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21. [Article] The Development of Low-/No-Emission Electric Vehicle Infrastructure in the Portland Metro Region: A Roadmap
The shift from combustion engines to low- and no-emission electric vehicles is underway and gaining momentum. During the last year, Oregon has become an active player in the electric vehicle arena, with ...Citation Citation
- Title:
- The Development of Low-/No-Emission Electric Vehicle Infrastructure in the Portland Metro Region: A Roadmap
- Author:
- MacArthur, John, Murchie, Peter, Beard, George
- Year:
- 2014
The shift from combustion engines to low- and no-emission electric vehicles is underway and gaining momentum. During the last year, Oregon has become an active player in the electric vehicle arena, with a number of promising relationships and activities in the early stages of formalization. With additional thought, effort and strategy Oregon can seize the opportunity to become the national leader in the adoption and incorporation of new vehicle platforms and mobility strategies into the fabric of urban life and the built environment. Oregon is currently actively engaged in relationships with international automotive companies and local businesses and utilities interested in being part of the "Portland Experiment." This proposal seeks funding to support the creation of a comprehensive roadmap for the development of low/no emission vehicle infrastructure in the Portland Metro region. The roadmap will guide research, education, partnership initiatives, and community engagement activities at Portland State University (PSU) and the Portland Metro region. The project will build momentum on a number of efforts currently underway including the Governor's Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Working Group, Oregon Department of Transportation's Office of Innovative Partnerships & Alternative Funding activities, and local utility and international automotive industry interest in Portland and other national efforts through the U.S. Department of Transportation. This roadmap will truly have a multi-disciplinary, multi-partner, and multi-campus focus and outcomes. The roadmap will focus on developing a unifying strategy, plan, knowledge base for low and no-emission vehicles, alternative fuels infrastructure and other sustainable mobility innovations. The specific research objectives for this project are to: 1) Strengthening and broadening strategic partnerships that will provide financial and other continuing research, education, and community engagement opportunities in electric vehicle infrastructure. 2) Develop a strategic roadmap for Portland to achieve a plug-in readiness in the next two years. 3) Develop a comprehensive research agenda, to evaluate wide array of research and testing needs for the Region. 4) Coordinate with national efforts through the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Project Get Ready, sharing knowledge with other participating Project Get Ready cities and other Oregon cities. This project will be a joint effort between OTREC and the Hatfield School of Government through the National Policy Consensus Center's (NPCC) Oregon Solutions program and the Executive Leadership Institute. Methods include a thorough literature review (print and web); an inventory of state, local agencies and municipalities actions; interviews with key partners; and a consensus building initiative. NPCC's Oregon Solutions program will use its expertise and experience in collaborative governance practices to provide the convening and facilitation system support to bring diverse stakeholders to the table to inform, develop and initiate the implementation of the roadmap. Oregon Solutions staff will engage in information collection, interviews and other efforts to assess the interests and resources of the project partners, refine the vision, and design and support the collaborative convening for the project. This includes developing agendas, products and materials and providing facilitation, note taking and post meeting follow up leading to a declaration of cooperation that will codify the individual and group commitments, roles and responsibilities for implementing the roadmap.
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There is little doubt that the United States has been undergoing a sweeping and multi-faceted economic transformation since the early 1970s. The industrial mix and spatial distribution of activities within ...
