H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest Site Visit Group Oral History Interview - Part 5, September 22, 1997

[Begins with group gathering in the Conference room at the Andrews HQ site after a dinner in one of the trailers. Those in attendance at the outset include Jerry Franklin, Ted Dyrness, Fred Swanson, Art McKee, Julia Jones, Roy Silen, Mike Kerrick, Martha Brookes, Al Levno, and Bob Tarrant. Group is engaged in pre-interview conversations and casual interaction as they look over historical photographs supplied by Al Levno.]

Al Levno: [discussing photos of an early flood event at the Andrews] It's obviously high water

Ted Dyrness: [In response to discussion about high water levels in the '64 flood] That's the year that Jack and Jean moved here, you know. Jerry Dunford and

Levno: '56/7, something like that?

Dyrness: '57. Yeah. He was, uh, District Ranger at

Mike Kerrick: Who's that?

Dyrness: Jack.

Kerrick: Oh, yeah. Before he came here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we were next door neighbors at Blue River.

Dyrness: And they left, when?

Kerrick: I don't know, it was after I left.

Dyrness: When did you leave?

Kerrick: I left in '59.

Dyrness: '59?

Kerrick: Yeah.

Dyrness: Yeah, I think they left about '61, and moved to Corvallis.

Kerrick: I think you're right. Yeah. [long pause]

Jerry Franklin: [responding to unintelligible question from MB] Well, first of all, there's a lot of support for, for retaining elements of the property, and there's certainly you know, clearly the experiment station has an interest in, well, protecting the potential of the region's experimental forests, and the various [unintelligible, overlapping conversations]. And uh, so you know, there's a lot of dissatisfaction and a lot of dissatisfaction on the forest. [pause, unintelligible question from MB] No, because, you know, everybody keeps a lid on that type of thing. And every [voice obscured by AL and overlapping conversation nearer the microphone]

Levno: [discussing pictures]

Geier: [discussing conversation with Jean Rothacher about photos of her time 00:02:00with Jack at the Andrews and in Blue River]

[Sound of slide projector as AL begins showing slides]

Art McKee: Right, right. Oh that's one that Dick.

Kerrick: Yeah.

McKee: When was that?

Dyrness: Blue Ridge, yeah. '62.

McKee: '62? God, you're old [laughter].

Dyrness: Yeah. Yeah. That's when he was just hired.

Levno: This is, uh, on the screen there is the uh.

Kerrick: Oh, ok. Yeah, that's the one I worked on.

Levno: That's the one you worked on, Mike?

Kerrick: Yeah. Yeah.

Franklin: If I were going to suggest something, it would be to cut, cut to, uh, clearcut that area where we are, about the area where the trail runs, and just cut that off.

Fred Swanson: And that stand blew down [referring to slide]?

Dyrness: yeah. Mostly during the Columbus Day storm, in '62, or '92?

Kerrick: No, '62. [laughter]

Dyrness: I can't believe that's so long ago.

Franklin: [overlapping conversations] The stand is up.

Kerrick: And that's all still there, isn't it Al?

Levno: Ahh, it's pretty well cleaned up.

Kerrick: Is it really?

Levno: Yeah. I don't know what this is. I've got numerous stuff, uh.

Franklin: [overlapping conversation in background, unintelligible]

Levno: [Showing slides of slash burning.] Can you tell where that is?

Dyrness: No, where is it?

McKee: That's Hi-15.

Levno: I don't know, that actually may be Hi-15. Huh?

McKee: Yeah.

Levno: I think I've got it on the printing of the slide, but uh. Now there. Remember that one?

Franklin: I thought, uh, they were using the maps, uh. [still carrying on 00:05:00overlapping conversation]

Levno: Jerry should remember that. That's the upper Blue River gauging station.

Kerrick: Ohh. Where was that? On Blue River itself?

Levno: That's above Quentin Creek about a mile.

Swanson: Are there gauging records from that?

McKee: Yeah, sure are.

Levno: Right. Here's a little survival, getting up there.

Franklin: Those are not in the [unintelligible, overlapping conversations] Along that road, from the nursery office on down was not part of the RFP.

Levno: There by the gauging station there. Remember that Roy? That one?

Roy Silen: Not that one, no. Faintly, but.

Levno: I think they built that one in '51.

Swanson: The Forest [overlapping conversations]

Levno: The main cabin was 7 miles up the river. And they'd stay in there, I guess, 2 or 3 months in the wintertime, and down

Kerrick: Is that part of the gauging effort for the Blue River dam, or what?

Levno: That was part of the study by the Corps of Engineers. They had three like this, yeah.

Franklin: There on the south side [overlapping conversation, unintelligible]

Dyrness: What kind of metal was that?

