2024 was a productive year for Purdue Forestry and Natural Resources across the three land grant mission areas of teaching, research and extension. We celebrated amazing research breakthroughs, hands-on learning both domestically and abroad and sharing natural resource knowledge with communities throughout the state. Here is a look at the most read FNR news stories from the year.
First, we will look at the Top 10 stories on FNR personnel and research from the FNR news website, then we will share the top five FNR extension stories and five bonus stories written about FNR from other sources.
2023 TOp News Stories from the FNR website
1 - HTIRC Partners with Tree Pro - The Purdue Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center has signed a commercial partnership agreement with Tree Pro to distribute select hardwood seedlings from its breeding program beginning in March 2025. The partnership, which will mark the HTIRC’s first commercial release of seedlings in its 25-year history, will see West Lafayette, Ind., based Tree Pro distribute bare root seedlings of six species across its timber select, conservation and wildlife lines.
2 - Metazoa Beer to Benefit Hellbender Lab - Metazoa Brewing Company and the Indiana Lakes Management Society have teamed up to collaborate on a new Indiana beer, which will raise money for the Help the Hellbender lab at Purdue.
3 - Publication Teaches Landowners How to Support Oak Hickory Ecosystems - Oak-hickory forests, which are comprised of a variety of different tree species, shrubs, grasses, sedges and wildflowers, as well as wildlife, including songbirds, are important to Indiana’s biodiversity. Learn how you can support oak-hickory ecosystems on your property through a new publication, “Forest Stewardship for Oak-Hickory Ecosystems in Indiana,” produced by Let the Sun Shine In - Indiana.
4 - Researchers Aim to Support Hardwood Industry with Formation of Wood Utilization Team - Researchers from Purdue Forestry and Natural Resources are teaming up with partners across the state to stimulate, expand and support the utilization of hardwood lumber by creating the Indiana Wood Utilization Team (IWUT). Goals for the project are to increase forest health and resilience, competitiveness of the wood products industry and economic development in rural areas of the state.
5 - FNR Welcomes New Faces to Faculty, Staff - The Purdue Department of Forestry and Natural Resources includes many new faces for the 2024-25 school year, including three new faculty members and several others who have joined FNR’s ranks since the beginning of the 2023-24 academic year.
6 - FNR Announces 2024 Career Award Recipients - The Purdue Department of Forestry and Natural Resources has selected six individuals to be honored for their career achievements at an awards ceremony in April 2025. Dr. John A. Kershaw Jr. (BSF 1984, MS 1986) and Betty Jane “BJ” Meadows (MS 1963) were selected as the department’s 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award honorees. Dr. Jacob Goheen (MS 2002) was named as the FNR Distinguished Alumni Award winner and Dr. Ken Kellner (MS 2012, PhD 2015) was chosen as FNR’s Outstanding Young Alumni recipient. In addition, Dr. Joe Robb (BSF 1982) will be honored with the Chase S. Osborn Award in Wildlife Conservation, while Dr. Zackary Delisle (PhD 2023) will receive the Chase S. Osborn Early Career Award.
7 - Researchers Study Deer-Vehicle Collision Reduction - It is in the vested interest of both humans and wildlife to reduce potential traffic collisions. Researchers in the Purdue Department of Forestry and Natural Resources and with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources looked at one possible option to do so in a five-year study involving the development and use of deer-reduction zones, areas where targeted recreational hunting was utilized to reduce animal-vehicle collisions.
8 - FNR Celebrates Students at Awards, Scholarship Ceremony - Purdue Forestry and Natural Resources recognized the department’s student award and scholarship recipients at a ceremony on April 17. Honorees included outstanding student award winners: Lydia Pultorak (Outstanding Freshman), Rebeca Appelmann (Outstanding Sophomore), Alyssa Johnson (Outstanding Junior) and Alex Dudley (Outstanding Senior).
9 - Dunning Named Legendary Leader - Dr. Barny Dunning was recognized among a group of six individuals who have ventured abroad to enrich their teaching, research and extension programs. The group received the Legendary Leaders award from the Purdue College of Agriculture for their work with study abroad programs.
10 - Soundscapes Study Will Record Animal Behavior During Eclipse - The solar eclipse on April 8 has drawn the attention of scientists and the general public alike. Beyond the visual uniqueness of the event, many are curious how the eclipse will affect animal behavior. Dr. Bryan Pijanowski and his team are beyond curious and have set out to document species from bats to insects, mammals and birds through a small study at the Southeast Purdue Agricultural Center (SEPAC). The study, designed to record how a variety of animals respond to the eclipse, will utilize a variety of microphones and acoustic sensors on land and in the water.
