Students may elect to work (a) independently on a project under the direction of faculty and graduate student mentors or (b) as a member of a research team on one of the three projects described below. In the Letter of Interest required for the EISI application, students MUST either:
(a) Indicate that they elect to work independently and append evidence, in the form of an email or letter, to the Letter of Interest that demonstrating the mentor's agreement to work with you and a short description of the proposed project.
(b) Indicate that they elect to work on one of the group projects, give preference for two of the five projects, and discuss how you will contribute and benefit from that project.
The program is 10 weeks long and you will be expected to stay at the Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon throughout those 10 weeks. The time commitment is approximately 40 hours/week, as with other summer internships and as reflected in the stipends.
Ecoinformatics on storage and release of water in the HJA Experimental Forest
Background: Questions related to the sources, storage, and release of water in forests remain unanswered. New tools allow scientists to collect information at higher resolutions and with greater confidence.
Thus, this project will utilize contemporary approaches in environmental monitoring and informatics to further develop understanding on surface and subsurface hydrology of forests. This project will require collaborations among students of ecological and informatics sciences to perform field work and numerical modeling.
Study Sites: Watershed 6, 7, 8. Watershed 7 tends to be dry and draining/losing water in the summer. Data available includes microclimate stations, LiDAR,
Study Plans: Two pairs of student groups to perform a set of simple experiments (data collection and modeling components):
Longitudinal stream temperature and fluxes of energy – New fiber
optic cable technology allows sensing of stream and air
temperatures at high spatial and temporal resolutions. Using data
from cables and numerous microclimate stations throughout in the
basin, groups will explore interactions and sources of atmospheric
and hydrologic variability. Experimental manipulations will
include use of ice releases as tracers. Heat budget modeling
(fortran-based) will be used in simulations and to quantify gaps
in our understanding.
Sources/sinks of flow – Use of tracers to document sources and
sinks of flow across a basin. Generally, what is the variability
of flow across a reach? What is the relative influence of
surfacewater, groundwater, and hyporheic flows on uniformity of
streamflows? Use of tracers for surface flows and OTIS model for
subsurface flows (median retention time for the hyporheic flow).
Subsurface water storage and release – Teams of students from EISI
will use a knocking pole to obtain soil depths. Project will link
stream temperature data, soil volumes, and tracer tests to
determine subsurface divide and visualize storage and release of
water in the basin.
Faculty Advisors: John Selker, Sherri Johnson, Jeff McDonnell
Interdisciplinary EISI Team: 1 hydrology, 1 environmental/ecological, 1 stat/probability, 1 mathematical, 1 computer science student
EcoInformatics: Unravelling the Effects of Climate Change and Forest Management on Snowpack
Background: Melting snow is a critical part of the annual supply of water to Oregon’s rivers, providing this valuable resource for drinking water, hydropower, and agriculture across the state. Uncertainty of future climates and changes in forest management have may affect annual snowpack and ultimately, the supply of water to cities and farms throughout Oregon. However, the relative importance and interactions of climate and management signals on snowpack is unclear. This is due, in part, to issues in spatial scaling associated with model distribution of climate stations measurements across a landscape that varies with elevation, temperature, wind, canopy cover, and aspect? Thus, this project aims to understand how changes in vegetation and climate parameters (e.g. temperature, precipitation) affect the distribution of snowpack in space and time on a watershed scale through field observations and modeling.
Study Sites:Watershed 7 at HJA. This basin is distributed across the rain-snow transition zone, includes old growth, clear cut, and 2^nd growth forest conditions, and is home to an energy balance climate station.
Study Plan:
Field work : One botany/environmental student will work Measure
height and density and shape/structure of the trees.
Modeling - Two geosciences/hydrology students will use SnowModel
(Fortran-based, runs on Lynx/Unix operating systems) to:
o Develop the boundary conditions
o Evaluate how well the model performs at different scales of
ecological and information relevance (e.g. 10-30m is the
scale of natural gaps in forests but 500m is the scale at
which remote sensing data is acquired)
o Sensitivity analysis - simulated various scenarios – clear
cut, thinning, regrowth with time; holding climate constant
o Simulate climate scenarios – hold vegetation constant
o Geostatistical analysis to evaluate output over space and time
Modeling - One computer science students will work with SnowModel
(Fortran-based, runs on Lynx/Unix operating systems) to (a)
develop, program, and evaluate an approach for expanding the
ability to describe vegetation characteristics (e.g. height) and
the affects of those changes on model outputs, (b) evaluate how
model algorithms for distributing snow affects simulated outputs,
and/or (c) develop a visualization of high resolution temperature
data over space and time.
Ultimately, this work will include mathematical treatment of the scaling processes and linking snow processes to surface and subsurface hydrologic processes.
Faculty and Graduate Student Advisers: Anne Nolin, Eric Sproles, Julia Jones, Kari O’Connell
Interdisciplinary EISI team: 1 botany/environmental science, 1 hydrology & 1 geosciences who are comfortable with modeling, 1 computer science student
EcoInformatics: Retention by and fish use of wood habitat structures over time; Structural controls and disturbance on ecosystem stability
Background: Following decades of removing wood from streams to increase drainage and reduce flooding, many habitat restoration projects in the Pacific Northwest are now returning large wood to streams in an effort to recreate channel complexity, store sediment and organic materials, and establish cover habitats for Pacific salmon (/Oncorhynchus/ spp.).
However, long-term studies of the structures are rare and thus questions remain regarding how and why the structures work.