Levno: Aluminum sheets. That was all packed in by mules. I think from Sanitam Pass.

Franklin: Well it's all on the south side of the truck.

Levno: Well, 5 years, I believe.

Dyrness: No kidding. Who was that there? Is that Dick?

Franklin: [fragments of overlapping conversation in background obscured by group discussion about slides]

McKee: That's Dick Fredrikson.

Dyrness: No kidding. He's so young.

McKee: See his picture out in the hall, here?

Dyrness: Yeah, that's a good picture in the hall.

Levno: And, uh, let's see, what else? Five years, but as I say, I think they'd spend most of their time just trying to stay alive. They didn't get much work done. [laughter] But the, uh, the cabin was still there, and we used it, had a couple bunks in there, and had a little wood stove, and. But I haven't been back there for 15 years now.

Franklin: [continuing overlapping conversation in the background] So if somebody in the agency wants to try and do something, the only thing they'll have to be very careful of, is I can't [unintelligible] my working relationship with Skamania [unintelligible, overlapping conversations]

Levno: This is the Regional Forester, I don't know where I got this slide, but uh, I was hoping you guys would help me out with that.

Dyrness: Is that the Regional Forester sitting there?

McKee: [unintelligible]

Kerrick: I'm not sure, what year was that?

Franklin: [continuing overlapping conversation] I know Marla real well.

Dyrness: Do you have a date on that?

Levno: Yeah, I got a date on it, but I don't remember what it is. I'll have to look on that. [laughter] I think that may be the last one, oh there.

Dyrness: Oh, lookat there!

McKee: Now there's a good group! Who's the one on the left? Jerry, Dick, and

Dyrness: Who's on the left?

McKee: Jack Rothacher.

Levno: The other guy I think is Jerry Dunford, I don't know.

Swanson: Oh. Is at South Umpqua?

Levno: No, watershed 3.

Kerrick: Where is it?

Levno: Watershed Three, or just above Watershed Three.

McKee: Yeah, the swimming hole just above, upstream from Watershed Three. There on the North side.

Kerrick: Oh.

Franklin: Well, I've gotta run for a plane, but uh, I'll be back

Dyrness: [interrupting] Hey, this is Dick, uh Jack's stemflow studies. This is Jack's stemflow studies. The first. It was actually the first watershed management study that PNW Station did. I bet you any amount of money. I did a study on Mary's Peak for watershed management research, but that was, uh, well, maybe mine was first. But this is second. Because I did mine in '55. And this was started in '57.

Levno: But pieces of the stand are still there. [laughter]

Franklin: Reference Stand Two.

Dyrness: Yeah. Yeah.

Levno: A little bit farther.

Dyrness: Yeah. Remember that study, Jerry?

Franklin: Oh yeah. I remember that when I PUT that in! [loudly] 1957!

Dyrness: '57. Right. Yeah. Station was just getting into water related research.

Franklin: A highly technical job.

Levno: There's Watershed Three when it was first built.

Dyrness: No kidding.

Levno: And one corner got

Swanson: [interrupting] Built to last.

Levno: [continuing] left, uh, left uh, upper left.

Franklin: Well, I gotta take off. But it's been really enjoyable.

Swanson: Thanks for coming Jerry. [Others saying goodbye, thanks, etc]

Franklin: Yeah. Good to see y'all. By golly. Maybe we'll see ya next year! [laughter]

Dyrness: I'll be in touch about this Watershed group [interview].

Franklin: Oh, yeah.

Swanson: Remember the 50th anniversary party, August 25th or 28th.

McKee: 21st, probably.

Swanson: Probably the 21st. Put it on your calendars.

Dyrness: Okay.

Levno: Any final word of wisdom?

Franklin: No, [laughter]

Swanson: What about the next 50 years? [laughing] What do we need to do in the next 50 years?

Franklin: Get organized.

Dyrness: Stay the course, right?

Franklin: Stay the course. [laughter] I LIKE that. I like that. [pause] Roll 00:10:00with the punches.

Levno: Well, we've got to bring in some young men who can carry on.

Bob Tarrant: Who better than the mountain men who laid the golden eggs?

Silen: Bring up some men who get money. [laughter]

Swanson: That's all part of the [voice dies out]

Levno: That [unintelligible] picture was uh, Forest Service people, including a Regional Forester, Herbert Stone.

Kerrick: Yeah.

Dyrness: Herbert Stone?

Kerrick: He was [unintelligible, overlapping comments]. Who?

Levno: Ed Anderson?

Tarrant: And Marshall Dana.

Levno: Yeah?

Tarrant: D-A-N-A?

Levno: DANA.