Citation Citation
- Title:
- Perspectives on Urban Economic Planning: The Case of Washington, D.C., Since 1880
- Author:
- Abbott, Carl
- Year:
- 1989
There is little doubt that the United States has been undergoing a sweeping and multi-faceted economic transformation since the early 1970s. The industrial mix and spatial distribution of activities within the national economy are being altered by basic changes, including (1) the simultaneous growth of certain manufacturing industries and the decline of others, (2) the broad decentralization of manufacturing production to overseas locations and the rising importance of international trade, (3) the shift of employment from manufacturing and transportation into information processing activities, and (4) the emergence of historically peripheral regions in the South and West as centers of innovation and economic change. In varying combinations, these changes are altering the economic circumstances of American cities and forcing reconsideration of appropriate economic roles. With the effective withdrawal of the federal government as an initiator of local economic development in the 1980s, responsibility has fallen on states and municipalities as the traditional promoters of urban growth. State economic development agencies, blue-ribbon panels, futures task forces, and special economic planning committees in a variety of versions have all aimed to consider what their various cities should do next. In some cases, the result may be the abandonment of economic strategies that sufficed for a century or more. Civic leaders across the country chase high-tech industry. Manufacturing cities seek positions in the transactional economy. Other communities try to devise new roles as international retail cities, travel destinations, amateur sports centers, or health care centers. Debates about the future of American cities draw heavily on academic expertise in economics, planning, regional science, and related fields. Book catalogs in these applied fields are filled with city and regional case studies whose titles or subtitles proclaim their interest in "deindustrialization," "reindustrialization," "economic prospects," "structural change," and "prospects for change." However, few studies are available to allow comparison of current economic planning concerns with past experiences. As a contribution toward a historically informed discussion of decision-making in economic restructuring, I have begun to explore the case of Washington, D.C., a city that has never found it easy to achieve a "natural" economic role. It has experienced an ambiguous regional orientation, uncertain opportunities, and entrenched preconceptions about appropriate activities. In particular, the generation of Washington leaders following the upheavals of Civil War and Reconstruction faced a need for economic redirection with parallels to the deindustrializing factory towns of the 1970s and 1980s. The focus of this examination is the evolving character of ideas on Washington's potentials as an economic entity. Washingtonians have engaged in an ongoing "conversation" or discussion about the possibilities of economic development. My interest lies in the articulation and evolution of public ideas, not in the separate questions of the implementation process or the equitable division of the benefits of growth. Ideas about economic development may have their final test as they affect the production and distribution of wealth, but they also have careers as intellectual constructs that express a social context of power and values.
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Demands for space in Oregon’s Territorial Sea and Outer Continental Shelf are increasing over time, putting pressure on existing ecological resources, uses, and users of this shared public resource. Data ...
Citation Citation
- Title:
- Oregon Data Integration: A perspective on information networking
- Author:
- Lanier, Andy
Demands for space in Oregon’s Territorial Sea and Outer Continental Shelf are increasing over time, putting pressure on existing ecological resources, uses, and users of this shared public resource. Data and information are critical to understanding the impacts of this “sea change.” Key ecological questions need to be answered to understand both the short- and long-term effects of implementing marine renewable energy facilities in an environment about which we know relatively little. Ocean management processes within the state, such as planning for ocean hydrokinetic energy projects and the establishment of marine reserves, require a wide variety of data and information to be used by agencies, scientists, communities, and stakeholder groups. Efforts to find, share, and manage needed data to evaluate these processes have demonstrated the need for Oregon to improve current data management and data sharing practices and capabilities. The emerging policy of the federal government to utilize marine spatial planning techniques to address marine management and policy at the regional and state levels reinforces the need for the State of Oregon to better structure its marine data and information sharing practices and to minimize duplication of effort. To address these concerns the Nearshore Research Task Force, a group of concerned stakeholders and agencies, convened and recommended (August 2010) the following actions: • Establish a framework community of data stewards for key marine data sets. • Specify metadata standards consistent with federal standards for all data acquired or used by the agencies and organizations responsible for ocean management in Oregon. • Maintain a data catalogue to track new datasets that are developed and clarify when datasets become obsolete. • Facilitate data interoperability by the adoption of cross-platform open standards. • Accommodate a variety of information including traditional geospatial (GIS) data; gridded data from ocean and coastal observing programs from satellites, radar, and models; point observation data from sensors such as current meters and wave buoys; and non-geographic informational data such as PDFs, reports, images, websites, and spreadsheets. To that end, the Oregon Coastal & Marine Data Network has recently (September 2012) been endorsed by the Oregon Geographic Information Council (OGIC) as a new Framework Implementation Team (FIT). As part of the endorsement process the network put forward the following mission statement: The mission of the Coastal-Marine FIT is to foster and support a community of producers and users of Oregon coastal and marine data to proactively address emerging data needs. The participants in this effort have been slowly working out a process to address some of the above issues, including working towards the establishment of a collection of network provider catalogs related to ocean and coastal data. Throughout their ongoing effort, the OCMDN has been tracking the data coordination work at the regional level by the West Coast Governor’s Alliance (WCGA) Regional Data Framework (RDF) Action Coordination Team (ACT). The community has members actively participating in both efforts, thereby ensuring that future efforts will enhance the connectivity and collaboration between state and regional data initiatives. The approach and goals of the RDF ACT and the OCMDN are consistent in that they recognize similar elements of an integrated framework for data discovery, dissemination, and distribution of effort. In this way the OCMDN is nested within the RDF effort and both networks will contribute and benefit from each other’s expertise, infrastructure, and access to resources.
