Beverly Elizabeth Law
Born
St. Paul, Minnesota
Alma materOregon State University
Scientific career
InstitutionsOregon State University
ThesisRemote sensing of radiation intercepted by vegetation to estimate aboveground net primary production across western Oregon (1994)
Doctoral advisorRichard Waring

Beverly Law is an American forest scientist. She is professor emeritus at Oregon State University known for her research on forest ecosystems, especially with respect to carbon cycling, fire, and how human actions impact future climate.

Early life and education

Law was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and grew up on a lake where her grandfather taught her about the woods; she describes herself as someone who loved birds, forests, and being outdoors.[1] Going to college, she was split between marine biology and forest ecology, but decided on forest ecology after taking a class from Katherine Ewel.[2] She earned her B.S. in forest management from the University of Florida in 1980.[3] After college she worked at multiple places including AT&T, the University of Florida, and the Environmental Protection Agency in Oregon[1] before going to Oregon State University where she earned her PhD. in forest science from Oregon State University in 1993.[3]

Career

Following her Ph.D., Law was a postdoc at Oregon State University in the College of Oceanic & Atmospheric Sciences until 1998 when she joined the faculty of the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. In 2006 she was promoted to professor; as of 2021 Law is professor emeritus at Oregon State University.[4][3]

In a 2018 oral history interview, Law noted that she was always interested in a policy component to her research because the research is funded by tax payer dollars,[1] and this is evident when she discusses retaining large, old growth trees that can capture carbon through presentations to Congress,[5] presentations at websites,[6] and newspapers.[7][8]

Research

Law's research combines direct measurements of forest data, remote sensing, and modeling that spans from regional to global scales. Her Ph.D. research established the metrics needed to estimate aerial coverage of different types of vegetation from space[9] and then used that information to assess net primary production in Oregon.[10] At Oregon State, she quantified temporal changes in respiration in a pine forest through measuring changes in carbon dioxide levels.[11] While building the equipment needed to measure photosynthesis in this project she realized that the spikes in carbon dioxide were caused by cars waiting at a nearby traffic light which she described as an "ah-ha" moment that expanded her interest in global change research.[2]

More recently, Law's research has examined the flux of gases between the land and the atmosphere. She is the lead investigator for the Oregon site of the Ameriflux project, one of the global network of sites within FLUXNET that use eddy covariance to measure carbon, water, and energy fluxes from terrestrial ecosystems.[12][13] Law's research has revealed that allowing old-growth forests to live longer increases carbon storage by forests relative to planting of new forests.[14] A 2020 investigation by ProPublica revealed that the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, a state-funded agency, was acting as a lobbying arm for the timber industry while discrediting this research[15] despite the fact that the paper passed peer review.[16]

In 2006, Law's student Daniel Donato, published a paper on the role of logging in the recovery of an area after a fire based on his research following the 2002 Biscuit Fire.[17] The paper was controversial (e.g., Biscuit Fire publication controversy) and resulted in a series of articles following up the initial publication.[18] Subsequent research by Law and colleagues revealed carbon emissions from the fire was 16 times higher than the region's annual production in the years prior to the fire.[19]

