I've been covering the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for the past year or so and just wrote about it here on MNN last week.

Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography traveled out to a spot of sea 1,000 miles from shore and were sad to find plastic everywhere.

For a mere $10,000, you can book a seat on a 20-day working cruise to a giant patch of floating plastic trash.

A new study by two graduate students from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego found that a little over nine percent of the fish that swim ne

The trash accumulating in the Pacific Ocean — scientists estimate there are 1.5 million tons of tsunami debris alone — is arriving on the West Coast.

A single-celled, coral-killing creature with 'devil horns' has been found on microplastics in the open ocean.

Angela Sun investigated several aspects of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in her documentary "Plastic Paradise."

Likely caused by pollution, levels of mercury in Pacific yellowfin tuna have been on the rise steadily since 1998.

Once the 2011 tsunami rolled back into the ocean, it swept marine life as far away as California.

A huge sea of plastic trash is swirling in the North Pacific — part of an even broader plastic plague that's growing in oceans worldwide.

LCC Asia Pacific nominated as a finalist in multiple deal & industry categories

We are pleased to announce the unveiling of our new brand, Pacific Gate Partners, focused exclusively on cross-border transactions for Western Technology companies in the China market.

World-class property first time on market in one of America's most desirable cities

Glowing, a leading customer engagement messaging software company, today announced that Tat Meng Chee has joined the company to lead business development in the Asia-Pacific region.

New neighborhoods feature latest HomeSmart™ technology

53rd Pacific Marine Expo, the West Coast's largest commercial marine and fishing trade show, set for the CenturyLink Field Event Center Nov. 21 through Nov. 23. Last year's Expo attracted more than 6,000 visitors from 40 states and 24 countries.

"Pebble Mine: The Changing Minds" Keynote Panel set to provide an in-depth discussion of the recent Army Corp of Engineers' Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Pebble Mine Development in Bristol Bay at 2019 Pacific Marine Expo.

Pacific Mayor Leanne Guier and 12 other mayors, councilmembers and a city manager elected to lead the Board of Directors of the Sound Cities Association, which provides a regional voice for more than one million people in King County, Washington.

53rd Pacific Marine Expo will be held from Thursday, November 21, through Saturday, November 23, at CenturyLink Field Event Center in Seattle. Register today at www.PacificMarineExpo.com.

Worldwide Parcel Services are pleased to be involved in the transport of goods to some of the more exotic places in the world and there can be few places in the world more exotic than the Pacific islands.

The annual International Finance Awards ceremony for the Asia Pacific region was held at the Waldorf Astoria, Bangkok, on January 31, 2020.

WPG's Flair Collection Continues The Design Excellence This Award-Winning Builder Has Delivered To California Desert Communities

Washington Wheat Welcomes Secretary Perdue

Freehold Communities' Miralon Is One of The Nation's Largest New "Agri-hoods"

In India, Mumbai has emerged as the most expensive city for expatriates and was ranked 118 in the Index. Last year Mumbai was ranked 114th on the list.

Global investors now more confident about India than China: Pacific Paradigm Advisors

Grand Canyon will celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/grand-canyon-to-celebrate-asian-american-heritage-month.htm

Earth's climate is changing, as evidenced by warming temperatures, increased temperature variability, fluctuating precipitation patterns, and climate-related environmental disturbances.

Much of the water supply in the Pacific Northwest originates in national forests. It sustains the region’s aquatic ecosystems, agriculture, hydroelectric power, and community water supplies.

As a signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United States annually compiles a report on the nation's carbon flux—the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere compared to the amount stored by terrestrial landscapes.

Over the past 30 years, the Pacific Northwest Interagency Natural Areas Committee has promoted the establishment and management of natural areas in Oregon and Washington--protected areas devoted to research, education, and conservation of biodiversity.

This report chronicles a large-scale effort to map place values across the Pacific Northwest Region (Washington and Oregon) of the U.S. Forest Service.

Provides historical information on log harvest; employment in the forest industries; international trade in logs, lumber, and chips; and volume and average prices of sawtimber stumpage sold by national forests.

