Science- The Business of

Human Beings Expunged From USDA Research Websites, Including the Forest Service, But Not Interior (USGS)- Why?

by

USGS website “staff profiles”.

 

Dear USDA,

What happened to you? Agricultural research has always been fundamentally networked with farmers and their needs.  But for some reason, at least with Forest Service R&D and ARS, there seems to have been an intentional effort to make it difficult for citizens to contact researchers.

IMHO we need to foster relationships between the public and scientists, not put barriers up to those relationships.

Why are you doing worse at this than Interior (USGS)? What’s going on?

Signed,

One Very Grumpy Retired Employee

******************************

Well, I had the idea of posting a useful researcher and research project each day until the budget discussion has led to not zeroing out R&D.  But sadly, I found that I couldn’t do this… because I associate great research with specific researchers.. and guess what? Instead of making NFS human beings more accessible, the FS has made R&D human beings less accessible. It doesn’t seem to be the FS’s fault though, because it happened to ARS as well (the other intramural research agency at USDA).

I suspect, but can’t prove that this effort started in the previous Admin (remember the disappearance of the employee directory?) and appears to have been driven by some non-partisanal force that we don’t yet understand.

Here’s how I used to look for researchers (and research)- the information was organized.

This is the site as captured by the Wayback Machine June 24, 2024.

When you go to the people link, you got this alphabetized list.

And if you selected a person, say Nate Anderson, you would get an extremely useful set of tabs. I picked Nate because he’s  on the first page of names, and he’s working on biomass as well as other things which are Congressional and Admin priorities.  Note that with this page, interested members of the public could contact him.  Also note that you can still use the Wayback Machine to locate scientists the old way.

 

This all seems very useful, at least to me.

But what does the homepage for RMRS look like now?

The people appear to be gone, and contact forms for the Station are supposed to substitute.. which I think would actually make more work for folks to route the questions. The same thing we noticed with NFS last year.

I tried to figure out if this was a USDA-wide thing by looking at ARS. I noticed that ARS also doesn’t have their data on people anymore, and did a Wayback to April 2024.

 

So it seems like it’s a USDA thing..not a Forest Service thing.  Then I checked USGS, and they do have their people listed. So it appears to be only USDA? It would be sad if the agency that is the home of the Land Grant model, liking education, research, and extension, somehow decided it was important to build walls between people and the peoples’ researchers.

 

Useful FS Research and Researcher: Dr. Reeves and the West-Wide Rangeland Fuel Assessment

by

This video series “Reading the Tea Leaves” on fuel moisture by Dr. Reeves of the Rocky Mountain Research Station reminds me of what intramural pragmatic FS R&D can be. Researchers who have been paying attention to the same things for their careers become experts. Practitioners give them info, they do research and provide info back to practitioners as researchers and practitioners mutually learn through time.

For me, it’s about researchers engaging directly with the folks their research is supposed to help. Reaching out via mechanisms other than journal publications. Not using more abstract or trendy terminology than is necessary to get the point across. These folks are treasures.

Reeves’ Fuelcasting system is an important component of the Rangeland Production Monitoring System. Both sound extremely useful to me.

Anyway, to the Index:

Who benefits: fuels, wildfire and grazing folks
Scale: West-wide
Time: The current year, comparison to past years
What Questions: How are fuel conditions looking this year in terms of wildfire?

A West-Wide Rangeland Fuel Assessment: Reading the Tea Leaves
In this monthly recorded series, Dr. Matt Reeves – an RMRS Research Ecologist specializing in remote sensing and ecological modeling – will analyze current rangeland fuel conditions across the west, with emphasis on emerging hotspots. New episodes will be posted every month and more frequently as the summer progresses.

Projections are based on Reeves’ Fuelcasting system, a new program that provides projections of expected fuel conditions this grazing season. It is an important component of the Rangeland Production Monitoring System.

***********

Wildfires are a result of fuels, weather, and topography. Topography is static, but weather and fuels change constantly and require regular monitoring. One of the techniques used to monitor fuel conditions is analyzing the Seven-Layer Cake. The Seven-Layer Cake consists of:

Standardized Precipitation Evaporation Index (SPEI; both 6- and 12-month varieties)
Change in fine fuel production compared to long term average
Total fine fuel amount
Wildfire history
Density of larger diameter fuels
Density of invasive annual grasses

In this webcast, USDA Forest Service Research Ecologist Dr. Matt Reeves analyzes rangeland fuel conditions around the western United States and draws parallels to the 2017 fire season in the northern Rockies, especially western Montana. Moreover, conditions in California, northern Great Basin, central and southeastern Arizona, Columbia Basin and eastern Cascades, and parts of the Black Hills region exhibit interesting fuel characteristics. All previous recordings are located on the Reading the Tea Leaves page.

Useful FS Research and Researchers: Developing Our Own Indices of Research Utility

by

I thought as I posted these we might develop our own indices of research utility. So far, I’ve thought of these questions.

1. Whom is this information intended to help?
2. How are they involved in design and feedback (e.g. FIA has a super-formal approach, others may be more organic)
3. What specific questions of theirs does it answer?
4. Would a reasonable person think that the answer to that question was already known?
5. What is the spatial scale to be helped?
6. What is the temporal scale to be helped?

I’m sure we can think of more questions in developing our own IRU’s.
Other questions?

President’s USDA Budget and R&D: Missing the Forest and the Trees

by

I agree with the idea of consolidating duplicative programs, or at least checking to see if they are duplicative.

I have to point out two areas in which I think the Budget write-up is wrong, as well as inconsistent. It is also against the intentions that I think this Admin has.. which is to focus on what we might call “science for the people” or scientific work of practical value, that answers questions that folks in forest management and farmers want to know. In my view, by targeting forumula funds and FSR&D, they are actually short-circuiting opportunities for the public to influence research priorities and design, and in fact, produce practical research. It leaves people further divorced from direct influence over research priorities. It seems to me based on the stated goals of this Admin, it would be better to identify more direct methods of people influencing R&D portfolios rather than getting rid of the ones that are working.

This comes from my experience at NIFA and with the Fund for Rural America, a research, education and extension program that Congress funded in the hope that it would generate some useful information. The utility of USG research has been a long-standing concern of theirs.

