We quantified temporal dynamics of wood storage, input, and transport in a third-order stream over a 23-year period in adjacent old-growth and second-growth forested reaches in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. Numbers and volumes of large wood (i.e., standing stock) in the old growth reach were more than double and triple, respectively, than those in the second growth. Annual inputs of large wood were highly variable. Wood numbers delivered into the old-growth reach were 3X higher and wood volume 10X greater than that of the second growth. Movement of number and volume of logs did not differ significantly between the two reaches. Less than 3% of the logs moved in most years, and the highest proportion moved in the year of the 1996 flood (9% in old growth and 17% in second growth). The majority of wood occurred in accumulations (i.e., jams) in both reaches. The second-growth reach lacked major jams, but 29% of the logs in the old growth were in full-channel spanning jams. Long-term observations of annual storage, input, and movement best reveal the dynamics of wood rather than static representations of the characteristics of wood. Input events and transport of wood in Mack Creek were episodic and varied greatly over the 23-yr study, which illustrates one of the major challenges and opportunities for understanding the cumulative dynamics of wood in streams.

In U.S. academic institutions, efforts often concentrate on enhancing the recruitment of students from underrepresented groups, focusing on gender and/or race. Yet, non-demographic forms of diversity have received little attention, such as environmental worldviews, i.e., differences in the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical beliefs that define how humans view, value, and interact with the natural world. Here, we develop an exploratory measure of environmental worldview diversity among undergraduate students enrolled in natural resource related programs. We tested our procedure at Oregon State University, a large public land-grant university in the US. Many students reported metaphysical, epistemological, and/or ethical beliefs that deviate from what has been philosophically characterized as the dominant western worldview of natural resources (anthropocentric, dualistic, hierarchical, utilitarian, mechanistic). Our results suggest that, although forestry students’ environmental worldviews are in some ways more closely aligned with the dominant western worldview than other students in natural resources, generally their worldviews reflect long-term generational shifts away from a strict resource-commodity value orientation, as documented in past research. Our findings highlight the importance of considering environmental worldviews as a dimension of diversity within the new generation natural resource students. Future efforts toward understanding these levels of difference can be important assets in designing programs which appeal to wide variety of students; ultimately helping efforts to recruit and retain a diverse of aspiring natural resource professionals.

Despite significant investments in watershed-scale restoration projects, evaluation and documentation of their impacts is often limited by inadequate experimental design. This project aimed to strengthen study designs by quantifying and elucidating sources of error in paired-watershed experiments and evaluating the statistical tools that detect and quantify population-level changes from watershed-scale restoration. Meta-analysis of 32 BACI experiments revealed that synchrony between paired-populations was both weak ( ρ ̵̅ = 0.18) and unrelated to the primary experimental error (r = 0.01), the degree to which paired-populations vary independently in time ( independent variance). Instead, it was found that the sum of the paired-population temporal variances ( total variance), accounted for 91% of the variability that controls statistical power. These findings demonstrate that 1) synchrony in paired-populations does not influence the primary error in BACI field experiments and 2) the magnitude of temporal fluctuations is primarily responsible for this error. The second study component, hypothetical BACI simulations, mathematically relates spatial, temporal and sampling errors to the independent variance and power. Design guidance based on these findings are provided to ensure that future restoration experiments have maximum probability of detecting a present restoration impact. We recommend planners quantify error sources directly from pilot studies and apply the tools provided by this research to estimate statistical power in their monitoring designs. Lastly, we propose a paired-reach design which provides a powerful platform to conduct replicated local-scale restoration experiments, which can build understanding of restoration-ecological mechanisms.