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24. [Article] Catastrophic Post-disaster Long-term Recovery Planning: A Capacity and Needs Assessment of the Oregon Coast
Project committee: Andre Leduc, chair, Dr. Jean Stockard, Krista DillonCitation -
25. [Article] Report on Coastal Mapping and Informatics Trans-Atlantic Workshop 2: Coastal Atlas Interoperability
Workshop ProceedingsCitation Citation
- Title:
- Report on Coastal Mapping and Informatics Trans-Atlantic Workshop 2: Coastal Atlas Interoperability
- Author:
- Cummins, Valerie, Wright, Dawn J., Bermudez, Luis, Berman, Marcia, Helly, John, Watson, Stephanie, Dwyer, Ned, Benoit, Greg, Uhel, Ronan, Nyerges, Timothy
Workshop Proceedings
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27. [Article] "We Were Privileged in Oregon": Jessie Laird Brodie and Reproductive Politics, Locally and Transnationally, 1915-1975
This thesis conveys the history of reproductive politics in Oregon through the life of Dr. Jessie Laird Brodie (1898-1990). Brodie was a key figure in this history from the 1930's until the 1970's, mainly ...Citation Citation
- Title:
- "We Were Privileged in Oregon": Jessie Laird Brodie and Reproductive Politics, Locally and Transnationally, 1915-1975
- Author:
- Adams, Sadie Anne
- Year:
- 2012
This thesis conveys the history of reproductive politics in Oregon through the life of Dr. Jessie Laird Brodie (1898-1990). Brodie was a key figure in this history from the 1930's until the 1970's, mainly through the establishment of family planning programs through social and medical channels in Oregon and throughout Latin America. Oregon's reproductive legislation walked a fine line between conservatism and progressivism, but in general supported reproductive healthcare as a whole in comparison to the rest of the United States and Latin America. The state passed controversial contraceptive legislation in 1935 that benefited public health, but also passed eugenic laws, specifically a 1938 marriage bill, that attempted to limit specific population's reproductive control. By the time family planning was solidly rooted in the national and international sociopolitical discourse in the 1960's, due to the advent of the "pill," population control rhetoric, and the Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) Supreme Court decision, eugenic laws were virtually obsolete. Portland's history suggests that leaders in local reproductive politics sought to appeal to a diverse clientele but were restricted to the confines of federal funding mandates, specifically the war on poverty, that were fueled by postwar liberalism in an increasingly global age. The first chapter concentrates on the history of women's health and reproduction in Oregon prior to the 1960's. Dr. Jessie Laird Brodie's experiences with families in poverty during medical school in the 1920's disheartened her and motivated her to seek ways for these women to efficiently and affordably access birth control information. In response to public health concerns, she helped get positive contraception legislation passed in Oregon in the 1930's that set guidelines and restrictions for manufacture of contraceptives. This law was the first of its kind in the country and set a precedent for other states to follow. Brodie also supported a marriage bill in the 1930's that mandated premarital syphilis and psychological testing, in the hopes that it would lead couples to seek contraceptive, or "hygienic," advice from their physicians as efforts to establish a birth control clinic had failed up to this point. The second chapter focuses on Brodie's continued involvement in Oregon in the 1940's and 1950's, a period marked by a high tide of pronatalism in the U.S., and how she took Oregon's vision for women to a national and international level. Locally, she was involved with the E.C. Brown Trust, an organization dedicated to sex education, and was the President for the Pacific Northwest Conference on Family Relations, a group focused on the postwar family adjustments of higher divorce rates and juvenile delinquency. In 1947, Brodie was one of the founding members of the Pan-American Medical Women's Alliance, an organization created to provide a professional arena for women physicians throughout the Americas to discuss problems specific to women and children. Involvement with these groups helped her gain recognition nationally and in the late 1950's she served as President, and then Executive Director, of the American Medical Women's Association. Lastly, the third chapter looks at the establishment and growth of Planned Parenthood Association of Oregon (PPAO) in the 1960's under Brodie's leadership and her foray into the international establishment of family planning programs through the Boston-based Pathfinder Fund, an organization whose mission involved bringing effective reproductive healthcare to developing countries. Brodie acted as Executive Director for PPAO, where she was