College of Forestry

About the OSU College of Forestry: For a century, the College of Forestry has been a world class center of teaching, learning and research. It offers graduate and undergraduate degree programs in sustaining ecosystems, managing forests and manufacturing wood products; conducts basic and applied research on the nature and use of forests; and operates more than 15,000 acres of college forests.

Forest landslides’ frequency, size influenced more by road building, logging than heavy rain

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A long-term Pacific Northwest study of landslides, clear-cutting timber and building roads shows that a forest’s management history has a greater impact on how often landslides occur and how severe they are compared to how much water is coursing through a watershed.

Findings of the research, led by associate forest engineering associate professor Catalina Segura and graduate student Arianna Goodman of the Oregon State University College of Forestry, were published in the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms.

OSU College of Forestry hosting listening session regarding research forests’ management plan

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Oregon State University College of Forestry invites community members to participate in a listening session Monday, Nov. 7, regarding the development of a new management plan for the McDonald and Dunn research forests.

Combined, the two forests owned by OSU cover roughly 12,000 acres in the Coast Range foothills northwest of Corvallis and provide an outdoor living laboratory and classroom for students and researchers. Many areas of the forests are open to the public as well and are used for a range of recreational activities.

Thinning can help offset cost of managing for mature forests, Oregon State study shows

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Research by the Oregon State University College of Forestry suggests a way for forest managers to reduce the costs associated with managing older Douglas-fir stands.

Thinning – removing some trees in a stand to allow more room and resources for the others – can result in enough of a financial offset to prompt some forest managers to grow older stands, 100 years old or more, before harvesting them, the study indicates.

Huge forest fires don’t cause living trees to release much carbon, OSU research shows

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Research on the ground following two large wildfires in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range showed the vast majority of carbon stored in trees before the blazes was still there after the fires.

Published in the journal Forests, the findings are an important step toward understanding the connection between wildfires and climate-change-inducing carbon emissions, according to a scientific collaboration that included Mark Harmon of Oregon State University.

Scientists urge creating strategic forest reserves to mitigate climate change, protect biodiversity

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The United States should immediately move to create a collection of strategic forest reserves in the Western U.S. to fight climate change and safeguard biodiversity, according to a scientific collaboration led by an Oregon State University ecologist.

Bev Law, her College of Forestry colleague William Ripple and other scientists from around the West argue that climate change and biodiversity are inextricably linked and that strategic forest reserves would tackle both “emergencies” while also promoting the protection of water resources.

OSU to host mini-symposium on 2021 ‘heat dome’ event and impact on PNW forests and trees

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The effect on trees of this year’s early summer Pacific Northwest heat wave is the subject of a Nov. 19 event hosted by the Oregon State University College of Forestry.

The Mini-Symposium on the June 2021 Heat Dome Foliage Scorch is scheduled for 8 a.m. to noon in person in Richardson Hall and remote via Zoom. Registration is required but the event is free and open to the public.