Tarrant: Marshall Dana was at that time, publisher of the old Portland Journal, Oregon Journal.

Dyrness: No kidding.

Tarrant: Yeah, that's right [pause]

Levno: And I don't have a date for that. That's got to be one of the oldest slides I've got.

Dyrness: Yeah, Herbert Stone. He dates back.

Kerrick: I knew him. Yeah, into the '50s, and

Silen: He visited here several times. Yeah. [unintelligible]

Geier: Why was he coming down here? Was he looking for story material?

Silen: Well, it was part of the inspection of the Willamette Forest, and he'd come to the Experimental Forest to see what we were

Dyrness: [Interrupting] Is that your slide? [overlapping conversations, undecipherable]

Levno: Well, trot 'em out here. I'll show 'em [laughs]. I had a couple in there. Do you realize that 8 years after the '64 flood, we went back and took photos of 00:12:00the slides?

Dyrness: I'd forgotten that. '72?

Levno: At that time, and then Fred picked it up and went back and took 'em, and then I went back 20 years

Dyrness: Is that right?

Swanson: Some of them were published by Don Miles, who did a revegetation of landslide starts study.

Dyrness: But this is a valuable set of slides. We must have slides for the original? I don't have them, but I've got the 8-year retakes. We've got 'em.

Levno: Yeah.

Swanson: Well, these slides came from those large-format slides that were in the collection that AL manages, and so there's a chrono-sequence aspect, which is neat.

Dyrness: I was looking at some of those 8-year slides, and it's amazing how little healing, uh, some of those, uh, back slopes and slumps and so on

Swanson: Yeah. Yeah.

Dyrness: Have shown. No revegetation to speak of. Uh, just

Levno: Well, it wasn't that way at 20 years. We really had, we could take very few pictures that couldn't just.

Dyrness: Oh, that'd be neat, just to.

Swanson: Well, it's just that the foreground would grow up and

Dyrness: Yeah. Well, that's always a problem. What are you going to do? Get a stepladder or something?

Martha Brookes: Chop them down.

Swanson: Cut it down.

Dyrness: Cut it down. [laughter]

Brookes: And photograph the thing.

Levno: That's what the photographers in western Oregon say, the never travel without a pair of pruners. [laughter]

Dyrness: Yeah. That got to be a problem on re-taking vegetation plots at Watersheds One and Three, also. The foreground would just grow up, couldn't, you know, couldn't take repeat photos from the photo point.

Levno: But I think we could do it now. Might be kind of fun to go back and do it.

[Beginning of formal group interview]

Geier: Well, I guess we don't want to stay here all night, but I have some 00:14:00questions that I wanted to ask you as a group, that, some of you have addressed this individually, in various forms, but one that I'd like you all to just kind of talk about here a little bit, and that is, um, if you could think about when you first arrived here through your tenure at the Andrews, and what you were trying to accomplish, what your goals were, and what you were trying to accomplish, what would you identify as being some of the more important barriers to successful research, in accomplishing your goals on the Andrews, um, during your involvement there? And just to throw out some examples of things you might think about there, things like infrastructure, um changes in scientific paradigms or priorities, or conceptual ideas? You might think about people, or political concerns? Or about technological problems? You don't have the technology to do something, or the natural complexity of the system, perhaps? What are some of the barriers that you encountered, and how were they overcome? [long pause]

Dyrness: Actually, I don't remember many barriers. You know, I think that we had 00:15:00good support from the, uh, supervisors, and so on. In fact, sometimes, Jerry and I were surprised at what we could do with no repercussions [laughter]. The barriers were, there were so many things that needed to be done, research-wise, just finding enough, enough time, you know, to do the work. Also, of course, all of us could have used more field assistants, and so on. But uh, I don't know, I don't look back, I admit at one time, when I started this study on long-term vegetation changes following clearcuts on Watershed One and Three, that I did 00:16:00get a little feedback, 'Well, we prefer shorter-term studies. Studies that in one or two years, you could wrap up and write the definitive report and be done with it. But, you know, it just was comments, and wasn't a stone wall. So I can't, you know, and I give a lot of credit for those that were in positions of authority, like our project leader, Jack Rothacher, to uh, do, uh, as long as it fit fairly well with your position description, but uh, we, I don't remember that there were many barriers. Do you? Roy?

