It’s clear now that climate change solutions won’t be found in academic “silos” — i.e., within the narrow confines of one discipline or another. Instead, researchers across a spectrum of disciplines must combine their expertise and resources if effective answers are to be found.
In this spirit, biologist Scott Bridgham has teamed with landscape architecture professor Bart Johnson on a pair of multi-site projects designed to help enhance biodiversity while protecting people and property from wildfires in the face of a changing climate.
These projects also cross boundaries in other significant ways: by involving the Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University, as well as additional UO researchers.
Together these two projects have received $3.2 million in federal grant support.
The first of these studies examines the impact of future climate change on range distribution — essentially, which plants grow where — of upland prairie species at sites near Medford, West Eugene and Olympia, Wash.
An additional objective is to examine the robustness of current plant conservation and restoration activities in relation to predicted climate change. In addition to Bridgham and Johnson, post-doctoral associate Laurel Pfeifer- Meister is also collaborating on this project.
The researchers will plant the same 12 range-limited species within a matrix of restored native prairie in 20 plots at each location. They will monitor and manipulate plant growth by increasing temperature 5.4 ºF (through infrared lamps) and adding 25 percent more rainfall during the rainy season compared to controls.
These manipulations reflect predictions of how climate will change over the next 50-100 years in the Pacific Northwest. All sites are on nature preserves owned by The Nature Conservancy.
The four-year, $1.8 million study is funded by the Department of Energy.
The goal of the second study is to reduce the risk and intensity of potentially catastrophic wildfires in the Willamette Valley through landmanagement decisions.
Hundreds of years ago, prairie and open savanna covered much of the Willamette Valley. Now, those ecosystems occupy no more than 10 percent of their original territory, and dense forests of coniferous trees have taken their place in many locations. These forests carry the potential for devastating canopy fires, which could have increasingly greater impact as more people continue to move into the area and the climate warms over time.
The research team is using a series of simulation models to identify public policies that will enhance biodiversity and decrease fire risk.
Their study will focus on two large areas of mostly private land, one just south of Eugene and the other just east of Sweet Home. The plant-related models include wildfire behavior and forest succession under several different climate change scenarios.
These models will be integrated into a larger social model that assesses landowners’ willingness to manage their land under different public policies — through techniques such as grazing; light, controlled fire; thinning of brush; and removal of coniferous trees to restore endangered prairie and savanna grasslands and reduce the risk of wildfire.
The National Science Foundation is funding the four-year, $1.4 million project for which Johnson serves as primary investigator. The research team also includes UO landscape architecture professors David Hulse and Rob Ribe, and scientists from Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service. The aim of the project is to use their approach as an example of how to incorporate climate change into local and regional decision-making processes.
— Amanda Miles and Lisa Raleigh
Read about a UO alum's provocative book, plus his further explorations into cognition.
Read the Q&A from our lively humanities roundtable and/or listen to the entire discussion.
Watch Ian McNeely's talk at Google, Inc. and read a chapter from his book, Reinventing Knowledge.
Check out the dazzling "math windows" in Deady Hall.