Forest managers are seeking practical guidance on how to adapt their current practices and, if necessary, their management goals, in response to climate change. Science-management collaboration was initiated on national forests in eastern Washington where resource managers showed a keen interest in science-based options for adapting to climate change at a 2-day workshop. Scientists and managers reviewed current climate change science and identified resources vulnerable to expected climate change. Vulnerabilities related to vegetation and habitat management included potential reductions in forest biodiversity and low forest resilience to changing disturbance regimes. The vulnerabilities related to aquatic and infrastructure resources included changing water quality and quantity, the risk to roads and other facilities from changes to hydrologic regimes, and the potential loss of at-risk aquatic species and habitats. Managers then worked in facilitated groups to identify adaptations that could be implemented through management and planning to reduce the vulnerability of key resources to climate change. The identified adaptations were grouped under two major headings: Increasing Ecological Resiliency to Climate Change, and Increasing Social and Economic Resiliency to Climate Change. The information generated from the science-management collaborative represents an initial and important step in identifying and prioritizing tangible steps to address climate change in forest management. Next would be the development of detailed implementation strategies that address the identified management adaptations..

The Pacific Northwest Research Station launched a Biodiversity Initiative to assist natural resource professionals in integrating complex biodiversity concepts into natural resource management processes. We canvassed clients from various affiliations to determine the main challenges they face in biodiversity management, to define their information needs, and to understand how best to deliver biodiversity information within a collaborative framework. The biodiversity management challenges that emerged included (1) the lack of well-defined biodiversity management policies, (2) understanding and quantifying the interaction effects between a number of factors (e.g., disturbance types, management practices) and biodiversity, (3) the lack of applied biodiversity monitoring strategies, (4) difficulty in locating and accessing biodiversity information, and (5) balancing conflicting values relating to biodiversity. We also list the biodiversity information product needs of clients, as well as preferred technology transfer methods, and we discuss the future direction of the Biodiversity Initiative.

The Pacific Northwest is one of the world's major timber-producing regions, and its capacity to produce wood on a sustained-yield basis is widely recognized. Nonetheless, there has been increasing public interest in assuring that forests are being sustainably managed, as well as a desire by landowners to demonstrate their commitment to responsible stewardship.

WestProPlus is an add-in program developed to work with Microsoft Excel to simulate the growth and management of all-aged Douglas-fir-western hemlock (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco-Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.) stands in Oregon and Washington. Its built-in growth model was calibrated from 2,706 permanent plots in the Douglas-fir-western hemlock forest type in Oregon and Washington. Stands are described by the number of trees per acre in each of nineteen 2-in diameter classes in four species groups: Douglas-fir, other shadeintolerant species, western hemlock, and other shade-tolerant species. WestProPlus allows managers to predict stand development by year and for many decades from a specific initial state. The simulations can be stochastic or deterministic. The stochastic simulations are based on bootstrapping of the observed errors in models of stand growth, timber prices, and interest rate. When used in stochastic simulations, this bootstrap technique simulates random variables by sampling randomly (with replacement) from actual observations of the variable, rather than from an assumed distribution. Users can choose cutting regimes by specifying the interval between harvests (cutting cycle) and a target distribution of trees remaining after harvest. A target distribution can be a reverse-J-shaped distribution or any other desired distribution. Diameterlimit cuts can also be simulated. Tabulated and graphic results show diameter distributions, basal area, volumes by log grade, income, net present value, and indices of stand diversity by species and size. This manual documents the program installation and activation, provides suggestions for working with Excel, and gives background information on West-ProPlus's models. It offers a comprehensive tutorial in the form of two practical examples that explain how to start the program, enter simulation data, execute a simulation, compare simulations, and plot summary statistics.

Timber markets in the United States are areas where timber prices tend to be uniform because of the continuous interactions of buyers and sellers. These markets are highly competitive, volatile, and change relentlessly. This paper looks at how market interactions in the Pacific Northwest have responded to changes in underlying determinants of market behavior and government actions that have influenced supply or demand. Several messages emerge from timber markets about price reporting and changing definitions of price, long-term price trends, timber as an investment, impacts of market intervention, relations among different markets, and implications for future stewardship. The enduring message is that landowners and managers respond to price signals arising from market interactions, and their actions create the forests inherited by future generations.

This paper synthesizes the existing literature about traditional and local ecological knowledge relating to biodiversity in Pacific Northwest forests in order to assess what is needed to apply this knowledge to forest biodiversity conservation efforts. We address four topics: (1) views and values people have relating to biodiversity, (2) the resource use and management practices of local forest users and their effects on biodiversity, (3) methods and models for integrating traditional and local ecological knowledge into biodiversity conservation on public and private lands, and (4) challenges to applying traditional and local ecological knowledge for biodiversity conservation. We focus on the ecological knowledge of three groups who inhabit the region: American Indians, family forest owners, and commercial nontimber forest product (NTFP) harvesters.