Silen: Well, I had a completely different climate. When I first came here, we 00:17:00were, um, following a lead of a man named Jack Rothacher, from, [laughs] I'm sorry, Bob Aufderheide, who was, um, was a, came up through the Ranger and Supervisor, uh, area in the Forest Service, and he was concerned about the Forest Service getting into, uh, timber sales, with so little background and he thought the best way for getting into that background was for us to actually lay out the timber sales ourselves. And then, we started in an area on the coast and then this area opened up and he continued that, uh, that concept, and the concept went beyond what the Forest Service was doing at the time, in that we were laying out a whole drainage, essentially, before we really cut any timber 00:18:00in it, and not only were we laying out the cut units, but we, we were going over the whole area, both cut and leave units, figuring out the, uh, extraction routes and that sort of thing. And that continued until Bob left, to become supervisor of the Umpqua National Forest, and it sort of left me wondering which direction I'd continue that on, but I could see the Forest Service wasn't very interested [laughing] in it, and uh, although, and so I began to do other kinds of research along with it, and uh, that uh, oh, in 1954, so I really don't know whether you could call it obstacles, or just sort of changes in management. [pause] You've gotta remember, I was pretty low on the totem pole those days. I 00:19:00just followed instructions. Yeah, weren't we all. [pause]

Levno: Seems like a lot of time we had more money than we had time. Seems like the biggest barrier was we didn't have people to do what we needed to do.

Geier: So you had the money but not the personnel?

Levno: Yeah. Money left over at the end of the year. We just couldn't get it all done.

Geier: You couldn't use the money to hire other people?

McKee: No. You'd still have to supervise them.

Levno: Yeah.

Swanson: The question concerned, uh, were there impediments to getting research done, and uh, [pause]

Geier: It sounds like, from what you're saying, was that the climate in the Forest Service was more a matter of insufficient encouragement as opposed to barriers?

Silen: Well, uh, I don't really, see, we weren't doing any research outside of the forest service needs, up here. We were aiming our research to be used by the Forest Service, and uh, they weren't a very ready customer, I guess.

Geier: So, in other words, Identifying a client base would be one element?

Silen: Well, yeah, and I wasn't involved with identifying it when I first came up here. I was just, I had the instructions of what I was supposed to be doing, and it involved laying out the timber sales, and very little else, as far as research was concerned, uh, Leo Isaac was furnishing guidance in regeneration research, which is the main research that I did, following the regeneration on the clearcuts, and I produced my thesis on this area, and when I went to OSU, concentrating on lethal surface temperatures, which is an area that really 00:21:00needed a lot of work. So, uh, I don't know whether you can call them barriers or not. They're just misunderstandings, a lot of them.

Geier: Um hm. So has that changed, I mean, you start out in a position where you're basically, you're told what you need to be doing, does that change as you move into the '60s and '70s? Because we were talking out there about long-term research and how it was at the impetus of the individual researcher?

Kerrick: As a, as a client, you know, sitting on the other side of the fence, and I too was way down on the totem pole, in those days, but we were hungry for uh, for how to do stuff, I mean, the practical side of laying out timber sales, and the engineering aspects, that sort of thing. Uh, I'm not sure how Roy gets his reaction, and I know I was hungry, searching for

Silen: [interrupting] I think, uh

Kerrick: [continuing] the best way to do it.

Silen: I, I was having a LOT better luck with the people

Kerrick: On the ground.

Silen: On the ground, than I was

Kerrick: Yeah.

Silen: Uh, as you went up the line. It was actually antagonism, if you got to the, the uh, Regional Office.

Kerrick: But the research was focussed pretty short time. Short term.

Silen: Oh yes.

Kerrick: In terms of, you know, turnaround, getting it in the hands of folks who would put it into practice, but it was, the simple aspects of laying out sales and regenerating, you know, that sort of thing. As I recall, anyways.

Silen: And the fact that things were changing, as far as the regeneration picture was concerned, were, uh, natural regeneration was just not being used, as, and here I was concentrating my research on finding ways to make natural regeneration work. And, people were turning to planting, both in the National Forest and in the, in the private industry. Planting and direct seeding.

Geier: Um hm. Was recruiting people up here to work a problem? Roy, you were talking earlier about, in the car, I think, about trying to go out and lay out these sales, just the two of you [Hank Gratkowski and RS], um, at that point, it sounds like money, funding to hire additional people to do that work

Silen: [interrupting] Well, we didn't really have a program that needed more than two for the sale layout, and we could do it, we could do it with 2, as long as they were permanent people. And they were.

Geier: So as you move along, and you run into this problem of having money but not enough people, is that a recruitment problem? Was there a difficulty of getting people out here to work? Or is there a certain kind of person attracted out here to work on the Andrews?

