The H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest and Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program, Oregon, USA, has a history of influence in biocultural conservation through basic and applied ecology and forestry research, close partnership with managers of public forest lands, and a growing arts/humanities program. Studies of old-growth forests, the northern spotted owl flagship species, and watersheds over several decades underpinned a major shift in federal forest lands management policies in the early 1990s as the public sense for native forests shifted from their utilitarian values to their intrinsic value. Since the 2000s, a program engaging arts and humanities, including creative writers and philosophers, has richly expressed the profound beauty, wonder, and mystery of the forest, perhaps foreshadowing a new era of forest stewardship. This transformation parallels merging of environmental science, arts, and humanities at other USA LTER sites and similar programs internationally, notably the Omora Ethnobotanical Park Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research program in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve, Chile.

This study examined the 70-year history of clearcutting of old-growth forest and associated road construction, floods, landslides, large wood in rivers, and channel change in the 64 km(2) Lookout Creek watershed in western Oregon, where forestry practices began in 1950 and largely ceased by the 1980s. Responses differed among three zones with distinctive geomorphic processes within the watershed: a glacially sculpted zone, an earthflow-dominated zone, and a debris slide and debris flow-dominated zone. Watershed response to floods was more related to the timing of road construction and clearcuts, past geomorphic events, and forest dynamics than to flood magnitude. Even small (1-3 year) floods generated geomorphic responses in the period of initial road construction and logging (1950-1964) and during ongoing logging in the early part of a 30-year period between large flood events (1966-1995). The floods of 1964/65, 15 years after the onset of logging, produced much larger geomorphic responses than the flood of record (1996), more than a decade after logging ceased. Geomorphic response was negligible for the third largest event on record (2011) during the last period (1997-2020), when former clearcuts were 20 to 70-year-old forest plantations. Watershed response in each of five distinct time periods depended on conditions created during prior periods in the three zones. Understanding of watershed response to forestry requires integrated observation of forestry practices, floods, landslide susceptibility, wood delivery and movement, and channel change on time scales that capture responses to past and ongoing management practices and geophysical and biological factors and events.

The 22-23 April 2015 eruption of the Calbuco volcano (Southern Andes, Chile) led to extensive pyroclastic density currents (PDCs) interactions with vegetation. We seek to describe the PDCs which affected both Tepu and Frío rivers, northern Calbuco, from their timing and deposition to cooling and erosion, as well as their impacts on forests. Our investigation is based on field stratigraphy, forest disturbance assessment, and geothermometry from degassing pipes and charcoal. These PDCs reached at least ~540-603 °C, as estimated from fumaroles, and consisted of both concentrated and dilute PDCs during the first pulse (22 April) at Tepu and mainly during the second pulse (23 April) at Frío. Effects of PDCs on forest vegetation recorded in Tepu consisted of heating, abrasion, burial, and impact force. On the valley floor, trees were buried with up to 4 m of deposits from the concentrated PDCs, and all trees in this deposition zone died with no subsequent sprouting. Conversely, in the margins of the valley, defoliated fallen trees and standing shrubs indicate scorching due to the passage of dilute PDCs, and some of them were later sprouting. Estimated impact forces required to produce toppling range from 1.5 to 3.7 kPa, and PDC velocities reached up to 36 m s-1. Charring of the buried wood involved an emplacement temperature of 400-550 °C within PDC deposits. The rapid watershed formation may have facilitated infiltration, decreasing the temperature in the basal part within the deposits at the Tepu river. Runoff during the subsequent months triggered lahars and caused the rivers to incise the deposits and transport sediment downstream. This set of observations provides valuable insights into how the interaction between volcanic phenomena and margine forest on the valley floors informs eruptive processes, dynamics, and impacts. Our study is also relevant to interpret the thermal history and potential hazards of PDCs.

A broad spectrum of arts and humanities activities has emerged organically within the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program including disciplines such as philosophy and ethics, creative writing, and the visual, multimedia, musical, and performing arts. The majority of LTER sites now hosts activities that integrate the environmental sciences with the arts and humanities (eSAH). These programs serve important functions central to the LTER mission, including, but not limited to, public engagement, outreach, and education. Some LTER eSAH programs additionally consider these activities as steps toward the aspirational goal of helping society address grand social-ecological challenges of the twenty-first century, challenges that science alone cannot overcome. The arts and humanities can offer critical dimensions to this mission and to outreach, education, and general edification, such as awakening and engaging ethics, values, empathy, and wonder in individuals and societies. In this chapter, we reflect upon eSAH efforts across the LTER network, including their history, value to LTER’s mission, challenges, and aspirations and share case studies of eSAH activities from several LTER programs, including their objectives, organizational models, audiences, and outcomes.