1. NIFA

The Budget eliminates wasteful, woke programming in NIFA, such as activities related to climate change, renewable energy, and promoting DEI in education that were prioritized under the Biden Administration.

My only thought is that if certain Admins prioritize things, then other Admins can de-prioritize them. I’d prefer a system that focuses on non-partisanized topics, but that’s just me.

In addition, the Budget reduces funding for formula grants because they generally do not achieve the same results as competitive programs.< Instead, the Budget focuses on the President’s goal of advancing the competitiveness of American agriculture through the merit-based Agriculture and Food Research Initiative. The Budget protects funding to youth and K-12 programs such as 4-H clubs, tribal colleges, and universities. This investment would help prepare future generations of farmers. It also ensures HBCUs are amply funded.

What does the bolded piece even mean? I remember when employees came over from NSF to tell us at NIFA that formula funds were old hat, and the cool new way of doing business was better.bringing combos of scientists in to decide funding. It seemed to me one of those beliefs which needed to be taken on faith, as I never saw a formal analysis. Having seen both sides, I think it depends on how each is administered, and of course, what you think are the appropriate results (who interprets “better”?). Users are not allowed on the panels, and there was no separate way for us to hear from them what issues were important to work on. Individuals or groups decide and submit proposals.

There can be good formula and bad formula administration. Before formula funds were diverted into competitive grants (and there was a sizeable chunk of funding), some schools used to have formal groups of users advising them on issues that they thought needed research. So if a state was beleaguered by some pest, for example, they didn’t have to enter a US wide competition (where scientists alone rated proposals) to get grant funds. Deans would figure out a way to get it done with the research and extension capacity available. Of course, that was at its best- it could also be a slush fund for the Dean to award to his or her favorites, or to use to recruit scientists, or I’m sure there were other uses.

On the other hand, competitive grants can be more scientist generated.. what scientists think is useful. And there can be quite a gap between what scientists think is useful compared to what forest managers or farmers think is useful. For example, Chelsea Pennick is trying to round up funds to research “why previous biomass efforts haven’t been successful” and Frank Carroll has questions about managed fire, to whom does he take them? At least in the old days, you could sit down with a human being (Dean or substitute) and make your case.

As I looked into this, I noted that some odd things about how forests are included, for example in the NAREEEAB board (it’s interesting that social scientists and economists don’t count as “academic or research societies”, they instead count as “industry, consumer or rural interests.” And there is one position out of 15 for a forest person. Also interesting is that the NAREEEAB has subcommittees, apparently at the behest of Congress. This sounds like a great idea..but I don’t know how it has worked out.

SCC studies the scope and effectiveness of research, extension and economics programs affecting the specialty crop industry. It reports its research findings and makes recommendations for improving these programs, with the goal of making U.S. specialty crop production more efficient, productive and profitable.

But wouldn’t it make more sense to study such things for forest research across agencies (perhaps there can’t be an interagency FACA committee?). Within the USDA, there is the Forestry Research Advisory Committee or FRAC. However, on the FRAC webpage I didn’t see anything recent. This could be a broken link problem.. hard to tell.

2. Other Intramural USDA (ARS, NASS and ERS)

It’s interesting that giving money to land-grants to decide is bad (formula funds) but giving it intramurally via ARS is fine. Which is not to criticize ARS nor FS intramural. And looking back, I wonder if part of the formula funding critiques were really about other universities getting access to USDA funds.

The Administration is committed to prioritizing research that supports American agriculture. However, many of the current ARS facilities are in disrepair. The Budget reduces funding for research sites across the Nation that have exceeded their ideal lifespan and reduces funding for research projects that are not of the highest national priority. The Budget also makes small reductions to the Economic Research Service and National Agricultural Statistics Service to stop climate-politicized additional scopes added by the Biden Administration while ensuring all critical analysis and data collection continues.

I wonder who is deciding which research is of “the highest priority”? It seems to me that university administrators and faculty have to thread the needle of “what the scientific community thinks is currently cool to study” “what farmers and land managers in the State need” and “what is fundable by the current mix of programs among federal agencies.” I don’t envy them.

3. Intramural Forest Service (Forest Service R&D)

The President has pledged to manage national forests for their intended purpose of producing timber. The Budget reduces funding for the Forest and Rangeland Research program because it is out of step with the practical needs of forest management for timber production, but maintains funding for Forest Inventory and Analysis, a longstanding census of forest resources and conditions.

You’ve gotta be kidding! For some of us, getting an FS researcher interested is our only hope. How can the Admin say that the ARS is doing useful work and the FS is not? It’s just bizarre. I wonder if anyone actually believes that. Of course, some projects are more useful, in that sense, than others. But I’m sure that’s equally true of competitive grants funded by NIFA and intramural research at ARS.

Finally, we have to leave USDA because there is some overlap between what USGS does and what FS R&D does.
4. USGS

USGS provides science information on natural hazards, ecosystems, water, energy and mineral resources, and mapping of Earth’s features. The Budget eliminates programs that provide grants to universities, duplicate other Federal research programs and focus on social agendas (e.g., climate change) to instead focus on achieving dominance in energy and critical minerals.

Now some of us remember when agencies like BLM lost their R&D arms with the combo into USGS. Which meant again, that there is no institutional link between what managers feel they need and getting research done. At the time, it was kind of the same with Forest Health folks and FS R&D. “Your problems are too practical for us.” “OK, we’ll do the work ourselves.” “You can’t because that’s research and you are not funded to do research.”

My broader point is that if, as I think, some USGS research overlaps with FSR&D, then it won’t anymore if FS R&D is gone.

Of course, NSF is also in the mix. Check out this project at Univ of Montana. It sounds good (although, in this abstract, kind of nebulous), but you could see the FS funding it.

