Mays and Jensen are watersheds in the transition zone where central Oregon becomes basin-and-range country and the human population drops from sparse to almost nonexistent. It is an area that gets less than 13 inches of precipitation a year, forcing even drought-adapted plants to battle for moisture. Western juniper has spent the last century creeping down from these hilltops and expanding across the range where it is often victorious in the high-stakes competition for water. Oregon State University and Bureau of Land Management scientists are comparing the two watersheds to see how much water the juniper trees are using. The scientists chose Mays and Jensen because the two watersheds have so much in common. Both are similar in topography and size—about 260 acres each. When the study began in the 1990s, both were covered with juniper, some spiky and scraggly and some towering and regal. Between the trees were patches of sagebrush and clumps of grasses, many of them dead or dying. In 2005, after 12 years of study, the researchers removed 90 percent of the juniper growing in Mays while leaving Jensen untouched. The cut opened up the Mays landscape, exposing the hills and valleys; trees greater than 130 years old were left standing on the rocky ridge lines. Soon after the trees came down, Tim Deboodt, an OSU Extension range management specialist, began measuring a change in the depth to groundwater in Mays. The spring in the Mays watershed began registering a significantly increased flow after the cut. Into the late summer, the Mays spring continued to flow at a higher rate compared to the spring in Jensen and compared to previous years’ flow data before the cut. In April 2007, Deboodt measured the Mays spring’s flow at about 40 gallons per minute; the Jensen spring, less than a half mile away in the uncut watershed, was running at about 14 gallons per minute. Juniper inhibits the soil from retaining and holding water, so there is less groundwater available throughout the growing season. With its wide-reaching roots that can extend more than 40 feet from the tree, and a canopy that can stop more than half of all precipitation from reaching the ground, juniper dominates the landscape where it invades. "It's not uncommon to see a landscape of nothing but trees with bare ground in between trunks,” said Deboodt. “The situation leads to increased erosion from storm events and an inability of the land to soak up precipitation for later use.”</p> “The new vegetation coming up in the Mays watershed is capturing precipitation and giving it time to infiltrate into the soil,” said Deboodt. “If we can get water into the soil higher in the watershed, we decrease the chance that soil will wash away in the lower reach, and we save water that can be used by plants and animals later in the season when it’s really needed.”

Pacific Northwest Regional Water Quality Coordination Project Partners Land Grant Universities Alaska Cooperative Extension Service Contact Fred Sorensen: 907-786-6311 http://www.uaf.edu/ces/water/ University Publications: http://www.alaska.edu/uaf/ces/publications/ Idaho University of Idaho Cooperative Extension System Contact Bob Mahler: 208-885-7025 http://www.uidaho.edu/wq/wqhome.html University Publications: http://info.ag.uidaho.edu/Catalog/catalog.html Oregon Oregon State University Extension Service Contact Mike Gamroth: 541-737-3316 http://extension.oregonstate.edu/ University Publications: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/ Washington Washington State University WSU Extension Contact Bob Simmons: 360-427-9670 ext. 690 http://wawater.wsu.edu/ University Publications: http://pubs.wsu.edu/ Northwest Indian College Contact Charlotte Clausing: 360-392-4319 cclausing@nwic.edu or http://www.nwic.edu/ Water Resource Research Institutes Water and Environmental Research Center (Alaska) http://www.uaf.edu/water/ Idaho Water Resources Research Institute http://www.boise.uidaho.edu/ Institute for Water and Watersheds (Oregon) http://water.oregonstate.edu/ State of Washington Water Research Center http://www.swwrc.wsu.edu/ Environmental Protection Agency EPA, Region 10 The Pacific Northwest http://www.epa.gov/r10earth/ Office of Research and Development, Corvallis Laboratory http://www.epa.gov/wed/ For more information contact Jan Seago at 206-553-0038 or seago.jan@epa.gov
	The Project Land Grant Universities, Water Research Institutes and EPA Region 10 have formed a partnership to provide research and education to communities about protecting or restoring the quality of water resources. This partnership is being supported in part by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Our Goal and Approach The goal of this Project is to provide leadership for water resources research, education and outreach to help people, industry and governments to prevent and solve current and emerging water quality and quantity problems. The approach to achieving this goal is for the Partners to develop a coordinated regional water quality effort based on, and strengthening, individual state programs. Our Strengths The Project promotes regional collaboration by acknowledging existing programs and successful efforts; assessing program gaps; identifying potential issues for cross-agency and private sector collaboration; and developing a clearinghouse of expertise and programs. In addition, the Project establishes or enhances partnerships with federal, state and local environmental and water resource management agencies, such as by placing a University Liaison within the offices of EPA Region 10.
	Overgrazing, fire control, and favorable climatic conditions during the late 1800s and early 1900s are largely responsible for the rampant encroachment of western juniper, which increased ten-fold during the twentieth century, according to Deboodt. “On its own, juniper isn’t a bad tree,” said John Buckhouse, an OSU scientist in the Department of Rangeland Ecology and Management. “But it is opportunistic, and fire suppression has created a situation that is not natural.” The “paired” watershed experiment is an attempt to reestablish the landscape of the West’s presettlement era, when wildfire periodically burned the area and controlled the growth of small trees. Intermittent burns kept the juniper in check and helped ensure species diversity in the parched high desert. “We have learned that management generally works best when we attempt to mimic nature,” said Michael Fisher, an OSU rangeland researcher at OSU’s Cascade Campus in Bend. “In this case we are using a chainsaw as a surrogate for fire; the tree harvest was planned and carried out to simulate a natural burn.” “Removing the trees results in a more sustainable ecosystem,” said Buckhouse. “Where juniper has been removed, we are seeing the regeneration of sagebrush and grasses; and private landowners are telling us that springs are flowing where none were known before.”
	National Water Quality Program Areas The four land grant universities in the Pacific Northwest have aligned our water resource extension and research efforts with eight themes of the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Animal Waste Management Drinking Water and Human Health Environmental Restoration Nutrient and Pesticide Management Pollution Assessment and Prevention Watershed Management Water Conservation and Agricultural Water Management Water Policy and Economics
	This material is based upon work supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U. S. Department of Agriculture, under Agreement No 2008-51130-4734.

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