Assistant Professor Oliver Gailing recieved $1,746 from Pennsylvania State University for a project, DNA Isolation and Primer Test in Honey Locust (Gleditsia Triacanthos).
| Assistant Professor John Vucetich and Research Professor Rolf Peterson contributed to “Great Lakes National Parks in Peril,” a report released Wednesday by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The report fingers climate change as a cause for the slump in Isle Royale National Park’s moose population and the subsequent decline in the number of wolves. The report is available park. |
Professor Andrew Storer has received $9,800 from the USDA, Forest Service for a one-year project, Climate Controlled Reproductive Asynchrony and Mating Success in Gypsy Moth Populations: Houghton Site.
| The Forest Resources and Environmental Sciences Teacher Institute, is being held Monday June 27 through Friday, July 1. The 22 participants, coming from all over Michigan to Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia, are here to learn about a resource of the UP–its expansive forests.
Now in its sixth year, the institute is sponsored by the School, with a grant from the Michigan Forest Foundation. The course is taught by Tech faculty, natural resource professionals and expert teachers. The course is coordinated by Joan Chadde of the Center for Science and Environmental Outreach. |
A message to Dean Gale.
I thought your “Message from the Dean” in the current issue of the SFRES magazine was right on the money.
Speaking as an educator, you posed the question ”Are we providing students with the knowledge base they’ll need to address new issues that go beyond what they learned in their formal education?” My own career experience illustrates the importance of being able to do just that, and your recognition of the importance of this key issue speaks well for your program.
I had a 34 year career with the Bureau of Land Management primarily in western Oregon. Michigan Tech prepared me well for my early experiences, once I got used to the differences in scale. I still remember putting in a cluster of inventory plots in a 800-year old stand of Douglas-fir, and cruising a stand of timber on a beautiful riverside terrace that averaged 220,000 board feet per acre. But as my career evolved, I quickly got involved in issues that did indeed go far beyond my formal education.
For most of the latter half of my career, I was the BLM’s Chief of Forestry Planning with responsibilities covering 3,000,000 acres of forest land in Oregon and Washington. These responsibilities included forest inventory, the determination of the sustainable allowable harvest level and oversight of the program to bring that level of timber production to market, and the integration of the forestry program within the land-use planning process.
Early on, the process was relatively simple, and I was guided by the principles and philosophies I learned under Gene Hesterberg, Vern Johnson, and Eric Bourdo in old Hubbell School. Very quickly, however, it became necessary to “go beyond” as you suggest.
One of the first things I had to deal with in this context was the integration of management considerations related to anadromous fisheries. The spawning and rearing streams that salmon and steelhead depended upon were intimately associated with some of our finest timber producing lands. Some of the interactions between fish and timber production were quite subtle, in that relatively minute changes in water temperatures or quality, or the timing or magnitude of stream flows, could have drastic effects on fish production.
Furthermore, it quickly became apparent that the Douglas-fir old-growth seral stage itself was quickly becoming an endangered and scarce resource that needed special handling and management. Hundreds of wildlife species were uniquely dependent upon it, not to mention its importance in more esoteric areas like carbon sequestration and as refugia for mychorrizal fungi.
The point I’m trying to make is that my career quickly moved beyond the specifics I learned in my formal education, but I was able to traverse uncharted waters because of the sound knowledge base and the integrative attitude and adaptive capabilities I acquired at Michigan Tech.
That’s why it is so heartening to read your message. You’ve got the best forestry school in the country on the right trail, Peg. Keep on chuggin’.
Ron Sadler
1957
Congratulations to the Class of 1961 on their 50th anniversary!
Many of the class members followed the trail first blazed by the Class of ’57 to work for the Bureau of Land Management in Western Oregon. There may have been others, but the ones I’m personally familiar with include Leon Kabat, Elaine Mosher, Sarge Preston, Fred Pastori, and George Walimaa.
I spent 11 years as the BLM’s Chief of Forestry Planning. During that time, it was my extreme good fortune to have Sarge Preston as my right-hand man. Sarge was in charge of the forest inventory program including all aspects from field work to data analysis. He made thousands of analytical allowable cut runs during this era when it required feeding a computer large boxes of punch cards.
The Class of ’61 provided yet another example of how well the training and professionalism received at da Tech transfered to the Douglas-fir forests of Oregon.
Ron Sadler
 The Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) reported in its June newsletter that Associate Professor Linda Nagel has received US Department of Agriculture Forest Service funding for a new project titled Adapting silviculture in the context of climate change. It will involve land-management studies that take climate change factors into account in a number of experimental forests across the nation. |
Great piece on the summer/fall camps in the Fall 2009 issue of the FRES newsletter. I read it with a constant grin on my face remembering the summer of 1968 when I attended camp. I just missed the Alberta experience as it was held on campus that year.
Many of our classes were held in the old Hubbell building. And yes, we had Gene Hesterberg, Bob Sajdak, Mike Coffman, Norm Sloan, Hammer Steinhilb and others as instructors and Glenn Mroz drove the bus. You’ve come a long way, Glenn! We also had a couple of women at our camp. It took Summer Camp for one of them to realize she was claustrophobic when she went in the bush. She switched to biology the very next term .
That camp produced some of the very best times I had while at Tech. I learned more doing those “hands-on” exercises than I would have spending twice the number of hours in a classroom. The experience of the instructors was invaluable and served me well throughout my entire forestry career. I had occasion to work with people who had graduated from other forestry schools that didn’t have a camp and I can tell you that their lack of practical knowledge was very obvious. I had to actually teach a couple of them how to run a compass!!
I can still hear Vern Johnson speaking that famous phrase “C’est la vie” although he pronounced it “Sell a vee” which gave rise to the phrase coined by the students “If you can’t sell a W, sell a V”. Thanks much for including that piece in the newsletter.
Assistant Professor Joseph Bump has received $90,188 from the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians for a 20-month project, Assessment of Suitable Elk Habitat in the Manistee Watershed, Michigan.
| Professor Andrew Storer has received $150,000 total from the Michigan Department of Agriculture for three one-year projects: EAB SLAM/ARRA Project Coordinator Position Support, $70,000; 2010-2011 EAB SLAM/APHIS Purple Traps Deployment, $40,000; EAB SLAM/ARRA Forest Health Monitoring Plots, $40,000. |