This Regional Innovation Engines Development Award is focused on precision forestry and rangeland management. It will be a new economic driver in the Northern Rockies/Northern Plains region by applying technology, tools, and data to the emerging field of precision forestry and rangeland management. This project, led by the University of Montana, brings together researchers and partners from the Plains University Innovation Alliance, the Montana Wood Products Association, the Nature Conservancy, the US Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium in addition to state Climate Offices, economic and workforce offices in the Montana Governor’s Office, and venture capital firms. Through this innovative partnership between public institutions, Tribal Community Universities, and private industry, the team will create a dynamic economic development ecosystem and an expert knowledge base that will address critical issues related to land management with national and global relevance. As a key aspect of the effort, the Development Award will demonstrate the application of recent and emerging technologies to manage the land to maximize the economic benefit of federal, Tribal, and private forests and rangelands while minimizing ecological impacts such as fire, drought, and flood. Technologies such as lidar, autonomous aerial systems, satellite imagery, sensor arrays, and predictive modeling can increase forest and rangeland production by improving the available data for use by land managers. This will enable more precise policy and decision-making and improve environmental risk mitigation.

Science Friday: Some Ideas and Concerns for Current Admin/Congress

by

 

 

1)  If you haven’t seen, please go back to my post yesterday on Managed Fire.  Perhaps because of the Supreme Court case, it doesn’t seem to have gotten much attention.  And we haven’t heard from other parts of the country whether the Arizona approach is similar to how other areas go about doing MF.

But on to science..
It seems to me that this is an opportunity to get folks together to get a handle on better managing the USG R&D portfolio. I’m talking about serious change and so it would have to be some kind of bipartisan institution maybe begun in this admin, but dedicated to making better use of the R&D budget, making decisions and prioritization more transparent, and ensuring that research intended to be applied.. can actually be applied. Maybe that’s too big an ask, but I would at least like to see us start on that path. In this effort, little science (us) would have a voice along with Big Science (say, the usual OSTP suspects).

2) People are very concerned about One Wildfire Agency in terms of losing local capacity.  But I’m the only one concerned about centralizing fire research in the Intelligence Center (or will it be centralized?)  I’m concerned on the basis of losing FS research- the kind of useful work you find in the screenshot above –  as more aggressive and larger research agencies may be empowered to set research agendas.  More satellites and high tech (nothing wrong with high tech), less emphasis on communities and human firefighters.  The idea that you can understand something without understanding any of the moving parts or mechanisms. Maybe it’s my time in DC, trying to hoover up any scraps from the Big Science funding table, and I think that very careful structuring of how R&D is designed, prioritized and funded is important.

3) The previous Admin had an open-access effort, I think that’s a really important to keep up or expand.  Fortunately, the linked article on paywalls is not paywalled.

In Washington, D.C., these shifts prompted both Republicans and Democrats to urge the federal government to revise its access policies. In 2013, then-President Barack Obama attempted to strike a compromise—via the 1-year embargo rule—between publishers and open-access advocates.

But many—including Biden, then Obama’s vice president—were not happy with that deal. In a 2016 speech, for example, Biden noted, “The taxpayers fund $5 billion a year in cancer research, but once it’s published, nearly all of that sits behind [pay]walls. Tell me how this is moving the [scientific] process along more rapidly.”

4)  In addition to some kind of cross-checking that different agencies (or within agencies) aren’t doing duplicative research, I’d like to see a clearer check on research panels for “research that is supposed to be helpful to policy makers or managers or resource professionals.” That would involve a check on whether something is already known, and whether more knowledge is actually helpful to anyone.  Perhaps reviewers are too polite to say “I think we already know this” or “no one cares about that plant and its future under modeled climate change.”  Often I found in the FS  that folks in NFS would relationally not want to question what R&D folks were doing- “why annoy them?” and “it’s their funding.” This can also be true for university researchers (as I was advised “don’t question them, they’ll write even worse things about us”). So my view is that to get an unbiased look you would need to select people out of the relational line of fire.

5)  I think perhaps only in JFSP is there a direct link from managers and resource professionals questions and what gets prioritized, designed and funded.  For example, I think we could know how different parts of the country do managed fire, how they do it, what communities think and so on.  We have excellent literature on PF, MT and community views.  Perhaps a group could have an annual review of what is being studied (broader than, but inclusive of, USG funding) and what gaps there are, and move from their to actually funding work determined to be useful.

6) I don’t mean to pick on these people, certainly they are the right people, FS, USGS and Forest folks. From the abstract, and the FS has an open version on their website here.

However, lack of natural ponderosa pine regeneration in undisturbed forests (i.e., no occurrence of stand-replacing events) may require management treatments to promote regeneration.

In addition to effects on near-surface temperature and soil moisture, management conducive to natural regeneration was associated with the density of competing tree species, understory litter and debris cover, and adult tree cone production.

***********

Our results show that existing forest management treatments have the potential to promote natural ponderosa pine regeneration in the SWUS, but will require assessment and modification through time to remain effective.

********

I think there are questions around “is climate change impacting the things we already know about forests?” and maybe this was it.  Another way to prioritize would be.. “hey these things we’ve noticed are different and they seem problematic, what can we do about them?” Of course, the scientists were supported by the Climate Adaptation Science Center; but isn’t every management or non-management practice now considered “climate adaptation”? When I was working, it seemed like there was a burgeoning business in creating new centers with new administrative structures that seemed duplicative, at least to us users. When we asked questions about that, I remember USGS folks saying “it’s too late Congress already funded them, you get to help us decide where to put them.”  USGS has Adaptation Science Centers, USDA has Climate Hubs. Is anyone checking for duplication or gaps?

Here’s a study on Forest Ops in the Northern Forest Climate Hub.

7) I thought that this was an interesting idea- Let Unfunded Grant Applications See the Light of Day

Something very similar happened with the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 2023, the Academies called out NSF for not meeting its legal obligation to share data: “Granting access to data on all applicants for program assessment purposes, as is called for in the legislation mandating this review, and establishing processes that would allow for structured evaluation of policies and procedures would help NSF understand the effectiveness of its initiatives and how its programs could be improved.”

Despite expectations from policymakers and statutes that data from science agencies be available for analysis, both of us—longtime open science advocates who have worked in various government and industry positions and who are writing only in our personal capacities and not on behalf of anyone else—have heard top researchers complain that they can’t get access to information on unfunded proposals, or, on the rare occasions when they do, access is conditional on allowing the agency to veto any publications using the data.

Without knowing what proposals go unfunded, there is no way to know whether agencies are supporting a wide range of ideas or favoring a narrow theory. Are “high-risk, high reward” proposals getting a chance? Have hard-won changes in grant policies actually helped early-career researchers? Do the questions researchers ask change in response to demands from Congress or calls from citizen groups? These questions seem both valuable and straightforward. Yet metaresearchers (those who research how research is done) are unable to address such topics with any certainty. The public cannot know, for example, how many NIH grant applications come from historically Black colleges or universities, or how many researchers propose to study gain-of-function in viral genomes, without knowing what is included in all R&D grant applications, funded and not.