ABSTRACTDynamics and functions of large wood have become integral considerations in the science and management of river systems. Study of large wood in rivers took place as monitoring of fish response to wooden structures placed in rivers in the central United States in the early 20th century, but did not begin in earnest until the 1970s. Research has increased in intensity and thematic scope ever since. A wide range of factors has prompted these research efforts, including basic understanding of stream systems, protection and restoration of aquatic ecosystems, and environmental hazards in mountain environments. Research and management have adopted perspectives from ecology, geomorphology, and engineering, using observational, experimental, and modelling approaches. Important advances have been made where practical information needs converge with institutional and science leadership capacities to undertake multi‐pronged research programmes. Case studies include ecosystem research to inform regulations for forest management; storage and transport of large wood as a component in global carbon dynamics; and the role of wood transport in environmental hazards in mountain regions, including areas affected by severe landscape disturbances, such as volcanic eruptions. As the field of research has advanced, influences of large wood on river structures and processes have been merged with understanding of streamflow and sediment regimes, so river form and function are now viewed as involving the tripartite system of water, sediment, and wood. A growing community of researchers and river managers is extending understanding of large wood in rivers to climatic, forest, landform, and social contexts not previously investigated. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Long-term, place-based research programs in the National Science Foundation-supported Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network have had profound effects on public policies and practices in land use, conservation, and the environment. While less well known than their contributions to fundamental ecological science, LTER programs’ commitment to serving broad public interests has been key to helping achieve their mission to advance basic science that supports society’s need to address major environmental challenges. Several attributes of all LTER programs are critical to these accomplishments: highly credible science, strong site-level leadership, long-term environmental measurements of ecosystem attributes that are relevant to the public and to resource managers, and effective and accessible information that supports sound management practices. Less recognized attributes of three case study LTER sites (Andrews Forest, Harvard Forest, Hubbard Brook) which have contributed to major impacts include strong interdisciplinary research communities with cultures of openness, dispersed leadership within those communities, a commitment to carry science perspectives to society through multiple governance processes, strong public-private partnerships, and communications programs that facilitate the exchange of information and perspectives among science communities, policy-makers, land managers, and the public. Taken together, these attributes of sites drive on-the-ground outcomes. These case studies reveal a virtue of the long-term nature of LTER not anticipated when the program began: that the decades-long engagement of a place-based, science community can have a major impact on environmental policies and practices. These activities, and the cultivation of science communities that can accomplish them, go beyond the initial directives and review criteria for LTER site proposals and programs.

Four decades of research into biophysical responses to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens have vastly improved our understanding of how landscapes react to cataclysmic disturbances.

The moist coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest are notable for the dominance of long-lived evergreen conifers, productivity, and the massiveness of the older forests (Franklin and Dyrness 1988; Franklin and Halpern 2000) (plate 2A). The environment of this region is extremely favorable to forest growth, with its moderate temperatures, high precipitation, and relatively fertile soils. The dominance of evergreen conifers is unusual, however, as most moist temperate forest regions of the world are dominated by hardwoods (angiosperms) (e.g., Kuchler 1946; Askins 2014). The climate allows photosynthesis to occur on essentially a year-round basis, which has been identified as one factor favoring evergreen conifers (Waring and Franklin 1979). Although the high productivity of the forests is important, the massiveness of the older forests is as much the consequence of the dominance of tree species present in these forests: for example, Douglas-fir is capable of continuous growth over many centuries and also produces decay-resistant heartwood, which persists for several more centuries. Hence, older forests have accumulations of organic matter (biologically sequestered carbon) that are among the greatest in the world (plate 1B).

Water, sediment, and large wood (LW) are the three key components of dynamic river-floodplain ecosystems. We examined variations in sediment and LW discharge with respect to precipitation, the presence of dams, land and river use change, and related channel incision and forest expansion on gravel bars and floodplains across Japan. The results indicated that unit sediment discharge and unit LW discharge were smaller in southern Japan where precipitation intensity is generally much greater. Effective precipitation, an index that takes current and antecedent precipitation into account, was a strong predictor of discharge in small watersheds, but not in larger watersheds. However, precipitation intensities related to unit sediment discharge in intermediate and large watersheds were smaller than those associated with unit LW discharge, which we attribute to differences in particle shape and size and also transport mechanisms. The relationship between river flow and discharge of sediment and LW lead us to posit that discharges of these components are supply limited in southern Japan and transport limited in northern Japan. The cross-sectional mean low-flow bed elevation of gravel-bed and sand-bed rivers in Japan decreased by ~0.71 and 0.74m on average, respectively, over the period 1960–2000. Forest expansion on bars and floodplains has been prominent since the 1990s, and trees apparently began to colonize gravel bars ~10 to 20years after riverbed degradation began. Forest recovery in headwater basins, dam construction, gravel mining, and channelization over the past half century are likely the dominant factors that significantly reduced downstream sediment delivery, thereby promoting channel incision and forest expansion. Changes in rivers and floodplains associated with channel incision and forest expansion alter the assemblages of aquatic and terrestrial organisms in riverine landscapes of Japan, and climate change may contribute to this change by intensified precipitation. Additionally, regime shifts of water, sediment, and LW may continue or they may reach a dynamic state of quasi-equilibrium in the future. Continued monitoring of these three components, taking into account their geographic variation, is critical for anticipating and managing future changes in river-floodplain systems in Japan and around the world.