Tarrant: Well, I don't know how many times we went through the cycle of, uh, sudden across the board in federal service, of very tight restrictions on 00:24:00employment. And uh, it was not a straight-line thing, whatsoever. [throats clearing in background] All sorts of things could be a reason for uh, cutting down on ceilings, and uh, the big thing was to save your ceiling, and uh, some recruiting mistakes, a number of recruiting mistakes were made, in a hurry, because in the Forest Service, they had "X" number of "X" Thousand ceilings, and if there was a vacant ceiling, somebody could, uh, skinny that away from PNW Station to somewhere else [soft laughter] and real, uh, busts, in my opinion, were made on hires of that sort. But uh, I was, there was always a constraint of 00:25:00some, as long as I can remember, there's always been a constraint of some sort, you could get all the money you want and there's no problem hiring as many people as you want. There's always been some constraint going. And, of course, the money is directed into particular things by Congress, specific items, and uh, very uh, it's not an easy place to work. And you don't have the time-frame for a short decision as they might have in industry. And many times we wouldn't have a budget from the Congress, we'd go several months like this last, rotten year that the leaders on both sides insulted everybody in the United States by 00:26:00shutting the government down. Uh, there were a number of things that stopped short of that, but there were, not many, not 2 or 3 years went by where there wasn't, where there'd be at least one of those threats, uh, as I look back, that's one of the hardest to uh, not that you may not have the money, but that you might not have the authority to hire with that money. So what do you do? Why, buy equipment. All, everybody asks for equipment. So that's, you know, it takes some creative cheating to, it doesn't always come out well.

Swanson: One thing that's happened in recent times, by recent I mean the last 20 years, there's a lot more university people involved, so there are these limitations on the number of positions that are available in the Forest Service 00:27:00side, but there are a lot more university people that are working on money that they or us, they may get themselves, but they may get cooperation form the Forest Service side, um, to sort of help staff up things, around here, and sometimes, there may be Forest Service money to get going with this too. And uh, that gives a lot more flexibility, just in staffing. And just greatly ramped up the workforce. Which much greater flexibility than we would have had through the Forest Service.

McKee: Money is a chronic issue, and uh, the roller coaster ride that you get on seeking funding and, and uh, getting it, and then the way it's colored and how it can be used, and shucking and jiving to do it, that other problem that Bob 00:28:00was referring to, but the uh, when I think about restrictions up here, uh, facilities were a bit of a bottleneck for awhile. We worked around it, amazingly well, considering the lack of facilities we had here. The uh, but that was certainly a bottleneck and money is a chronic issue, but uh, you know, from the last 10 years, the research program has been jerked around by external forces, regional timber politics, and that's interfered with a couple of establishments of uh, research projects. A uh, but uh, we've, in some instances, the delay in execution of those particular studies has resulted in better studies. Other instances, we simply lost it and went on to other things. It was so difficult to 00:29:00install a particular study. [pause]

Geier: So one of the strategies for addressing these concerns is bring in more cooperators, more interdisciplinary connections, it sounds like. People from the university, and then that leads into this new phase of research, this long-term, some of the technology transfer issues we were talking about before, which, if I understand from what you're saying, in the more recent period [pause]

McKee: Yeah.

Geier: Contributes to some political issues and the kind of research you can

McKee: [interrupting] We had a virtual freeze on doing ANY manipulations here, uh while the, during the phase when the spotted owl politics was, were driving things. We had one particular study that was, eventually, we never installed. Redesigned and moved elsewhere, because of proximity to an owl nest. Well, that 00:30:00was part, part of it, but uh, we had somebody, a cartographer working in the wee hours of the morning that got tired and ran a, a boundary line down through the forest and, and uh, suddenly, the western half of the Andrews Forest was off-limits to any manipulations whatsoever. That didn't last, that was a couple years of heartburn, but [we] moved on to other things.

Geier: When was that?

McKee: That was part of the habitat, the Spotted Owl Conservation Plan.

Kerrick: That was the early '90s, I assume?

McKee: Yeah, the late '80s, early '90s, and we saw the map, and went, 'What's going on here? Because we'd been assured by the scientific team working on this that the Andrews was going to be well outside the, his exclusionary boundary, and I called one of those scientists, and he says, 'Oh, no! That's WELL out.' He 00:31:00says, 'the line goes right down Blue River, all the way to the reservoir.' I said, 'No, it doesn't. It comes right down a township range line.' And, uh, he said, 'No, no. Something's wrong.' And he called me back a couple hours later, he said, 'Oh man.' He says, 'You're not gonna believe this.'[laughter] And the uh, [Willamette National] Forest, Mike and company, were willing to work with the Region on changing the boundary, but the Region took a 'No, we're not going to open that can of worms, you start moving one boundary here, then we've got the whole boundary issue through the whole region.' So.

Geier: But it turned out that was just an error?