This paper describes a growth model for young plantations of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) growing in the Pacific Northwest. The overall model has three major components. The first is a yield model for diameter and height distributions describing stands prior to pruning or precommercial thinning. The second component is an annual per-acre net increment model adapted from a recent model for Douglas-fir plantations in New Zealand; thinning and pruning are features of the model. The third component is growth equations for cohorts of individual trees; the results from this component are adjusted to match those from the second component. Fitting data are from Stand Management Cooperative experiments, with top heights generally below 75 ft. An intended use of the model is the evaluation of pruning regimes, in conjunction with the ORGANON model for growth at older ages, and TREEVAL model for clear-wood recovery and economic evaluation.

Forests of the Pacific Northwest have been an epicenter for the evolution of truffle fungi with over 350 truffle species and 55 genera currently identified. Truffle fungi develop their reproductive fruit-bodies typically belowground, so they are harder to find and study than mushrooms that fruit aboveground. Nevertheless, over the last five decades, the Corvallis Forest Mycology program of the Pacific Northwest Research Station has amassed unprecedented knowledge on the diversity and ecology of truffles in the region. Truffle fungi form mycorrhizal symbioses that benefit the growth and survival of many tree and understory plants. Truffle fruit-bodies serve as a major food souce for many forest-dwelling mammals. A few truffle species are commercially harvested for gourmet consumption in regional restaurants. This publication explores the biology and ecology of truffle fungi in the Pacific Northwest, their importance in forest ecosystems, and effects of various silvicultural practices on sustaining truffle populations. General management principles and considerations to sustain this valuable fungal resource are provided.

Population growth in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska is expected to increase demand for outdoor recreation on public land. This trend will be tempered by changes in the sociodemographic composition of the population. Among sociodemographic characteristics, different ages and incomes correspond to different participation rates. Although older Americans are participating more, participation is still lower among this group for active pursuits. Hence, as the population ages, demand for passive activities may increase. Low-income people participate at a much lower rate than higher income people in outdoor recreation, and the growing disparity between the wealthy and poor may create inequities in opportunities for participation. State recreation planning documents for Oregon, Washington, and Alaska have identified this issue as a significant concern for recreation providers. Another important factor in recreation trends in the region is ethnicity: different ethnic groups participate in outdoor recreation at different rates, exhibit some different preferences for specific activities, and use recreation sites in different ways. In Alaska, the number of Asian/Pacific Islanders is expected to quadruple by 2025; in Oregon, the Hispanic population may triple by 2025; and in Washington, both these segments of the population may double.

Timber availability, aboveground tree biomass, and changes in aboveground carbon pools are important consequences of landscape management.

Sustaining farm and forest land has been an important goal in the United States because of the role these lands play in the livelihoods of rural residents while also providing desired open space benefits. However, land use policies to protect rural lands often involve a tension between balancing public interests regarding economic and open space goals with the private interests and property rights of farm and forest land owners.

In a sun-baked, grassy clearing on the east side of the Cascade Range in central Washington, Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station landscape ecologist Miles Hemstrom and a group of ecologists and land managers from the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) gather in the shade of a ponderosa pine.

Provides historical information on log harvest; employment in the forest industries; international trade in logs, lumber, and chips; and volume and average prices of sawtimber stumpage sold by national forests.

Nationally, there is growing public interest in and policy pressure for developing alternative and renewable sources of energy. Wind energy facilities in the Pacific Northwest expanded rapidly over the past decade, as a result of state policies that encourage wind energy development. While much of the development thus far has occurred on private lands, there is interest in expanding onto federal land. However, there are concerns about the impacts of wind energy on wildlife. Wind energy facilities have the potential to harm wildlife both directly through collisions with turbines and transmission lines, and indirectly by modifying habitat. This report synthesizes the available scientific literature on potential wind energy facility impacts to wildlife, with a focus on the Pacific Northwest (Oregon and Washington), and summarizes the current best management practices recommended in federal and state guidelines for wind energy development. Research gaps in our understanding of wind energy impacts on wildlife remain. Future research needs include long-term, multisite, experimental studies of wind energy impacts on wildlife, improved ability to estimate population-level and cumulative impacts of wind energy facilities on wildlife, and better knowledge of key wildlife species' migration and demography.