One fundamental question asks whether they effective at restoring habitat building processes under natural disturbance regimes? That is, how does flooding affect the structures and channel’s ability to retain wood, sediment, organic matter, water? And how do the structures, channel features (e.g. depth/area of pools, volume of stored sediment), and retention processes change over time following floods?
A second question asks under what channel conditions (e.g. confined vs.
unconfined, distance to other structures, deep or shallow pools) are salmon most likely to use the structures? Determining why salmon use some structures and not others could help to increase the design and efficacy of wood placement.
Study Sites: Quartz Creek in the Blue River Basin, near HJ Andrews Experimental Forest. Wood structures were installed in 1988 and all field data (fish, wood, channel units, leaf retention, dye tracers) was collected for years 1988-1992, and again after the 1996 flood. Every year, channel units and wood surveys are performed.
Study Plan:
Field study: To be performed by one ecology and one geomorphology/engineering student - Electrofishing surveys, x-section surveys, dye (rhotamine) and leaf releases, wood (diameter, length, orientation), channel units. Analysis of data will evaluate links between presence of fish and the characteristics of and retention capacity for each structure.
Mathematical Modeling: Will be used to address the larger question of how the structures help establish natural retention processes in the channel over time. A math student will use the existing literature and Quartz Creek dataset to develop a mechanistic model of organic and inorganic retention capacity of the structures over time and with disturbance.
Graduate Student and Faculty Mentors: Desiree Tullos, Randy Wildman
Interdisciplinary EISI team: 1 environmental science/fisheries biology, 1 geomorphology/bioengineer, 1 mathematics student
Ecoinformatics of butterflies and moths, meadows, and biodiversity
Background: Meadows in the mountains of Oregon provide key habitats for hundreds of species of moths and dozens of species of butterflies, who depend upon meadow plants and provide a unique source of biological diversity in Oregon conifer forest landscapes. Moths and butterflies have been sampled in a couple of hundred locations in the H.J. Andrews Forest since the 1980s and information on moth occurrences has been used to create Google maps of moth species diversity and density. Records also have been used to estimate changes over time in moth life history in response to climate change. However, meadows shrank rapidly during the 20th century and meadow habitat is threatened; the Forest Service is exploring alternative strategies, such as burning and seeding, to preserve and restore meadows.
Little is known about moth and butterfly host plant species abundance and distribution in the meadows of the Andrews Forest and surrounding areas.
Machine learning methods for species mapping are evolving rapidly, spurred by interest in detecting organism responses to climate change. Mathematical modeling of metapopulations of endangered species has been used to understand how species "wink out" as the mosaic of habitat they depend on contracts.
Study sites: Meadows on Lookout Mountain, Frissell Ridge, Carpenter Mountain, and "chinkapin ridge" along periphery of the Andrews Forest.
Google Earth maps and datasets of historical sampling are available. A GIS layer of historical changes in meadows also is available.
Study plan: Pairs of students will conduct plant and moth sampling based on list of target moth species and host plant species in meadows ranging in size and type and degree of isolation, and with alternative histories. Moth and plant sampling will be integrated using GIS and Google Earth and using machine learning techniques for species mapping.
Faculty advisors: Matt Betts, Jeff Miller, Weng-Keen Wong, Yevgeniy Kovchegov
Graduate student advisor: Steven Highland
Interdisciplinary EISI student team: 1-2 botany/ecology; 1 geography/GIS;
1 computer science
Ecohydrology - Relationships and processes driving diurnal fluctuations in Streamflow
Background:The links between water use by riparian vegetation and summer low flows are unclear. Although stream response to the diurnal cycle of transpiration is evident, recent findings indicate that near-stream vegetation is not drawing on the same water source as that expressed in the stream. This paradox leads to several questions aimed at better understanding the mechanisms and relationships of transpiration controls on streamflow? Is the connection between transpiration and streamflow direct (same water source) or indirect (differing)? How do lags between peak sap flow and minimum stream flow relate to travel time of water in the Oregon Coast Range. Is the behavior similar to recent published results from H.J. Andrews in the Cascades? How does topography and soil depth influence moisture distribution? Are the effects measurable in transpiration rates of trees? Are subsurface inflows to the stream predictable based on soil depth and topography?
Study sites: Comparison between Watershed 1 at HJA and the Alsea watershed in the Oregon Coastal Range to evaluate relationships of transpiration and streamflow based on different soil types, slopes, climate.
Study plan:Two students will work on collecting and analyzing soils, hydrology, and vegetation data. These findings will support a visualization and spatial analysis of spatial patterns in transpiration, soil moisture, and stream inflows based on soil depth and various topographic indices. **
Field work:
o construction and installation of sapflow sensors,
piezometers for measuring groundwater levels, lysimeters for
measuring soil water, soil cores for determining hydraulic
properties of the soil
o vegetation mapping
o tracer tests for evaluating travel time of water and
locating of subsurface inflows
o Soil depth mapping
o Collecting vegetation, soil, and water samples for isotopic
analysis (if interested and time allows, they could
potentially get some hands-on lab experience, as well)
Visualization/ Spatial Analysis:
o Saptial relationships between topographic analysis and field
data
o Visualization of sapflow and streamflow through the basin
Faculty and graduate student advisers: Cody Hale, Julia Jones, Barb Bond
Interdisciplinary EISI team: 1 hydrology/environmental, 1 botany, 1 spatial stats/GIS/visualization student