..

Researchers could make more efficient progress by using past grant proposals to refine their approach and so avoid wasting months or even years on unrealistic proposals, particularly if reviewers’ comments and scores are also shared. They could learn whether they are pursuing projects already deemed unpromising by funding agencies, which could prompt them to try other areas, or to have a pre-application conversation with a program officer to gain a better understanding of an agency’s interest. Researchers with similar interests would be able to discover each other’s work and potentially join forces, leading to stronger proposals, more impactful research, and collaborations formed much earlier than those enabled by publications and conference presentations.

Though agencies can look across their own applications for insights, access to a complete picture of the research landscape across the federal government would allow funding agencies to make more informed decisions about funding priorities. As articulated in the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act signed into law by President Trump in 2019, when agencies can share and access information across the government, they are able to more efficiently identify research trends, understand the derivative impacts of their own work, and craft decisions and policies informed by evidence. They can also build more effective, cross-agency initiatives, such as NSF’s Smart Health funding opportunity, designed to support cross-agency efforts to incorporate information science in health care

8) Indirect costs caps. There has been much concern about NIH reducing its caps. A reasonable person could wonder “why shouldn’t all USG research have the same caps?” I’ve never really heard this kind of thing discussed. Certainly it would seem to be easier for grant administrators and PIs to deal with. I ran across this guide to indirect costs from my old agency, NIFA (that is one agency in one department- USDA!).

Back to the Future?: Potential Changes to FS R&D- E&E News Story and Additional Context

by

I’ll put some thoughts in this, but also dive into some history that may help explain where FS R&D is and how it got there to provide some context.

 

GREENWIRE | The Trump administration is gearing up to redirect the Forest Service’s scientific work toward timber and wildfire and away from pests, diseases, forest ecology and the effects of climate change.

I’m not sure about this.. it seems to me that traditional organismal biology positions such as entomology, pathology, physiology and genetics have been downplayed for some time.  In fact, the Forest Service seems a bit like some universities.  In the case of some universities, user-oriented disciplines like entomology and pathology are now only found in Extension, whereas in the Forest Service they are found in Forest Health (part of State and Private).  This is not the fault of FS R&D, with limited budgets, they felt they had to go for bigger science bucks like climate change or other Big Science fads like sequencing genomes. I remember sitting with a Station Director at the SAF Convention in Rochester, NY in 1988 who blithely said “we’re tapped into the bucks for climate now and we’re never going back to helping you (NFS).”  I’m not blaming them.. given the conditions it was the choice to make.

Also, about wildfire research, I am wary of proposals such as the Wildfire Intelligence Center in FOFA that could be seen as NOAA and NASA poaching wildfire research funding. Let’s face it, FS R&D is a minnow among the sharks of the Big Science world.  It’s interesting that Nick Smith’s news roundup today had precisely that, NASA working with DOD on prescribed fire. One of the most amazing things to me about the way federal R&D works is that no one ever checks for duplication. Perhaps that’s what the Wildfire Intelligence Center will do.. but I have my doubts.

The realignment of the forest agency’s research priorities has been in the works for weeks and reflects staff reductions — some already completed through deferred resignations, others on the way — as well as forthcoming spending proposals that would be left to Congress to decide, according to employees and outside organizations familiar with the administration’s thinking.

The fallout of the shift in the Forest Service’s focus would ripple not just through national forests but on state and privately owned land across the country, where the agency’s research guides land management practices.

Preliminary budget-related communications within the Agriculture Department and the ever-changing internal roster of employees and their jobs offer clues about where the research mission may be headed, said an employee who shared some of the materials with POLITICO’s E&E News.

Three agency employees familiar with the administration’s thinking said the approach aligns with long-simmering views within the Forest Service and in Congress that the agency’s research mission is overdue for some tweaking, if not an outright overhaul.

Congress has long been concerned that federal R&D in ag and forestry has departed from utility.  Hence (in the distant past) the Fund for Rural America and other efforts.  Tensions within the Department about “listening to stakeholders too much” led to the firing of my boss at the time, the head of the Fund for Rural America.  Putting stakeholders on panels! Some folks had come over from NSF, and earnestly believed that R&D direction and funding needed to be of the scientists, by the scientists and for the scientists. I acknowledge that formula funds at the land grants could be a Dean’s slush fund, but some universities also had councils of stakeholders to advise on R&D priorities with their USDA research funds. So slowly and subtly the connection was broken and research has slowly drifted away from stakeholder involvement.

But outside organizations and some employees said there’s a danger that the administration will go too far, losing seasoned researchers and weakening the Forest Service’s ability to apply long-term research to current, everyday problems.

That’s true not just on the 193 million acres the Forest Service manages but in privately owned forests across the country that depend on the agency for up-to-date science on everything from disease outbreaks to the likely consequences of the warming climate. Challenges await cities large and small as well, where Forest Service research — and grants, up until now — support urban tree-planting programs.

A USDA spokesperson declined to comment on forthcoming restructuring or spending proposals, saying in a statement it would be inappropriate to speculate on future restructuring or funding.

But, the spokesperson said, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins “fully supports the President’s directive to improve government, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s many services to the American people,” adding, “Secretary Rollins is committed to ensuring critical research and essential services remain uninterrupted.”

Research on long-term issues can include forest ecology over 30 years, said Richard Guldin, a former research official in the Forest Service’s Washington office and a board member at the National Association of Forest Service Retirees. While the administration may be focused on more immediate problems — like wildfire — short-term needs and long-term trends go hand in hand, he said.

“We need to figure out how to help the national forest land managers begin to apply what we are learning,” Guldin said. “You do the long-term research, and it has to be good — but it has to be good for something.”

For those who haven’t followed this, there has been a long-standing tension between what (some) R&D scientists want to study, and what NFS managers think would be useful.  This led to folks like forest health folks with Ph.D.s doing their own work (so-called “administrative studies”) because R&D scientists (and university folks) weren’t interested (nor funded).   I have never been a fan of the “we scientists will determine how to frame the problem, what and how to study it, and then tell you all what to do.”  In my view, that’s not what FS R&D nor the land-grants institutions should be doing.  It tends to divide, when finding out knowledge should bring people together, in my view.

