In his final few days as the director of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station, Paul Anderson can begin to look back with pride on a career that spanned 29 years from Rhinelander, Wisconsin to Corvallis, Oregon.
But he won’t exactly be retiring to simply kick back and enjoy the views from his Llewellyn Road property south of Philomath.
“On July 1, I’m becoming a volunteer with the Forest Service and I’m going to be working on data and project analyses and writing a couple of papers from things that I dropped when I became a program manager and then a station director when a lot of things got set to the side,” Anderson, 66, said Wednesday afternoon.
“I’ll stay involved and try to keep my hands in it but more focused on producing the science for some of the longer-term projects that I have,” he added. “And then I’ll kind of sit back … and continue to support forestry research and development from a little different space.”
Anderson appears to be looking forward to getting outdoors. He admitted “even while I was the station director, I was still sneaking out onto the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest (in Deschutes National Forest) and collecting some tree physiology data and whatnot in support of some ongoing studies.
“So that call to be out doing the kinds of things that I entered into a science profession for — that call is still sitting here pretty strong,” he added.
In his position as station director, Anderson headed up the research efforts and supported the work of some 300 permanent and seasonal employees based out of 11 laboratories and centers and 12 active experimental forests, ranges and watersheds across Oregon, Washington and Alaska.
Anderson was installed as the interim station director in 2017 and achieved permanent status in the position in 2021.
A native of Minnesota, Anderson earned a bachelor’s degree in forest ecosystems and silviculture from the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. He also has a master’s degree in forestry and natural resources from Purdue University and a doctorate in wildland resource sciences from the University of California, Berkeley.
His career with the Forest Service started in the upper Midwest not far from his home state.
“I finished up my Ph.D. work in California and had done some work in climate change research,” Anderson said. “So back in the late ’80s and early ’90s in California, I was doing air pollution work and then some of the earliest controlled exposures of ponderosa pine to elevated CO2 and the Forest Service unit in Wisconsin was undertaking a project to look at northern red oak — a hardwood species — and how that species would respond to elevated CO2 combined with drought. And so I was aware of the work and they were sort of aware of the things that I was interested in and it was a really good time to go to Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and spend seven years there.”
He published his first paper on climate change’s effects on ponderosa pine in 1988.
“I think one of the things that we want to point out about the role of research and development is ideally, we’re taking on or we’re thinking about some of these issues hopefully before they become really manifested as big problems,” Anderson said. “One of the roles that we’re trying to sustain in Forest Service research and development is dealing with issues that people are really aware of and how people know they’re being impacted with natural resources but also keep a part of our program of work … trying to look out ahead and be out in front.”
Anderson moved on to Oregon in 2002.
“I came here to look at alternative ways of managing forest growth and development that would provide for some of the full range of forest types and age structures,” Anderson said. “So thinking broadly about not just the timber values but thinking about the ecological values and other values that people derive from forests. How do you help manage forests to represent all of those different stages of development … and provide that full breadth of resource use?”
Anderson has obviously been involved with many projects and initiatives over the years.
“We had a project that I was pretty deeply involved with called the density management studies and it was cross agency work that we did with the Bureau of Land Management,” he said when asked to identify a project that he was most proud of during his time here. “I think it had a really nice development of information about how to manage in the uplands for creating diverse forest structures that promoted the development of older-age forest structures.
“And then in the riparian areas, we spent a lot of time investigating how our forest management activities in the upland, how to manage the riparian areas so that they could still provide those critical water resource and fisheries values,” he added.
Valerie Hipkins will succeed Anderson as the station director. But as he indicated, he’ll continue to be involved in a volunteer capacity.
“I describe myself as a silviculturist and as a tree physiologist when I have my scientist hat on,” he said. “When I’m thinking about the problems and the issues that we need to continue working on, I find myself thinking more about how do we understand and make sure we’re cognizant of how different values that people hold for forests, how are they showing up in the discussion?”
Anderson said he’ll work his final day on the job as station director on June 29.