able to use her medical expertise and connections to bring the new organization credibility and respect throughout Oregon that they lacked before her involvement because the board was mainly comprised of a younger generation on the brink of second-wave feminism and the sexual revolution. In her career with Pathfinder she assessed the needs for family planning in Latin American and Caribbean countries and facilitated the establishment of programs in the region, largely in cooperation with the U.S. federal government and the Population Council. The conclusion offers a brief history of Dr. Brodie's continued involvement in the local and international communities beyond 1975 and the awards she received highlighting her career in the battle for effective healthcare for all women. In short, this thesis argues that legal and rights-based contestations that were prevalent in other regions of the U.S. and throughout the world were not characteristic of Oregon, allowing Brodie and PPAO to bring birth control to the state with relatively limited opposition.
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28. [Article] The Oregon Conservation Strategy, 2006
Abstract -- State and federal agencies, as well as other organizations, have developed and led many plans during the years to guide conservation of Oregon's fish and wildlife and their habitats. Most of ...Citation Citation
- Title:
- The Oregon Conservation Strategy, 2006
Abstract -- State and federal agencies, as well as other organizations, have developed and led many plans during the years to guide conservation of Oregon's fish and wildlife and their habitats. Most of these plans have focused on a particular species, area or natural resource. Although wildlife conservation often has been an implicit concern of these plans, many were developed primarily for other purposes. With the creation of this Oregon Conservation Strategy, Oregon has its first overarching state strategy for conserving fish and wildlife. The Conservation Strategy is an effort to use the best available science to create a broad vision and conceptual framework for long-term conservation of Oregon's native fish and wildlife, as well as various invertebrates and native plants. As a guide to conserving the species and habitats that have defined the nature of Oregon, this strategy can help ensure that Oregon's natural treasures are passed on to future generations. The Conservation Strategy emphasizes proactively conserving declining species and habitats to reduce the possibility of future federal or state listings. It is not a regulatory document, but instead presents issues and opportunities, and recommends voluntary actions that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of conservation in Oregon. Healthy fish and wildlife populations require adequate habitat, which is provided in natural systems and, for many species, in landscapes managed for forestry, agriculture, range and urban uses. The goals of the Conservation Strategy are to maintain healthy fish and wildlife populations by maintaining and restoring functioning habitats, preventing declines of at-risk species, and reversing declines in these resources where possible. These goals fit well with ODFW's statutory obligation to protect and enhance Oregon's fish and wildlife and their habitats for use and enjoyment by present and future generations. However, this is not a management plan for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Instead, it is a broad strategy for all of Oregon, offering potential roles and opportunities for residents, agencies and organizations. It incorporates information and insights from a broad range of natural resources assessments and conservation plans, supplemented by the professional expertise and practical experiences of a cross-section of Oregon's resource managers and conservation interests. It is designed to have a variety of applications both inside and outside of state government. Most important, perhaps, it establishes the basis for a common understanding of the challenges facing Oregon's fish and wildlife, and provides a shared set of priorities for addressing the state's conservation needs. The heart of the Conservation Strategy is a blueprint for voluntary action to address the long-term needs of Oregon's fish and wildlife. The future for many species will depend on landowners' and land managers' willingness to voluntarily take action on their own to protect and improve fish and wildlife habitat. The strategy outlined in this document considers fish and wildlife from a statewide perspective, establishing a broader context for decisions about the species and habitats in greatest need of conservation attention. It also recognizes that these issues vary in different regions, requiring conservation actions to be tailored to the unique needs of the fish, wildlife and human communities that coexist throughout Oregon. Much good work already is being done by private