McKee: Cartographer's error. Correct. That was, the uh, Eric eventually showed me the draft of the map that he'd given to the Cartographer, and it bore no [resemblance]. I don't know why the fellow came from the South, but he did. 00:32:00[pause] But that one that, in the long scheme of things, that's pretty small peanuts. At the time, it was a big source of heartburn, but. [pause]

Geier: Along the lines of technological concerns, um, Ros Mersereau was talking about the um, problem of doing long-term studies with changing technology, and um, he talked about a decision to go along and use, what it sounded like, was kind of an old-fashioned machine that seemed more reliable. Kind of reminded me of what Jerry Franklin was saying about 'keep it simple' for long term studies. Um, are there any other issues like that, where, you know, how do you decide what kind of technological changes to bring in to that, to new research questions? What kinds of things are possible, and what kinds of things do you have to rely on?

Swanson: To mention one with the near term, we sort of wanted to emphasize the 00:33:00early time, but in remote sensing, through Tom Spies' efforts, we were able to hire a remote sensing scientist as a post-doc, and uh, at that time, there were official ways within the forest service to develop remote sensing capability, and it was based at Starkville, Mississippi, and nothing, as far as we were concerned, very exciting, was happening, Starkville, Mississippi itself didn't sound very exciting [laughter], and so, basically, it ended up being a work-around on the Forest Service system, securing NSF money, no, uh, NASA money, and it also, and it had to do with, uh, old-growth detection at the time that old growth was a big issue, and uh, how much is out there?

Kerrick: Oh, yeah.

Swanson: And where is it? And how much is out there by different definitions? 00:34:00And um, so that was an initial work-around, and Warren, Warren Cohen came in on that, in that role. And because his personality, and his capabilities worked out, in uh, some very positive ways, it led us into this whole body of work that if we'd followed the strict procedure for dealing with that technology at that time in the Forest Service structure, we would have never scored. We would have never gotten anywhere. And it went from old-growth delineation to a whole series of other things that were very important, already are, and in regional carbon studies and, and other studies, such as forest change as a result of growth and disturbance by land use, and disturbance by wildfire in west-side forests, but 00:35:00uh, some really important work, but it was a work-around. And so, technology is a tricky thing, because often it comes into the workplace, through the next generation. In our case, a lot of the high, high pollutants, computer stuff, it isn't the old farts going and learning it, learning how to do it, it's the next generation that is, and uh, that's an interesting aspect, it seems to me, of a program like this, the inter-generational aspect, and so I was thinking about that today, in the morning, being out with Julia Jones and co-teaching a class, and here's Gareth [JJ's baby] who's like 3 months, and [laughing] a fresh researcher, so people, managers, and researchers have been involved here since Day One. [pause]

Geier: That strikes me as another possible example here, of uh, a barrier, and 00:36:00you found a way still overcome it, and that's kind of what I'm looking for, is barriers, and strategies to get around those barriers. How do you move information and studies across generational lines? How do you bring people in and get them involved? [pause]

Silen: Well none of the new people that come in want to get saddled with an old study. You know, you've got, you want to publish quickly, and the most modern way, and it's pretty hard to get carryover.

Geier: Are there examples of where that was accomplished? I mean, it's kind of a natural problem?

Silen: You can imagine what it is in genetics, in Forest Genetics, why things that I was doing have no, hardly interest in the new group that had a whole different, uh, college background. We didn't, we didn't know what a, uh, well, 00:37:00we knew quite a bit of things, but all of the modern genetic engineering, we didn't have a clue about that. Most of the people now want to go into something that has very modern, uh, technology. I imagine it's the same thing with every one of the sciences.

Geier: One example I was thinking about here, you were mentioning you were working up at the Andrews until 1954, and you left, and I understand that Jack Rothacher came in somewhat later, a couple years later.

Silen: Well, see, he was in watersheds, and that was the only carryover that, see, we had myself, and we had a wildlife unit working here, and the, the uh, hydrology group, and of the three, the only one that survived was the hydrology 00:38:00group. So that's all that happened from then on. For years.

Geier: So what kind of mechanisms were in place, to help transfer that information from one generation of scientists to the next? What did later scientists rely on for that information?

Silen: My guess is the hydrology group had difficulties with one period of time too, when you couldn't be sure that you were going on, isn't that right? [pause]

Levno: I don't recall that at all.

Dyrness: Yeah, we uh, [laughing] go slowly.

Silen: Yeah, you'd slow down. Yeah.