Top 5 Extension Stories on the FNR News Page in 2023
Our most read stories from the extension realm came from the Intro to Trees series, which gave readers a glimpse into common trees of Indiana by sharing about all of the species featured in the new extension publication “An Introduction to Trees of Indiana.” Each story featured each species including how to identify it, where to find it and how the wood is used.
1 - Intro to Trees of Indiana: Flowering Dogwood - Meet the flowering dogwood or Cornus florida. This small native Indiana tree has beautiful white blossoms in the spring, and red to maroon foliage in the fall. It has opposite leaf arrangement with simple leaves featuring a venation pattern that sees the veins angle and sweep along the edges of the leaf and curve to the tip. The bark is a rough alligator hide texture that ranges from light to medium gray. The showy white flowers, which appear in April or May, are followed by berry-like fruit clusters that are green at first, later turning red.
2 – Intro to Trees of Indiana: White Pine - Meet the eastern white pine or Pinus strobus, the only five-needled pine native to Indiana. Each bundle of needles or fascicle, has five needles, which are typically between two and four inches long and blue green in color. The bark is dark and smooth in young trees and heavily furrowed in older trees. The cones are up to eight inches long, have relatively thin scales and often covered in white sap or pitch.
3 – Intro to Trees of Indiana: Red Cedar - Meet Eastern red cedar or Juniperus virginiana, one of the most common coniferous trees in Indiana. This evergreen tree, also known as aromatic cedar, is unique in that it has both scale-like and sharp-pointed leaves. The red cedar features a shreddy, gray-brown bark on both the trunk and branches, and it produces a small cone, which resembles a berry that is blue in color.
4 - Intro to Trees of Indiana: Hackberry - Meet the hackberry or Celtis occidentalis. This species is easily identified by its single-tooth margined leaves, which are lopsided with one side slightly higher than the other at the base of the twig. The gray, ashy bark is often warty/bumpy with smooth spots in between, although it may be fairly smooth like beech with warts and ridges spaced throughout. The fruit of the hackberry are small hard black berries, which are favored by birds.
5 – Intro to Trees of Indiana: Osage Orange - Meet the Osage Orange or Maclura. Also known as the hedge apple, this species has oval shaped leaves with point tips, twigs with sharp thorns, fibrous looking bark with an orange undertone, and large yellow-green colored bumpy fruit. While this species is not native to Indiana, it is found throughout the state, where it was planted for fence rows and fence post plantings due to its decay resistant wood.
Links to all posts related to the Intro to Trees series are available online on the Fifty Common Trees of Indiana page.
More FNR Extension posts are available on the FNR Extension website and GotNature! blog.
Top 5 Stories About or Featuring FNR Personnel in 2023
Stories about FNR personnel and research and featuring the expertise of FNR faculty and staff were written by several other entities across the university and country. Here are a few of the top stories written outside the department.
1 - Purdue AI Urban Tree Monitoring and Analysis Initiative to Improve City Life - Drs. Daniel Aliaga
and Songlin Fei have received a $5 million fund from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for uTREE (Urban Tree Resilience and Environmental Equity), a project that focuses on using AI to obtain information about tree density, species and location, and changes in tree counts over time and events. The uTREE team will achieve this goal using the first cloud-based cyberinfrastructure (CI) to support a national (and potentially worldwide) urban tree inventory. The CI will be used in multidisciplinary urban science, engineering and planning to create and maintain safer and more livable cities.
2 - AI Learns to Simulate How Trees Grow and Shape in Response to Their Environments - A research team from Purdue University’s Department of Computer Science and Institute for Digital Forestry, with collaborator Sören Pirk at Kiel University in Germany, has discovered that artificial intelligence can simulate tree growth and shape.The researchers used deep learning, a branch of machine learning within AI, to generate growth models for maple, oak, pine, walnut and other tree species, both with and without leaves.
3 - Studies Assess Feasibility of Aquaculture Wastewater Treatment Methods - Aquaculture production operations that help feed the world’s growing population also generate polluted wastewater that harms the environment. Four studies published by Purdue University scientists since last May document the feasibility of previously unproven methods for successfully treating the wastewater. All four studies were funded by a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture aimed at increasing Midwestern seafood production and consumption.
4 - Genomic Analysis of Prairie Chickens Cast Doubt on Species Classifications - A rigorous genomics study of prairie chickens in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas led by Purdue University scientists has found evidence of hybridization between species with no clear indication of genetic problems such as inbreeding. The scientists published their findings July 24, 2024, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus.
5 - U.S. Department of Energy Taps Purdue Extension to Lead New Indian Collaborative for Renewable Energy - Purdue Extension has received a three-year, $1.9 million award to lead an Indiana Renewable Energy Planning and Technical Engagement Collaborative. The collaborative will be a hub to help Indiana communities with renewable energy planning, evaluation and decision-making.