landowners. water-shed councils, conservation organizations and agencies like the many soil and water conservation districts. This strategy continues building on the solid foundation these groups have set for Oregon's conservation future. This document is called a strategy, not a plan, because its purpose is to help people make decisions more strategically about how they can invest time and resources in fish and wildlife conservation. To that end, the Conservation Strategy focuses on a suite of species and habitats, many of them closely linked, that are in greatest need of conservation attention. The strategy provides guidance on the types of actions most likely to benefit these species and habitats, and describes a variety of non-regulatory programs that can help landowners and land managers with implementation. For agencies and organizations working on a larger scale, the Conservation Strategy highlights specific geographic "Conservation Opportunity Areas" that provide good opportunities to address the conservation needs of high-priority habitats and species. These landscape-scale areas include both public and private ownership where targeted investments in conservation actions and incentives for private landowners are likely to generate the greatest long-term benefits for fish and wildlife. The expanding footprint of human development and 150 years of landscape alteration have left much of Oregon's fish and wildlife at varying degrees of risk. For example, the song of Oregon's state bird, the western meadowlark, is rarely heard in the Willamette Valley any more. A grassland bird still common in eastern Oregon, the meadowlark is not going to be a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act any time soon. But the state bird is in trouble across a significant portion of its historic range in Oregon. Like most of Oregon's wildlife, it retains a natural resilience and will respond to improved habitat conditions. However, the meadowlark needs some conservation attention. For the western meadowlark and dozens of other similarly vulnerable species including fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, invertebrates and plants, the Oregon Conservation Strategy offers hope for a more secure future.
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29. [Article] Report of International Coastal Atlas Network Workshop 4: Formalizing the Network, Engaging the Mediterranean
From November 16 to 20, 2009, the International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN) held a workshop on “Formalizing the Network, Engaging the Mediterranean” at the Adriatico Guest House of the UNESCO International ...Citation Citation
- Title:
- Report of International Coastal Atlas Network Workshop 4: Formalizing the Network, Engaging the Mediterranean
- Author:
- Dwyer, Ned, Kopke, Kathrin, Wright, Dawn, O'Dea, Liz
From November 16 to 20, 2009, the International Coastal Atlas Network (ICAN) held a workshop on “Formalizing the Network, Engaging the Mediterranean” at the Adriatico Guest House of the UNESCO International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. The workshop (aka “ICAN 4”) engaged 32 participants from 12 countries, representing 26 organizations and multiple areas of scientific and technical expertise. This meeting was a follow-up to the successful 2008 workshop on “Federated Coastal Atlases: Building the Interoperable Approach” (aka “ICAN 3”) held in Copenhagen, Denmark, as well as the 2007 workshop on “Coastal Atlas Interoperability” (aka “ICAN 2” in Corvallis, Oregon, USA) and the 2006 meeting “Potentials and Limitations of Coastal Web Atlases” (aka “ICAN 1” in Cork, Ireland). ICAN 3 continued the momentum by identifying the additional opportunities for partnering on coastal web atlas development throughout Europe, demonstrating the atlas interoperability prototype to the European Environment Agency and its many partners, and initiating the development of a long-term strategy and governance model for ICAN. ICAN 2 examined best practices for achieving interoperability between atlases, and led to the design of a demonstration interoperability prototype using the metadata catalogues of two atlases. ICAN 1 examined state-of-the-art developments in coastal web atlases (CWAs) from Europe and the U.S., shared several case studies and lessons learned, and established key issues and recommendations related to the design, data requirements, technology and institutional capacity needed for these atlases. At the conclusion of ICAN 3 it was abundantly clear that ICAN had grown from a simple idea to the cusp of a formal virtual organization, which had captured the interest of the European Environment Agency (EEA), the European Commission, UNESCO, and several government agencies, companies, non-governmental organizations, and universities. However, much more work needed to be accomplished. Therefore, the activities of ICAN 4 included: Discussions of final implementation