Swanson: The thing is, uh, here's Al, about to retire, and the last few years, we've brought in a series of grad students who are doing different studies, capitalizing on the long-term database that you guys have generated, and so, try to make sure there's a good flow of information and uh, so, uh, I don't know, 00:39:00we've done some of this. That is, uh, try and have students come in and capitalize on the long term records as part of their work, and do something that's in the sort of modern milieu of science for another part, so maybe some state of the art modeling. But, you know, have other chapters of their work capitalizing on long-term databases. So, um, we try to have them respect the traditions, and capitalize on them, but also to, uh, to build on the current stuff. That's probably easier to do than something like a gene splicer. That could really [laughs]

Geier: Um, I don't know how long we want to run here. Um, I've got, I've got

Swanson: [Interrupting] Some of us have a couple-hour drive yet.

Geier: Yeah, I've got a lot of questions I could ask, but I don't want to run people into the ground here, either, so let me know when it's gone on long enough. Um

Kerrick: One thing that's kind of interesting over time, is that, from my perspective, is that uh, Ted and Roy talked about specific disciplines, you know, the, uh, it's evolved, during the IBP days into a multidisciplinary, and now into an inter-disciplinary thing, so you don't have watershed research being carried on in a vacuum. It's more of a holistic part of the, everything that's happened. Or at least, that's my notion of what's, and it's kind of evolved from watershed folks focussing on streamflow information and uh, to these bigger questions that need answers to. And hopefully, that's a trend that will continue.

Silen: Oh, I think that was why we, that was basically why we got the different disciplines working here, and one of the products was just, uh suggesting contract items that should go into the timber sales. And we had many contract items that were tried here, from what were wildlife, and from the, the uh, sedimentation and that sort of thing, that went in, were tried, and nobody used them after that, some lived through.

Kerrick: Yeah, a lot of them carried through.

Silen: So that was sort of one product that we were producing as an interdisciplinary effort, uh, while we were working for, I don't know.

Swanson: That's a real key point, I think, uh, like as Mike describes it, that, uh, we have our components, but a major contribution of the whole scene, I think, is the bigger picture and how it fits together, and then, how do you 00:42:00capture that? How do you convey it? And, there are different ways of conveying it, you know. A book level treatise on how the whole schmeer works, or a big computer model of, you know, a systems model, or a management plan, or a monitoring plan, and those are best when they convey an understanding of how the system functions. And I think that uh, despite $50+ million worth of science around here, probably our best expressions, our most creative expressions of synthesis, are in the management plans, riparian management guides for the Willamette, or the landscape plans for Augusta Creek and Blue River now, I think are some of the better, and this stuff that Roy was doing, thinking about how 00:43:00the whole watershed worked, and where you wanted to lay out your units, and how you want to distribute your road system. So it's, you know, it's built off of a good, uh, holistic understanding.

Silen: And there was no lack of interest in that sort of thing, when you were proposing, uh, new contract items. You got a lot of interest in that. [pause]

Geier: It's interesting, there's um, from what you were saying down at the stream there, from what, I think Jerry was emphasizing the long term research. I think Ted also mentioned this, depends a lot on the individual, and the fire in the individual to carry that on, and a lot of the things that seem to have transformed the Andrews have been institutional, I mean, things like the IBP and NSF funding, and LTER, and then these management problems you've been talking about, and I'm curious what the intersections of those two are. In other words, 00:44:00how do you transmit that inner fire to the next generation through a management report? Strikes me there's something else going on here at the Andrews that we're not talking about, that's what I'm saying. It seems to me that's being done, but, there's a good framework here, so, um, is there a formal mentoring process, or anything? There are some graduate students, I guess now, coming in? [pause]

Levno: [laughing] That's a good question. Where'd you come up with all these questions? [laughter]

Geier: I can think of one example that, that did seem to work that way, um, Ros Mersereau was telling me that he came in here and learned everything that he knew from you, and so, I don't know if that's formalized, or how do those kinds of personal connections get made? How does somebody like Ted and Jerry get together? And work off of each other? Is it just wild chance, or is there 00:45:00something that attracts them to the Andrews?

Silen: Probably over a cup of coffee. [laughter] I think we got a lot more interdisciplinary kinds of things in our lab, when we had a coffee room. Now you don't, you don't meet the other projects in our building at all. I don't know who's next door.

