In 2008, scientist and FES assistant professor Bryan Black took core samples the diameter of a pencil from a forest near the north Oregon coast. Most of the trees were hemlocks and Douglas fir that had been undisturbed for about 90 years.  The hemlocks were growing normally. But Black was shocked at what he saw in the Douglas fir samples.  “In 1984, these Douglas fir all but shut down,” Black says. “In fact, their growth was so slow that it wasn’t even forming wood around the whole circumference of the tree.”