structures for governance (including formal procedures for receiving new members), technical activities, and continued identification of funding opportunities, so that ICAN can formally incorporate as a virtual organization (aka “community of practice”). Presentations on emerging atlases in European countries (especially the Mediterranean) and beyond that are making themselves relevant through policy, environmental and socio-economic indicator work and related themes. Continued progress on our ontology and semantic interoperability work, with an eye also toward articulating the benefits of semantic interoperability at a broader scale to non-specialists. In this we look forward to the advice and assistance of MMI and SeaDataNet, as well as to the new NETMAR (Open Service Network for Marine Environmental Data) initiative, which has already developed conceptual framework documents in this area. To this end, we also: o Held a small “workshop within a workshop” for atlas administrators on how to become a new node in interoperability prototype. o Initiated strategies on making further improvements to all those nodes (according to the Shared Environmental Information Systems (SEIS) principles of sharing information for multiple purposes, using data and systems that are accessible and interoperable). o Facilitated further work on partnerships, infrastructure and data exchange formats, all with the overall objective of enabling the nodes to share and communicate with each other, avoid duplication, and streamline information management. Presentations and discussion of user issues, including better knowledge of our atlas users, their needs, and on continued inventory, assessment, and evaluation of atlases. To this end, we discussed as part of a small “workshop within a workshop” how to improve the functionality of CWAs for general users, especially as the technology continues to change. Small group meetings on potential funding opportunities on both sides of the Atlantic (European Union, US National Science Foundation and government agencies) in order to continue the work of ICAN. Initiation of plans for a major ICAN presence at Littoral 2010 in London (European ICAN partners), as well as a standalone ICAN Americas meeting in Wisconsin, USA. In addition, the ICAN workshop took place around a two-day Workshop on Maritime and Coastal Information Systems, organised by the EEA’s Environmental Information and Observation Network (EIONET), which was open to ICAN 4 attendees as well. The main objective of this meeting was to inform the many participating countries of the EIONET National Reference Centre (NRC) network and to allow for a first exchange of views on scope and roles in the new formation for this entity. Four participants of ICAN 4 were invited to give presentations at the EEA/EIONET workshop, which allowed EEA/EIONET to explore collaboration opportunities as a result of ICAN’s emergence. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) had originally awarded support for two ICAN workshops, so there will be a 5th international workshop (aka ICAN 5), at the headquarters of the UNESCO International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) in Oostende, Belgium, August 31 to September 2, 2011. IODE will co-host CoastGIS 2011 in Oostende immediately following ICAN 5. Objectives of ICAN 5 will include follow-up activities that we did not have time to accomplish at ICAN 4, including: Continued progress on our ontology and semantic interoperability work, but with an eye also toward articulating the benefits of semantic interoperability at a broader scale, to non-specialists. Continued engagement and servicing of users of coastal web atlases, and on continued inventory, assessment, and evaluation of atlases. Revisiting the main recommendations of the ICAN 1, especially evaluating atlas impact, and developing analysis and decision-support tools in atlases. Forming proposal teams and submissions to the next available and appropriate NSF and other grant competitions (e.g., NSF Partnerships for International Research and Education, NSF Community-Based Data Interoperability Networks, NOAA, European Framework Program, InterReg, and ESF ). Exchanging lessons learned in spatial data infrastructure between the US, European INSPIRE and other national and regional efforts. Continued implementation and improvement of new governance, strategic planning, and technical working groups.
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30. [Article] Breeding an open pollinated broccoli for organic production systems using participatory methods
Organic agriculture is an important and growing sector of U.S. and world food production. Consumers are increasingly aware of and interested in the production practices and impacts associated with agriculture ...Citation Citation
- Title:
- Breeding an open pollinated broccoli for organic production systems using participatory methods
- Author:
- McKenzie, Laurie R.