A vast research mission

Federal spending on forest research and development has climbed slightly in recent years, from $296 million in discretionary appropriations in fiscal 2022 to more than $300 million the past two fiscal years. The Biden administration requested increases, citing the need for more information about climate change and expansion of markets for wood products, among other priorities.

Do we need “more information about climate change?” Or do we deal with the impacts as they manifest themselves in real time?  For some time, current problems are not funded in pursuit of predicting future problems.

The Forest Service is the world’s largest research organization, the Biden administration said in its budget request for the current fiscal year. The mission includes 76 experimental forests, four experimental ranges and four experimental watersheds.

I don’t know what “largest” means in this context.. certainly not in funding.  Maybe acres?  All of USDA (ERS, NIFA, FS, ARS) is a drop in the science bucket. See the chart at the top.

A forest products laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, explores alternative uses for wood, such as in tall building construction. The Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montona, has a 66-foot-high combustion chamber that allows for burn tests in controlled conditions, according to the Forest Service.

The budget also covers five research stations, distributed in each region of the country. And the agency’s forest inventory and analysis program — which the administration has signaled will remain a top priority, according to employees — provides crucial data about the condition of the nation’s forests.

One of the reasons FIA is so popular is that it has a strongly supportive group of stakeholders, and regularly listens to their feedback.

Still, research accounts for just 4 percent of the Forest Service’s budget, according to the agency.

A 2017 report by the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities said the number of researchers in federal land management agencies has plummeted in recent years, particularly in areas such as plant pathology and entomology. Even the forest products lab — which the Trump administration has marked as a higher priority — lost most of its workforce in the decades after World War II, the report said.

Corporations, too, have retrenched on research, the report said, and universities don’t spend as much on applied forest research as they once did.

My research colleagues in industry lost their jobs when the tax changes encouraged forest products companies to sell their land.  And universities are subject to the same science market forces.. practical work isn’t cool nor funded.

Deep cuts at the Forest Service research probably couldn’t be made up by universities or other nonfederal entities, researchers and other people close to the programs said.

In part, that’s because forest research that takes decades to play out on the ground doesn’t translate into quick profits for the wood products industry, said Peter Madden, president and CEO of the Endowment for Forestry and Communities, based in Greenville, South Carolina.

But forest health — which may take a hit in the President Donald Trump budget — can’t really be separated from forest products, Madden said. The emerald ash borer has clobbered markets for ash trees, and in Canada, a bark beetle outbreak “literally wiped out a lot of those markets, a lot of those communities that depended on timber.”

Biodiversity and forest health are big issues, Madden said, “but I don’t really see private industry spending the money.”

Having watched the demise of industry R&D, it was never about “quick profits”.. forest genetics has never been very quick.  And then there is NCASI, which had done much good work.

Realigning Forest Service research could go along with the priorities of some congressional Republicans. In recent years, Republican appropriators have called on the agency to refocus research on wildfire and wood products.

Like I said, I don’t see R’s as the danger to wildfire research.  And wood products..both sides of the aisle are interested in uses for biomass, if that’s the same thing.  I wonder exactly what the appropriators said?

Gaps and concerns

A study by the National Academy of Public Administration in 2021 also pointed to organizational troubles in the Forest Service’s research and development, including a lack of coordination and conflicting views about which science takes priority.

Research is critical to the agency’s mission, the report said. “However, pressure to undertake more applied research and focus on delivering existing science to meet near-term needs raises concerns about how to maintain support for basic research.”

The study added, “Moreover, for many of R&D’s internal agency partners, station research is associated with a university-style approach to research with little attention to addressing mission challenges.”

Does the FS need to do “basic research”? Isn’t that NSF’s job? And “little attention to addressing mission challenges” is fairly standard over the past 30 years or so, but to be fair if you tell your scientists to get their own funding, and Big Science doesn’t care about small landowners or the national forests, what were they supposed to do?

Focusing on one type of research without paying enough attention to others overlooks the complexity of forest science, said Matt Betts, a forestry professor at Oregon State University and lead scientist for an ecological research program at the school’s H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. The program is cooperatively managed with the Forest Service.

I don’t think, technically speaking, the Andrews belongs to OSU.

“It’s hard to do research in isolation,” Betts said. Someone who invests in forests to make wood products, for instance, needs to know how fast certain trees grow based on conditions, as well as how wildfires spread, he said.

If the Trump administration is serious about boosting timber harvests by 25 percent, Betts said, forest research will be even more critical — and some of it is more suited to the government than to industry.

Sometimes, forest science and business practices don’t exactly overlap. To meet demand for wood, timber companies often don’t want to wait until a Douglas fir tree, for instance, has hit its target of 80 years for full maturity. Instead, they cut it at 35 or 40 years old, he said.

Last I checked, economics was also a science. Hopefully we’re not back to de-emphasizing the social sciences- so 20th century.  After all, both Rs and Ds want to use small diameter woody material from thinnings rather than burn it.  Why have we been unsuccessful for the last 30 years of trying? What can we do about it?  FS economists and some university folks are studying that.

Gaps constantly emerge in forest knowledge, too, Betts told E&E News. A generation ago, many people believed old-growth forests were a waste, he said. Now, he said, researchers believe protecting old-growth forests is a way to balance environmental needs with maintaining the timber industry — a point Betts and others made in a paper in Science magazine Thursday.

“We still don’t really know how forests work,” Betts said. “The more I learn, the more I realize we don’t know about forests.

A New Biochar Research Program? Part of Westerman Bill

by

The Westerman Draft bill wants to support biochar research. It seems that many folks are already studying biochar. An idea would be to round these up, and look for gaps and overlaps before we send any more funding.

I tried the search terms forest and biochar for a variety of federal research organizations. Apparently, search terms select a broader group than I intended.

I looked at NSF (National Science Foundation) and searched on biochar and forests and got this.. but many of them don’t seem to have biochar or forests, so maybe my searching is at fault.

I looked at Department of Energy and found these, which are about biochar but the forest one is about biomass for energy 🙁 not biochar.

