Riparian Group Oral History Interview, Part 2, November 21, 1997

Norm Anderson: You institutionalize the inter-disciplinary umbrella and it will be gone. Again, the cooperation of the university with the Forest Service has been central to the Andrews.

Linda Ashkenas: You can look within the university, citing lack of cooperation as well.

Max Geier: Everyone is running out of steam here. Let me ask one last thing. What do you identify as the most important research issues and outstanding questions what emerged from your work at the Andrews?

Stan Gregory: There is a huge number of questions going into restoration. How do we restore systems that we don't think they are not where they should be? How do we manage across land use types? So, it is not just a forestry issue, it is an 00:01:00ag and urban issue as well.

Linda Ashkenas: Can we take the lessons we have learned for the Andrews and apply them to different landscape sites? That is a really good question.

Norm Anderson: And from the headwater mountain streams to the valley where people live.

Stan Gregory: I would think about these ideas of how we were going to manage or restore these riparian areas, and then how we balance them against the projected changes in human population. Can we do it? The population is changing so fast that our planning institutions can't even keep up, to get into the social side of it, even if you've got the best science. But, as you go into that kind of large scale and human dimension side of things, there are also questions about how do riparian zones in the first place. How do they regenerate? Most of the 00:02:00plant ecology studies have been in forests, and so as a result forest ecologists don't know how riparian systems die, how they grow. So, basic research on how riparian systems functions and nutrient uptake are some things that are always mentioned as information needs for riparian zones. They are important in picking up nutrients before they go into the streams. Most of that is cited in studies from Georgia and Iowa and we don't know much about how the streams in the Northwest function. How much of the nitrogen passes through riparian zones is taken up? We don't know. There is a huge number of primary research questions than applied research questions.