Life at OSU

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Except for modest visitor increases at a small percentage of iconic places, Instagram content is not resulting in more tourist traffic on public lands, according to a study by researchers at Oregon State University.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – In northern Yellowstone National Park, saplings of quaking aspen, an ecologically important tree in the American West, are being broken by a historically large bison herd, affecting the comeback of aspen from decades of over-browsing by elk.

Desert bighorn sheep whose Southern California range is bisected by freeways may one day benefit from Oregon State University modeling designed to show where the animals would be most apt to use overpasses to safely cross the interstates.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The evening grosbeak, a noisy and charismatic songbird, once arrived at Oregon State University in springtime flocks so vast an OSU statistics professor estimated there were up to a quarter million of the birds on campus daily.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon State University researchers have created a tool to assess the risk of hybridization among native and non-native fish, a development that could aid natural resource managers trying to protect threatened or endangered freshwater fish species.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Sunscreen that includes zinc oxide, a common ingredient, loses much of its effectiveness and becomes toxic after two hours of exposure to ultraviolet radiation, according to a collaboration that included Oregon State University scientists.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Free from human disturbance for a century, an inland island in Central America has nevertheless lost more than 25% of its native bird species since its creation as part of the Panama Canal’s construction, and scientists say the losses continue.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Four decades after their capture more than a half-mile below the ocean’s surface, three snailfish species have received their scientific names, two of them from school children on Guam in the island’s native Chamorro language.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Selectively cutting trees in riparian zones to aid forest restoration can be done without adversely affecting streams’ water temperature as long as the thinning isn’t too intensive, new research by Oregon State University shows.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Converting the ground under electrical transmission towers into spaces for wildlife can enable fragmented populations to connect with one another, increasing local biodiversity and providing animals around the globe an important tool for adapting to climate change, a new study found.