Scientists

Conservation Biological Control in Cane berries, Climate change effects on Swiss needle cast in PNW Douglas-fir forests, Development and implementation of pest models and virtual weather for IPM and plant biosecurity, Modeling and decision support for IPM, plant biosecurity, and invasive species management.

Dr. Plantinga 's research focuses on the economics of land use, climate change, and forests. Particular emphasis is given to the development of methods for econometrically modeling land-use decisions, the application of land-use models to environmental and resource policy problems, and the modeling of land development pressures. Current projects involve the use of a national-level (U.S.) econometric model of land use to evaluate wildlife conservation policies and factors determining historical land-use changes, the effects of forest fragmentation on wildlife species, land-use policies designed to lessen adverse effects of fragmentation, growth management restrictions in Oregon and its effect on property values, and the application of techniques from macroeconomics to model natural resource markets.

My primary research focus is on fisheries oceanography and marine ecosystem ecology. I am interested in studying the causes of temporal and spatial variations of marine populations. Most of my work revolves around early life stages of fish, as variability at the population level is closely linked to egg, larval and juvenile survival in marine organisms. Through these investigations I combine quantitative analyses (i.e., mathematical and statistical modeling) with more field and experimentally oriented approaches.

Transboundary ground water resources; water resources management; water resources in developing regions, especially Central America, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia ; regional hydrogeology; dynamic simulation modeling in water resources

I devote most of my research to some of the oldest and slowest-growing animals in the sea: sea turtles, sharks, sturgeon, and west coast rockfish. I primarily use computer models and simulations to help us understand how these animals respond to human impacts and to guide research and management policy towards their recovery. I am particularly interested in how these animals will respond to climate change and increasing human populations on our coastlines.

Environmental Politics and Policy. Sustainability. Water and Marine Resource Management and Policy.

Nutrient cycling in natural and human-disturbed ecosystems, soil organic matter dynamics, forest biogeochemistry. My lab studies the changes in biogeochemical cycling, and the effects on the vegetative community, that has arisen from human activities.

I am interested in interactions between the atmosphere and ocean that affect the climate system. I study atmospheric boundary layer clouds, intertropical convergence zone variability, and cross-equatorial winds over the eastern tropical Pacific.

Ecological Policy; science, policy, and environmental protection; biological resource management, fisheries management. Specific research includes, alternative ecological futures, salmon restoration, ecosystem management, ecological risk assessment, interface between science and policy

Dr. William Pearcy is a world-renowned authority on many aspects of biological oceanography, in particular his extensive work on fishes and squids in the North Pacific. He has made significant contributions to many areas of marine research, including fisheries oceanography, the ecology of deep-sea and open ocean fishes and squids, the trophic dynamics of marine fishes, and pollution and trace metals in the marine environment. He is perhaps best known recently for his contributions to understanding all aspects of Northeast Pacific salmon during their ocean phase.

Research interests include: (1) Influences of landscape structure on demography of animal populations, (2) Animal movement (particularly dispersal), (3) Population viability modeling, (4) Ecological thresholds, (5) Trophic cascades in forest ecosystems, (6) Species distribution modeling, (7) Socio-political mechanisms to affect sustainable forestry (8) Measuring landscape change.

Biomicrometeorology: Atmosphere-vegetation interaction, atmospheric turbulence, mixing in plant canopies, flow and transport in weak-wind boundary-layers, dynamics of the lower atmospheric boundary layer, scale transitions from milliseconds to hours and days, trace gas exchange
Climate change science: Forest ecosystem responses and feedback mechanisms, carbon-water coupling, hydro-ecology, regional climate trends in temperature and seasonality
Instrumentation: Acoustic remote sensing (SODAR-RASS), spatially distributed sensor networks (optical-fiber techniques), trace gas analyzers

Environmental-Economic Tradeoff Analysis, Climate Change and Carbon Sequestration, Natural Resources; Environmental Quality, Productivity Analysis and Production Theory, and Rural Health Care and Cost-Benefit Analysis.

Application of remote sensing and modeling to monitor land surface processes; Development of carbon budgets at landscape to regional scales; Biogeochemical modeling of the carbon, nitrogen and hydrologic cycles; Climate change assessment.