The H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program has nurtured a large, highly interdisciplinary community that has been a wonderful seedbed for emergence of ideas from our group, and for my own growth as a scientist, educator, collaborator, and communicator. Collaborations for me as an individual and within the Andrews forest group have grown over the decades: research–land management since the 1950s, ecology–earth sciences since the early 1970s, biophysical sciences–social sciences since the early 1990s, and humanities–arts–sciences over the past dozen years. As a US Forest Service scientist in seamless collaboration with academic and land manager colleagues, the stable yet dynamic community that the LTER program fosters has served as a great platform for connecting science lessons with society through many means, ranging from development of regional conservation strategies and landscape management plans to storytelling. This is a practice of citizenship by individual scientists and by a science-based team. The sustained learning that the LTER program has underwritten gives scientists a foundation for communicating findings from science and discussing their implications with the public, and the forest itself is a great stage for these conversations. I have had a career of immersion in the International Biological Program (IBP) and in the LTER program since its inception. After completing graduate studies in geology in 1972, I had the good fortune to join the early stages of IBP in the Coniferous Forest Biome Project at the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest (AND) in the Cascade Range of Oregon. Our team of forest and stream ecologists, and a few earth scientists, had the decade of the 1970s to coalesce, mature, and craft stories of the ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest. The Andrews forest was a wonderful place to do that. It has a complex, ancient forest with nearly 100-m tall trees and fast, cold, clear, mountain streams whose beauty and chill takes your breath away. The year 1980 was pivotal for the group in three ways. First, Jerry Franklin led a synthesis of our team’s knowledge of old-growth forests, which set the stage for major transformation in public perception and policy toward federal forests a decade later and, incidentally, changed our lives.

The 2011 eruption in the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic complex deposited up to 50 cm of tephra in a plume that intersected the crest of the Andes along Route 215, offering an excellent opportunity to study disturbance effects on native forests along a gradient of tephra depth. Our observations focused on short-term, species-level, tree mortality and sprouting and tephra fall effects on foliage and limb fall. More than 80 % of the thickest deposits were composed of a basal, pumice, gravel layer containing individual clasts up to 6 cm in length overlain by finer gravel and capped by several cm of sandy tephra. In a sample of four plots with tephra thickness ranging from 10 to 50 cm, we observed a wide range of tree mortality: about 8 % of stems living at the time of the eruption were killed by 10 cm of tephra fall and 54 % were killed by 50 cm. However, properties of the affected forest, such as species composition, foliage sprouting and retention (deciduous versus evergreen) characteristics, and tree size/age, strongly influenced survival. The sites with 35 and 50 cm thick deposits were dominated by the deciduous tree Nothofagus pumilio, which was leafless in the austral winter, season of the initial phase of the eruption. The evergreen tree N. dombeyi experienced much higher mortality. The low density of the falling pumice particles appeared to cause minimal abrasion of the canopy.

Over the past century, ecology, the arts, and humanities diverged, but are now converging again, especially at sites of long-term, place-based ecological inquiry. This convergence has been inspired in part by the works of creative, boundary-spanning individuals and the long-standing examples of arts-humanities programs in intriguing landscapes, such as artist and writer residencies of the National Park Service and the National Science Foundation's Antarctic program. In the past decade many US biological field stations, marine laboratories, and Long-Term Ecological Research sites have substantially increased the presence of arts and humanities in their programs for reasons both practical (e.g., public outreach, increasing student and class offerings) and fundamental (e.g., foster creativity within individuals and research teams, collect a record of artistic/humanities engagement with place). Motivations include communicating about science agencies' missions, the scientific process, and science discoveries to the public who support the research work. The overarching accomplishment of this work has been to advance near-term "science outreach," but some of this work can be viewed as "basic" arts and humanities in the sense that its impacts won't be known for a long time. A next challenge is for interdisciplinary teams to address complex problems, which falls in the "intellectual merit" realm of the National Science Foundation evaluation criteria. The growing body of works at the ecology-arts-humanities interface will be a valuable resource for future study of science-society-nature relations. These efforts potentially contribute to initiatives emerging from the ecological sciences community that seek greater connection with society-initiatives promoting sustainability and stewardship, and the practice of science citizenship, such as development of future scenario projects and regional conservation plans. Despite the large number of programs undertaking these collaborations, their existence is a well-kept secret with little representation on individual site websites and no organized network to support the work. The strong, grassroots emergence of arts, humanities, and science collaborations at sites of long-term ecological inquiry signals a recognition that these are places of cultural as well as scientific work. Their appearance late in ESA's first century may foreshadow an important role for such endeavors in the next century of ESA.