Swanson: I think it is just the coming together and having enough opportunities for the constructive interaction to emerge. It isn't real well orchestrated, but we have a monthly meeting, and people from the Blue River Ranger District, people from the Supervisor's office, and people from the university, and from the Station get together and we have our meeting notes and all that, you know, and we see one another as human beings, you saw some of that at the last meeting [referring to a discussion by Lynn Burditt about a FS employee from the Blue River Ranger district who was abducted while inspecting campgrounds in the region]. That's one venue. Another is the summer HJA day. We come down here and 00:46:00we talk about things and talk about the history of some of the watershed work, and we have students there who are studying that place and were separated from some of the stuff that Ted was talking about by more than 30 years, and yet it was very compelling to them. So anyway, we do try to create the venues. WE don't have the coffee break thing, but it's the same spirit of those opportunities. And then there are things, for example, recently, uh, with the development of the Blue River landscape plan, corrected off the district, and we had a grad student who was doing the fire history part of that, and got him into it. And the graduate students in Forest Science, for example, have, uh, an obligation to get exposed to the social relevance of science. And uh, they can do that, meet 00:47:00that requirement, in part, through participating in something like that. So there are some explicit things, but we don't have a real plan. But it is something that I think is very important, and uh, there are things like Ted, he works in our scene, now, I personally direct graduate students to go and get sage advice from Ted. And it may be technical, but it's a lot of other stuff too. And I got sage advice when I was first trying to get hooked up here, and we worked on a paper together, and so, um, he influenced me, and then he left for Alaska and then I didn't see him, you know, we interacted a little bit over a couple of years in '72, 3, 4, and then he was out of here, and then he comes 00:48:00back, and I say, 'hey,' you know. So we want to have an intergenerational community, and Bill Farrell, who's been retired for quite a few years on the university front, and those guys, uh, provide very good input and they approach the world very differently than the next group of grad students would. We've got to worry about all age-classes. If we're just one age, you know, if we're an even-age stand just marching through, we're gonna stagnate [laughter], we're gonna, you know.

Levno: I think that's picked up in recent years, too. There's a lot more kids coming to you and asking all kinds of questions. And we all get it.

Dyrness: And luckily, we work in academia, too, so there is a formalized way to mentor, and that's through graduate students. And I think that the Andrews has always been strong on graduate student work. Witness the number of theses that, 00:49:00you know, a really important way to mentor the new generation.

Geier: How many graduate students are-it's not a number I'm looking for, but kind of a ratio-how common is it for a graduate student to do work at the Andrews and then later come here and work on a more permanent basis, maybe as a post-doc?

Swanson: Uh, some stick around. There are 45 or so that are active at any one time in recent years, and so we have very few slots, but there are some that will, um, generally, they have to write their own grant and get their own support. So we have a number of them, and they include some of our stars, you know, like Mark Harmon.

Geier: Um hm. I'm curious how this has changed over time, because, I gather from 00:50:00what you're saying, that a lot of these connections you're talking about happened in the last 20 years, and if you go back a little bit further, Roy, I'm sorry, Roy was talking about the copy, accidental meeting of the [interruption, pause] Okay, go ahead.

McKee: We've got an emergency here.

Geier: And, uh, I was wondering if there were other kinds of things earlier here, you know, how would you

Levno: [interrupting] How did Jerry, how did Jerry get into the group? Do you remember how Jerry got into the group?

Dyrness: How did Jerry get into the Group? Well Jerry, see, got into working on the Andrews as an undergraduate. He had a part time job through the Willamette Research Center, housed in the Forestry building on campus, and for example, one of his responsibilities was to monitor the stream gauging and so on. So that's 00:51:00how we got started up here. And then, when Jack was hired, uh, I think Jerry was his first summer employee. And I think that was when, do you remember Jerry said how he installed that study? That's when he installed that stem-flow interception study. And so, he, he was in really early, and from the start, he had really good rapport with Jack and Jean Rothacher, and so it was natural that he would do his master's on his work on the Andrews, although, of course, he went to Washington State on his Ph.D. and uh, worked on the Dobbenmeier, and 00:52:00worked in a broader context on upper slope conifers, uh, throughout the Northwest. So, yeah.

Levno: That happened a lot of times, I think. George Brown started out here on the Andrews.

Swanson: Digging soil pits.

Levno: Digging soil pits. [laughter] And doing watershed survey boundaries.

Dyrness: Yeah.

Levno: And somehow, a lot of the young people are attracted to work here. And we kind of shelter and foster them.

Kerrick: That number exploded, though, in terms of just sheer numbers, didn't it, in the '70s and into the '80s?

Dyrness: With IBP?

Kerrick: Yeah.

Dyrness: With IBP, oh yeah. It was like, you know, we were in 7th heaven. You know, suddenly, we had money to attract people in other disciplines which were necessary, and then, of course, getting more help.

Swanson: Well, Mike [Kerrick] followed the same path as a National Forest 00:53:00Service system, coming here earlier in his career, and going, [laughing] looping in and out.

Kerrick: Right. Yeah.

Geier: I was going to ask that, actually, for all of you, but Mike and I had talked about this a lot in the interview, but some of the reasons for getting engaged with this area and the Andrews over the years, you know, some of the reasons why people have left and come back.