Pacific Northwest Research Station

	Pacific Northwest Research Station
	About Us
	Finances & Workforce
	History
	Laboratories
	Organization Overview
	Partners & Clients
	Contact Us
	FAQs
	Newsroom
	Publications & Products
	Research

	Experimental Forests
	Job Opportunities
	Just For Kids

Pacific Northwest Research Station
333 SW First Avenue
Portland, OR 97204

(503) 808-2592

Focused Science Delivery Program

R. James (Jamie) Barbour, Program Manager

Forestry Sciences Laboratory
620 SW Main, Suite 400
P.O. Box 3890

Portland, OR 97208-3890
Phone: (503) 808-2542

In the Focused Science Delivery Program, our mission is to enhance the usefulness of scientific information. We recognize that high-quality research already exists, but that locating it among a scattered array of sources can be time-consuming, expensive, and confusing. Consequently, we strive to pull together and synthesize information from a range of disciplines, and deliver it in clear and accessible formats. By providing interdisciplinary information specific to clients’ needs, we can strengthen decisionmaking processes by ensuring that policymakers and managers have access to an integrated body of thought.

Hoping to reach as wide an audience as possible, we make every effort to engage a diversity of clients. We pay particular attention to collaboration—checking back with clients regularly to create an adaptive feedback loop that guides our product development process and fosters long-term partnerships. Finally, we actively encourage cooperation among researchers, political leaders, management specialists, and the public as they search for solutions to complex resource management problems.

We organize our efforts around a set of natural resource issues, or initiatives, each one lasting from two to four years. Currently, we are addressing issues related to sustainable wood production in the Pacific Northwest, biodiversity, and reducing fire risk to people and resources. For more information about our program, visit the Focused Science Delivery Program summary.

Feature Story—The Biodiversity Initiative
One example of our efforts is the Biodiversity Initiative, launched in the summer of 2004. During its scoping phase, the team asked for individual input from approximately 100 people whose work involves managing for biodiversity in Oregon and Washington. This included a variety of stakeholders, from small woodlot owners to people from state and federal agencies, private forestry companies, and conservation organizations. Following that, we held a series of workshops with clients to determine what major constraints they face in managing for biodiversity, what information tools would be most useful to them, and how the Focused Science Delivery program could deliver those tools within a collaborative framework. Biodiversity, commonly understood to refer to the variety of life in all its forms and levels of organization, is a complex, conceptual entity.		While many components of it directly impact natural resource management, it is extremely difficult to pin down. During the workshops, the difficulty of defining biodiversity in its entirety frequently left participants frustrated, leading one participant to joke that “Biodiversity is just biological diversity without the ‘logical’!” Nonetheless, the workshops accomplished a great deal. We listened closely to the individual needs of our clients, and are now working on developing appropriate information products to address those needs. One of the main goals of the initiative is to recognize that while our clients approach biodiversity with differing or even conflicting values and perspectives, they have a shared need for information. By including the viewpoints of diverse clients and emphasizing collaboration, the Biodiversity Initiative supports informed natural resource management for the long-term sustainability of a wide range of resources.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS AND DOCUMENTS

Sustainable production of wood and non-wood forest products: Proceedings of IUFRO Division 5 Research Groups 5.11 and 5.12, Rotorua, New Zealand, March 11–15, 2003 (PDF: 2.02 MB)		Bridging the worlds of fire managers and researchers: lessons and opportunities from the Wildland Fire Workshops (PDF: 1.14 MB)

Cover of Science Update publication entitled

Science Update 7: Reducing fire hazard: balancing costs and outcomes (PDF: 2.35 MB)

US Forest Service - Pacific Northwest Research Station
Last Modified: Wednesday, 12 March 2008 at 17:26:04 EDT