Organic agriculture is an important and growing sector of U.S. and world food production. Consumers are increasingly aware of and interested in the production practices and impacts associated with agriculture and as such, are showing a preference for sustainably produced, raised, and harvested foods. In order to continue to meet the growing demand for organic produce, organic growers need cultivars that are optimally adapted to organic and low input conditions. Quality seed is the foundation of any functional and stable farming system. Unfortunately the lack of organically bred and produced seed is hindering the continued growth and success of organic farming. Meeting the needs of the organic sector has been a challenge for the seed industry; it is an industry that often doesn't understand the specific and unique requirements associated with the diversity of environmental and market demands of organic systems. However, organic farmers and the organic food systems they supply, require a robust organic seed system that is appropriately adapted to regional agronomic challenges and market needs, meets standards and regulations, and encompasses the social and ecological values of organic agriculture. One plausible approach to meeting the cultivar and seed needs of organic and low input production systems is through the use of participatory plant breeding (PPB). PPB is a collaborative approach for identifying and developing genetically diverse plant material and varieties involving partnerships among formal sector breeders and researchers, farmers, extension agents, educators, and end users. Participatory plant breeding fundamentally changes the way that formal breeding programs and farmers manage germplasm and plant genetic resources. Typically, formal breeding programs restrict access to germplasm and breeding materials and only supply farmers with finished varieties. In PPB, farmers are involved in the early stages of creation and evaluation of germplasm and breeding material, and stay engaged with the breeding process until new varieties are created. PPB is an excellent model for breeding specifically for organic systems because organic systems in developed countries have many similarities to low-input agricultural systems in the developing world. Some of these parallels include heterogeneous growing environments, a wide range of end uses and marketing strategies, lack of suitably adapted and/or derived varieties, lack of attention from the formal seed sector, and a reduced reliance on synthetic inputs (compared to conventional systems). Breeding for organic systems is a relatively young field and breeders in the formal sector do not have a good handle on what traits are important for robust production under organic conditions. Thus the opportunity to meld farmers' experience and knowledge with breeders' expertise is an effective way to breed for organic production systems. The purpose of this project was to investigate and explore the opportunities and challenges of organic plant breeding using participatory research methods. This research had three goals: 1) to develop an open pollinated broccoli with contemporary quality traits for organic production systems using participatory strategies; 2) to compare broccoli selections made by formally trained plant breeders and farmer breeders; and 3) to capture the stories and experiences of the formal breeders and farmer breeders involved with this broccoli material in order to contribute to the growing wealth of knowledge on collaborative and organic breeding work. The Oregon State University Vegetable Breeding Program made significant progress towards decreasing the variability of the broccoli project material through three successive years of modified half-sibling selections. Evaluations and selections were based more strongly on quality traits rather than soley on production traits such as yield. Although progress was incremental and statistically verified in only three out of the fifteen quality traits, we observed trends in the data indicating progress towards an increasingly uniform, stable, and reliable open pollinated broccoli with specific adaptation for organic production systems. There were very few differences between broccoli materials developed by formally trained plant breeders and farmer breeders. This was especially true for the three cultivars developed in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) (one in Washington and two in Oregon). The 'East Coast' population, which had been collaboratively selected by formal and farmer breeders in New York, expressed significantly distinct differences from the PNW materials. When the farmer breeder and formal breeder materials were pooled together and compared to pooled check cultivars they expressed significant differences for nearly all traits across all years. This demonstrated that all of the collaboratively developed open pollinated materials are distinctly different from the F1 hybrids currently available. Our work has demonstrated a few of the myriad of positive outcomes achievable with the use of participatory plant breeding for organic production systems. The participatory nature of this project resulted in increased confidence and feelings of empowerment for all involved. Both farmers and breeders felt their involvement was socially beneficial and widened their networking and seed community circles. The farmer-bred cultivar 'Solstice' is now available as a result of Jonathan Spero's work, and a cultivar tentatively named 'Benton' is about to be released for sale through Oregon State University. Our results agree with previous study findings that formal and farmer breeder selections are often not distinctly different; thus providing evidence for continuing to support the involvement and education of farmers in plant breeding, especially in reference to organic production systems. This study demonstrates the potential of collaboratively developed and farmer-bred cultivars to become viable and vibrant open pollinated alternatives to the current open pollinated cultivars on the market today.