Here’s the list from National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA extramural research), again the search did not seem to restrict to biochar and forests.

I could find many biochar projects with the Forest Service, but not in a format that shows the funding and a link to the abstracts (which might exist, and I hope R&D folks will point that out.)

US Geological Survey of the Department of the Interior also doesn’t have project by dollars as far as I could tell, but does have this..including one on the effect of biochar on maize yield in Zambia. But it appears the last one was in 2015.

Speaking of agriculture, ARS (in-house USDA R&D) has a list of biochar projects.

This ongoing study is pretty interesting.

Through this project, we expect to demonstrate that applying biochar in agricultural lands for soil modification and remediation would be a climate-smart solution for sustainability in forest management, timber/biomass har- vesting, and economic growth of bioenergy, bioproducts, and crops. [2] Wood Fiber Insulation: The proposed solution is to evaluate several (underutilized) species in the region as feedstock for wood fiber insulation. Spruce (Pices spp.) and white pine (Pinus strobus) will serve as controls or “benchmarks”; other species to be investigated include: eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), bal- sam fir (Abies balsamea), red maple (Acer rubrum), and aspen (Populus tremuloides). [3] Wood Fiber Foam Packaging: Most available literature around foam forming is focused on rectangular shaped panels with no specific 3D shape. A process that can produce true 3D shaped lignocellulosic foamed structures by foam forming is currently lacking. In addition, low-density packaging foams are bulky and occupy a lot of space, making them difficult to ship and transport. Innovation is needed to develop foamed materials that can be compressed into high-density thin sheets for easier transportation and used upon 3D shape recovery after exposure to a stimulus. Finally, a clear understanding of the foam forming process in the presence of additives and various types of lignocellulosic feed- stock is required. Use of LCNF derived directly from wood sawdust as a binder in the formulation of such foams is another innovation that needs to happen to reduce costs and enable commercialization.

Sounds like something the FS could be funding?

I didn’t query NOAA, NASA or DOD. Conceivably biochar is related to climate and everyone studies climate (and researcher are creative in rationalizing what they want to do) so who knows?

Wouldn’t it be terrific if the research agencies would feed into a centralized database of all federal research? That included abstracts, and who is funding, how much and how long. Plus links to products. Then those interested could analyze gaps and overlaps. It appears that the Congress is interested in saving money.. but, I guess, not so much in spending it better. Especially when fixes would go across Committee responsibilities. Where is the Admin’s Office of Science and Technology Policy when you need it?

The Importance of Open Disagreement to Science, and Why Mean Tweeters Like Mann are Missing in Forest Science

by

The Mann trial was supposed to be  part of Roundup #2, but as you can see below, I got a bit carried away.

I read an op-ed this week by Loolwa Khazzoom, who said:

We are all pieces of a highly complex puzzle. When we listen instead of project, discuss instead of argue, and have a goal of learning instead of winning – approaching dialogue with an attitude of curiosity and discovery – we can benefit from the unique life experience and thought process that we each bring to the table.

Which is my belief as well. Otherwise I wouldn’t spend so much time on The Smokey Wire and similar efforts. Also this week, I followed along on the highly entertaining podcast Climate Change on Trial presented by the Unreported Story Society. I think it’s safe to say that Michael Mann, the climate scientist and plaintiff in the defamation lawsuit against two bloggers, Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, would not agree with that statement on the utility of listening and “approaching dialogue with an attitude of curiosity and discovery.”

At first, I thought the trial was a bit ridiculous. As if what two random bloggers wrote could actually defame Mann any more than a cursory examination of his Twitter feed, and that that would effect his financial remuneration in terms of research grants. Were they kidding? Then it turned out that this defamation biz had been going on for 12 years (!), and no one knows who is paying Mann’s court fees. My view is that in a just world, the jury would have awarded the past 12 years of legal fees to Steyn and Simberg. Of course, as a random blogger myself, maybe I’m being too sensitive. But it was OK, I guess, because according to the Hill, these guys are “right-wing” bloggers and I’m not.

So, at first, I was glad that scientists in our forest fields generally don’t behave that way. And I wondered if a podcast on some of our fuels treatment court cases with key parts being reenacted would be as entertaining. But as we delved into the Mann Tweets and emails, I wondered “how could that level of meanness be tolerated?” and “why was it OK for him to do what most of us would never consider doing?,” and “whose job is it to keep our convos civil, if anyone?”

The story of how all this developed was fascinating, at least to me. For those of you who don’t know, Mann was famous for the hockey stick graph, splicing together various measures of past temperatures including our very own tree rings. When someone asked for the data, he was unwilling to part with it, at least at the beginning. He clearly wasn’t a fan of FOIA either, forwarding a message to others to delete emails. The release of the Climategate emails was not a good moment for him.  If you were to ask him, I’m sure that he saw these as efforts to impugn climate science, and (thus, naturally, to him) he became combative in its (his own) defense.  It became a “good guys vs. bad guys” thing, with him, naturally, on the self-defined “good guys” side.

At the same time, you or I could also say that science should stand up to independent scrutiny, and that if someone wants the original data, they should be able to access it. I don’t think that that would be a big problem in forest science world. So what happened here? Perhaps Mann felt that the stakes were so high, it makes usual scientific practices and conduct obsolete. Some of us might say that that correlates at .99 with his self-interest, so.. But on the other hand, billions of dollar have been spent on climate science and Mann is just one of millions of climate scientists around the world, so the hockey stick is not all that important at the end of the day. But that’s today, and perhaps not when the posts were posted.

I started to think “what went wrong here?” and “are there lessons for us in less-favored and financed disciplines to learn?” Many of us belong to scientific and professional societies, universities and agencies, with codes of conduct that incorporate ideas like collegiality and respectful communications.

Dr. Curry (she of Mann’s so-called “slept her way to the top” email to Gavin Schmidt at NASA) drafted a complaint which she never sent:

“This defamation is affecting my academic reputation and my ability to conduct business. I note that I am far from the only person being attacked and libeled by Dr. Mann.
Penn State Policy AD47 (General Standards of Professional Ethics) states that professors have obligations as members of the “community of scholars” and are required to “respect and defend” free inquiry by other members of the community and to show “due respect” for the opinions of others:

IV.As colleagues, professors have obligations that derive from common membership in the community of scholars. They respect and defend the free inquiry of their associates. In the exchange of criticism and ideas they show due respect for the opinions of others.

