the state's coastline to the western edge of the Willamette Valley.
