Life at OSU

CORVALLIS, Ore. – An Oregon State University-led collaboration of ecologists and art historians has demonstrated that landscape paintings from more than 150 years ago can advance environmental science.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Four decades of conservation spending totaling more than $9 billion in inflation-adjusted tax dollars has failed to improve stocks of wild salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin, according to Oregon State University research.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Darius Adams, professor emeritus in the Oregon State University College of Forestry, is one of three researchers sharing this year’s international Marcus Wallenberg Prize for developing a pair of groundbreaking forest economic models.

Native bees in the Oregon Coast Range are diverse and abundant in clearcut areas within a few years of timber harvest but their numbers drop sharply as planted trees grow and the forest canopy closes, research by Oregon State University shows.

Oregon State University research into the ability of a wildfire to improve the health of a forest uncovered a Goldilocks effect – unless a blaze falls in a narrow severity range, neither too hot nor too cold, it isn’t very good at helping forest landscapes return to their historical, more fire-tolerant conditions.

Widespread tree scorch in the Pacific Northwest that became visible shortly after multiple days of record-setting, triple-digit temperatures in June 2021 was more attributable to heat than to drought conditions, Oregon State University researchers say.

Wolves on an Alaskan island caused a deer population to plummet and switched to primarily eating sea otters in just a few years, a finding scientists at Oregon State University and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game believe is the first case of sea otters becoming the primary food source for a land-based predator.