“The policy also states that researchers are required to be “open-minded when evaluating the work of others” even if that may “contradict their own findings”:

III…. As open-minded researchers, when evaluating the work of others, they must recognize the responsibility to allow publication of theories or experiments that may contradict their own findings, as only by free inquiry and dissemination of all facts will the fruits of the labor of the whole community be allowed to mature.

Policy HR64 says (my bold) that faculty members have “special obligations” as persons of learning and as educators and are obliged to “exercise appropriate restraint” and “to show
respect for the opinions of others” Faculty members are citizens, members of learned professions, and representatives of this University. When the faculty member speaks or writes as a citizen, the faculty member shall be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but the special position in the community held by the faculty member imposes special obligations. As a person of learning and an educator, the faculty member is expected to remember that the public may judge the profession and institution by his/her utterances. Hence, the faculty member agrees at all times to be accurate, to exercise appropriate restraint, to show respect for the opinions of others, and to make every effort to indicate that he/she is not an institutional spokesperson.”

Curry didn’t send it to Penn State because, as she says in her post .

“after all, the damage to my career was already done and I wasn’t clear where this would lead or whether it would have any effect.”

I wonder how Mann could have acted against these rules for so long with no one calling him on it.  I wonder if the folks he emailed (work emails) ever said, “hey, I’m not interested in gossip about our colleagues’ sex lives”,” or “maybe you should tone it down on  Twitter” or “I’m not sure we should try to evade FOIAs and delete emails.” From the court records, it sounded like a few people did.  If more had done so, could this all have turned out differently?

And how did he get awards from prestigious organizations for “science communication?” Was anyone reading his Tweets?

“I am truly humbled to receive the Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communications,” said Mann. “While none of us can fill the very large shoes Steve left behind, we can honor his legacy by doing our best to inform the public discourse over human-caused climate change in an objective, clear and effective manner.”

I don’t blame Mann for all of this.   People don’t always behave well when left to their own devices. This is a fact of human nature. That is why we have laws, law enforcement, codes of conduct and enforcement protocols.  It is the role of institutions to enforce their own rules.  And yet they apparently are not, at least in certain cases.

***********

Having listened to the podcast of the case, I was amused by this NPR story:

In a D.C. courtroom, a trial is wrapping up this week with big stakes for climate science. One of the world’s most prominent climate scientists is suing a right-wing author and a policy analyst for defamation.

The case comes at a time when attacks on scientists are proliferating, says Peter Hotez, professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology at Baylor College of Medicine. Even as misinformation about scientists and their work keeps growing, Hotez says scientists haven’t yet found a good way to respond.

“The reason we’re sort of fumbling at this is it’s unprecedented. And there is no roadmap,” he says.

**********

Imran Ahmed, chief executive at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says any response has to include social media companies, as that’s where attacks on scientists happen every day. Research finds that social media platforms can encourage the spread of scientific and medical misinformation.

Hotez says he and Mann are working on an upcoming project, collaborating on what they see as overlap in attacks on climate science and biomedicine and how to counter it.

Was NPR even in the room? I guess you don’t have to actually observe things when you can just ask your friends what they think.

With all due respect to Hotez and Mann, having discussions and disagreeing is what science is about in the pursuit of truth; actually even outside of “science,” as in Khazzoom’s quote at the top of this post.  Characterizing people who disagree as “attackers” with “disinformation” who need to be throttled down is bad for discourse, bad for the public trust (yes, that public, the ones who vote for research budgets) and bad for science.  I’m curious as to why, of all the disciplines and subdisciplines in science and engineering, only these two fields (climate and Covid) seem to have this problem highlighted? Perhaps they have bought into a form of politics-science mutualism.  In the same way that a phone call changed the views of the virologists and led to the Proximal Origins paper on Covid origins, in the Mann case a discussion with the President of Penn State led the inquiry team to change its findings on censuring Mann.  Where disciplinary self-interest, institutional self-protection and larger world politics meet.. is probably not a good place for the rest of us, nor for any truth to come out.  And it’s definitely not “science.”

Aren’t we fortunate that we don’t have these issues in forest science? Do we manage it better, are the stakes so low no one cares for high quasi-political drama, or are we just lucky as to the character of our scientists? What do you think?

Feeding Frenzy at the Wildfire Research Trough: Science Committee Wants More For “Premiere” Science Agencies

by

I’m seeing a trend here. Yesterday I posted that folks at CEQ and NSC (!) seemed to be making decisions that formerly would have been made by agencies.  Well, the Democratic Science Committee seems to have produced a bill to organize the wildfire research trough without USDA and DOI.   Sure,  they are looking out for the agencies they are responsible for (they aren’t responsible for other science agencies).. but it sounds a bit like a takeover bid  for research long done by USDA and DOI.   Maybe legislators need to organize/collaborate in a way that coordinates budgets and responsibilities across committees?

For some of us, when the Science Committee says “premier science agencies” we wince a little, since we know that doesn’t mean us at USDA and USGS. It means Big Science or the Science Establishment which are, of course, the agencies the Science Committee works with.   It seems like not much has changed since I was OSTP in 2000. I may have told this story before, but we have many new readers, so here goes.

For those who haven’t worked with the DC Science Establishment, you would be surprised how much of it is about getting more research money for their institutions; and for the Big Science agencies, that means Big Bucks.  I worked at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy at the Old Executive Office Building, now called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.  It is a terrific building to work in, very historic, fossils on the floors, boarded up fireplaces and so on. They had old-sized offices, which meant that we Agency folks detailed there (known as Agency Representatives) had desks right next to each other. Mine was next to a nice gentleman from DOE.

At the time, the Los Alamos fires were big news.  Sure enough,  folks from Los Alamos came in and gave their spiel about how it had been brought to their attention that wildfire is a thing, and they needed lots of bucks to study it.  This happened in our office, so of course I asked innocently “doesn’t the Forest Service study wildfire?”.  At the time, I was working for Forest Service R&D, and the wildfire research folks were in my group, in fact my Forest Service boss at the time was Bill Sommers, a fire/atmosphere/climate scientist.  The Los Alamos folks just looked at me.. as if to say “they don’t really count, don’t you get it?”