Selected publications

Awards and honors

  • Research.com Best Female Scientist 2022[20]
  • Fellow, American Geophysical Union (2014)[21]
  • Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow (2004)[22]
  • Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award, World Meteorological Organization for Law et al. (2002) paper,[14] awarded 2004[23]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Bev Law Oral History Interview · Special Collections & Archives Research Center". scarc.library.oregonstate.edu. Oregon State University. January 5, 2018. Retrieved 29 July 2021.
  2. 1 2 Law, Beverly E.; Shekar, Rachel G. (2021). "Researcher profile: Beverly Law". Global Change Biology. 27 (8): 1501–1503. Bibcode:2021GCBio..27.1501L. doi:10.1111/gcb.15495. ISSN 1365-2486. PMC 8048792. PMID 33494120.
  3. 1 2 3 "Beverly Law CV" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-07-29.
  4. ↑ "Law, Beverly | College of Forestry Directory". directory.forestry.oregonstate.edu. Retrieved 2021-07-27.
  5. ↑ "Subcommittee Hearing: Wildfire in a Warming World: Opportunities to Improve Community Collaboration, Climate Resilience, and Workforce Capacity" (PDF). House Committee on Natural Resources. April 29, 2021. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-05-01. Retrieved July 29, 2021.
  6. ↑ Law, Beverly; Moomaw, William (February 22, 2021). "Keeping trees in the ground where they are already growing is an effective low-tech way to slow climate change". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 2021-02-22. Retrieved 2021-07-27.
  7. ↑ DellaSala, Dominick; Law, Beverly; Moomaw, William R. (1 December 2020). "A strategic natural-carbon reserve to fight climate change". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 27 July 2021.
  8. ↑ Schlesinger, William H.; Law, Beverly; Sterman, John; Moomaw, William R. (2018-05-03). "Opinion | Pruitt Is Wrong on Burning Forests for Energy". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-07-27.
  9. ↑ Law, Beverly E.; Waring, Richard H. (1994). "Remote Sensing of Leaf Area Index and Radiation Intercepted by Understory Vegetation". Ecological Applications. 4 (2): 272–279. doi:10.2307/1941933. ISSN 1939-5582. JSTOR 1941933.
  10. ↑ Law, Beverly E.; Waring, Richard H. (1994). "Combining Remote Sensing and Climatic Data to Estimate Net Primary Production Across Oregon". Ecological Applications. 4 (4): 717–728. doi:10.2307/1942002. ISSN 1939-5582. JSTOR 1942002.
  11. ↑ Law, Beverly E.; Ryan, Michael G.; Anthoni, Peter M. (1999). "Seasonal and annual respiration of a ponderosa pine ecosystem". Global Change Biology. 5 (2): 169–182. Bibcode:1999GCBio...5..169L. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2486.1999.00214.x. ISSN 1365-2486. S2CID 39050007.
  12. ↑ Wilson, Kell; Goldstein, Allen; Falge, Eva; Aubinet, Marc; Baldocchi, Dennis; Berbigier, Paul; Bernhofer, Christian; Ceulemans, Reinhart; Dolman, Han; Field, Chris; Grelle, Achim; Ibrom, Andreas; Law, B.E; Kowalski, Andy; Meyers, Tilden; Moncrieff, John; Monson, Russ; Oechel, Walter; Tenhunen, John; Valentini, Riccardo; Verma, Shashi (2002-12-02). "Energy balance closure at FLUXNET sites". Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. 113 (1–4): 223–243. Bibcode:2002AgFM..113..223W. doi:10.1016/S0168-1923(02)00109-0. ISSN 0168-1923. S2CID 9223999.
  13. ↑ Baldocchi, Dennis; Falge, Eva; Gu, Lianhong; Olson, Richard; Hollinger, David; Running, Steve; Anthoni, Peter; Bernhofer, Ch; Davis, Kenneth; Evans, Robert; Fuentes, Jose (2001-11-01). "FLUXNET: A New Tool to Study the Temporal and Spatial Variability of Ecosystem-Scale Carbon Dioxide, Water Vapor, and Energy Flux Densities". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 82 (11): 2415–2434. Bibcode:2001BAMS...82.2415B. doi:10.1175/1520-0477(2001)082<2415:FANTTS>2.3.CO;2. ISSN 0003-0007. S2CID 29768827.
  14. 1 2 Law, Beverly E.; Hudiburg, Tara W.; Berner, Logan T.; Kent, Jeffrey J.; Buotte, Polly C.; Harmon, Mark E. (2018-04-03). "Land use strategies to mitigate climate change in carbon dense temperate forests". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (14): 3663–3668. Bibcode:2018PNAS..115.3663L. doi:10.1073/pnas.1720064115. PMC 5889652. PMID 29555758.
  15. ↑ Davis, Rob (August 4, 2020). "What Happened When a Public Institute Became a De Facto Lobbying Arm of the Timber Industry". ProPublica. Archived from the original on 2021-07-22. Retrieved 2021-07-27.
  16. ↑ Harkins, Luke (2021-05-25). "The state of Oregon should have nothing to do with the timber lobby". Vanguard. Retrieved 2021-07-29.
  17. ↑ Donato, D. C.; Fontaine, J. B.; Campbell, J. L.; Robinson, W. D.; Kauffman, J. B.; Law, B. E. (2006-01-20). "Post-Wildfire Logging Hinders Regeneration and Increases Fire Risk". Science. 311 (5759): 352. doi:10.1126/science.1122855. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 16400111. S2CID 28709932.
  18. ↑ Donato, D. C. (2006-08-04). "Response to Comments on "Post-Wildfire Logging Hinders Regeneration and Increases Fire Risk"". Science. 313 (5787): 615c. doi:10.1126/science.1126583. ISSN 0036-8075. S2CID 130296656.
  19. ↑ Campbell, John; Donato, Dan; Azuma, David; Law, Beverly (2007). "Pyrogenic carbon emission from a large wildfire in Oregon, United States". Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. 112 (G4): n/a. Bibcode:2007JGRG..112.4014C. doi:10.1029/2007JG000451. ISSN 2156-2202.
  20. ↑ "Beverly e. Law: H-index & Awards - Academic Profile".
  21. ↑ "Law". Honors Program. Retrieved 2021-07-27.
  22. ↑ "FELLOWS (By Name)". Earth Leadership. Retrieved 2021-07-27.
  23. ↑ "Norbert Gerbier-Mumm International Award". World Meteorological Organization. 2015-12-09. Archived from the original on January 7, 2017. Retrieved 2021-07-27.
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