I once had lunch with a Stanford physicist who was my boss’s boss in the OSTP chain of command.  He said that the problem with USDA (no joke) was that they had capped indirect costs.  Which was ironic given the Stanford yacht and weddings apparently procured with indirect costs..   He said “you can’t get the best minds working on something with a cap like that, no one from MIT would touch it.”  I can’t really imagine MIT folks working on wheat breeding, for example, in Kansas.  I was polite, since he was my boss’s boss, there but.. the lesson is that people really thought this stuff, and it sounds like they still believe their own hype (I thought that was the occupational hazard of politicians, but..)

********************

I’ve noticed a generalized splatter of wildfire-ish funding patterns in the last few days.   The webinar yesterday at University of New Mexico on Chris Marsh’s work studying reforestation practices to help people planting trees was funded by NIFA, a USDA agency that funds extramural work, in this case via the AFRI competitive grant program.

Another useful study I ran across at NAU  on understanding peoples’ perceptions of wildfire was funded by NASA:

For her part, Grimm, who is the principal investigator on the project, got to work developing a survey to find out how people were getting information about wildfires and what information they might be missing.

“The purpose of the project is to really understand Flagstaff community members’ experiences — the challenges they might have experienced with wildfire communication,” Grimm said.

She wants to look at what people learned about operations such as fire mitigation, property defenses and evacuation preparedness. Then she wants to examine communication during an event — actual messaging about evacuation and on-the-ground firefighting efforts. Lastly, she seeks to research the qualitative experiences of individuals after a fire — how and if people learned about flood risk, insurance and funding availability.

I know it sounds somewhat like Katrin Edgeley’s social science work also at NAU, so I looked to see who was funding Katrin.  It looks like JFSP, NCAR and NSF (NCAR is what I call the Temple of Climate in Boulder, and is funded by NSF). Here’s what we know-wildfire is already a funding free-for-all among agencies.  And the D’s on the Science Committee want to increase the food at the trough for their favorite pigs.

***************************

But  maybe instead of more bucks, there should be a panel of the current science agencies and potential research users (imagine that!) to 1) figure out current overlaps and gaps and 2) require coordination among the agencies. Before any of them ask for more money.  Just a thought. But that would be a bill by the “Good Government” party which currently doesn’t exist. NSF’s budget for 2023 was 10.99 billion, while JFSP’s was 4 million.  Wouldn’t it make sense for some committee or board across agencies to recommend funding for agencies to do the research that they’re good at? And coordinate so research isn’t duplicative? And involve the communities that would be using the science in what are the problems and priorities?

******************

Looking back through my career, it seems like there has been a tendency to move research from “what people say they need help with” to “what scientists want to tell higher level decision makers to do.”  There’s also been a tendency to move from the specific and local to the abstract and international.  And coupled a tendency to leave out local practitioners from involvement in priorities and in some cases having a voice at all.  Check out this paper about practitioners and the IPCC.

With lots of remote sensing and machine learning, I fear that people will be left out of the equation.  They may become the target of social science to see how they get the right “messages” via NSF’s “disinformation” research, and aren’t given agency in making decisions about what is studied and how.  Missing that link, science may lose trust and legitimacy among ordinary people.  What we see is anecdotal, what they tell us they’ve observed from a satellite is “science.”  The time to strengthen those connections. between the people and what should be their science, is now. IMHO.

 

A Framework for Federal Scientific Integrity Policy and Practice

by

The 2021 Presidential Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking charges the Office of Science and Technology Policy to (1) review agency scientific integrity policy effectiveness and (2) to develop a framework for regular assessment and iterative improvement of agency scientific integrity policies and practices (Framework). In January, the Biden Administration released the Framework. It includes a “first-ever Government-wide definition of scientific integrity,” a roadmap of activities and outcomes to achieve an ideal state of scientific integrity, a Model Scientific Integrity Policy, as well as critical policy features and metrics that OSTP will use to iteratively assess agency progress.  Here is that definition:

Scientific integrity is the adherence to professional practices, ethical behavior, and the principles of honesty and objectivity when conducting, managing, using the results of, and communicating about science and scientific activities. Inclusivity, transparency, and protection from inappropriate influence are hallmarks of scientific integrity.

The 2021 Presidential Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking also charges OSTP and NSTC to “review agency scientific integrity policies and consider whether they prevent political interference in the conduct, management, communication, and use of science …”  The “Model Scientific Integrity Policy for United States Federal Agencies” says this:

It is the policy of this agency to: 1. Prohibit political interference or inappropriate influence in the funding, design, proposal, conduct, review, management, evaluation, or reporting of scientific activities and the use of scientific information.

Ensure that agency scientists may communicate their scientific activities objectively without political interference or inappropriate influence, while at the same time complying with agency policies and procedures for planning and conducting scientific activities, reporting scientific findings, and reviewing and releasing scientific products. Scientific products (e.g., manuscripts for scientific journals, presentations for workshops, conferences, and symposia) shall adhere to agency review procedures.

It defines these terms:

Political interference refers to interference conducted by political officials and/or motivated by political considerations.

Inappropriate influence refers to the attempt to shape or interfere in scientific activities or the communication about or use of scientific activities or findings against well-accepted scientific methods and theories or without scientific justification.

I found it rather interesting, given the way the these terms are used, that the 2021 Presidential Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking actually says this:

Improper political interference in the work of Federal scientists or other scientists who support the work of the Federal Government and in the communication of scientific facts undermines the welfare of the Nation, contributes to systemic inequities and injustices, and violates the trust that the public places in government to best serve its collective interests.

Executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall establish and enforce scientific-integrity policies that ban improper political interference in the conduct of scientific research and in the collection of scientific or technological data, and that prevent the suppression or distortion of scientific or technological findings, data, information, conclusions, or technical results.

Deliberate or careless?  Could there be “proper” political interference, especially given the distinction made about “inappropriate” influence (which is defined in terms of “interference”)?

Any way, it’s good to know someone is working on this aspect of scientific integrity.  And it seems to be helping – compare these results of the Union of Concerned Scientists 2023 surveys of scientists at federal agencies with those from 2018.  (Unfortunately, while the 2023 survey includes USDA, it did not include the Forest Service.)