Catherine and Nick at a family wedding in Pungo, Virginia.
Like many new college graduates, Catherine Carlisle wasn’t sure what she wanted to do after school — and she certainly didn’t have forest carbon biometrician on her radar.
“My cousin Liz, who’s 10 years older than me, worked for the U.S. Forest Service,” says Catherine, who had just earned a bachelor’s in environmental science from the University of Virginia. “I wanted to be cool like Liz and work outside, so I applied there. It was the first place I heard back from after graduating.”
She moved across the country to Oregon for the USFS role as a seasonal silviculture technician. For six months of the year, she laid out thinning units, did regeneration surveys and supervised contract crews. One year, she filled the other six months doing seasonal work at a ski resort; another off-season, she backpacked around southeast Asia for three months.
“It was really hard to get a permanent job with the USFS, and I was 24 and needed something permanent,” she says. “Then COVID started. I figured I’d go to grad school since I had nothing else to do. It seemed like everyone I knew in Oregon had gone to Oregon State University, so I jumped online to look at their forestry graduate programs. Biometrics really stood out to me — I liked math and I’d be able to use my forestry knowledge from my previous work.”
She was accepted into the program and quickly decided she wanted to work at Weyerhaeuser.
“At Oregon State, I learned Weyerhaeuser employs some of the most renowned biometricians in the business,” she says. “And I’ve always wanted to be around the best of the best.”
Catherine and her fiancé Nick don camouflage for duck hunting.
GET TO KNOW CATHERINE
Why Weyerhaeuser?
Besides wanting to work alongside world-renowned biometricians, I had the opportunity to meet Nate Osborne, my current manager, when I was in grad school. The more he told me about his team, the more I wanted to work with them! I applied for a forest biometrician role right out of grad school and didn’t get it, so I worked at a carbon offset development company for about a year. Then Nate reached out and encouraged me to apply to this role. I’m so glad he did!
What is your role?
I’m a forest carbon biometrician, so I help develop our Forest Carbon portfolio. My graduate thesis was actually on projecting forest carbon on the OSU research forest, which lined me up perfectly for jobs like this. I was already using the same modeling software the carbon registry requires, so I was able to step right into this role. I work on forest carbon projects from the initial selection of a project footprint and provide all the modeling and statistics as the project goes through the registration and verification processes.
How do you describe what you do to your family and friends?
I’m based in my hometown of Virginia Beach, Virginia, where people tend to assume you’re a park ranger if you say you’re in forestry. So I start by explaining sustainable forestry and managed timberlands. Then I explain how we project timber growth in order to project future revenue and decide on management strategies. Once we have that established, then I can go into my spiel about carbon credits and how those are generated and predicted.
How do you explain WY to your family and friends?
I always start by saying it’s one of the biggest timber companies in the world and touch on how Weyerhaeuser was a forerunner in sustainable forestry strategies in the U.S. And I always mention how proud I am to work at a company that’s on the cutting edge like that.
If I get blank stares, I ask if they’ve seen early seasons of “The Office” and noticed the green logos on the paper boxes in the back! My fiancé is also a forester, and whenever he watches the show he points out every time he spots a Weyerhaeuser logo.
Catherine shows off her crab haul.
Have there been any surprises in your experience so far?
The biggest surprise — and a very happy one! — is how helpful people are. Everyone I talk to, whether they’re on my team and or work somewhere else in the company, makes time to help me whenever I have a question, even if they’re really busy. When I was in grad school imagining what it would be like to work here, I assumed that since the biometricians here are so well-known they probably wouldn’t have time for me. They present at conferences and publish papers, and they’re all still so approachable, helpful and excited about the work we’re doing.
Tell us a bit about your team. What do you like most about the team and your coworkers?
I’m on the Quantitative Systems and Inventory team, but the other forest biometrician, Bill Headlee, and I actually work more closely with the Forest Carbon team than with our QSI coworkers. Everyone on both teams is so sharp and knowledgeable. I learn so much from them, which is really important to me — it’s been great to be able to learn and develop so much in my role already.
Bill and I provide all the statistics for the Forest Carbon team. The Forest Carbon analysts do the mountains of other work to get projects off the ground and approved by the ACR registry. There’s so much work that goes into each project, and so much care that goes into the work.
What've you liked so far about the company?
Besides how helpful everyone is, I love how committed the company is to developing realistic, high-integrity carbon projects. There’s so much work that goes into each one and into justifying the credits we supply based on changing our harvest plans. Every project requires close collaboration with the Timberlands operations teams and so much data to prove that we will actually sequester and store more carbon than we would if we were to conduct business as usual on the footprint. Putting all that operational knowledge and data together allows us to project a really realistic baseline scenario, which is essential to developing high-quality credits.
Catherine with her catch of the day at the Virginia Beach fishing pier.
What’s been most different from where you came from?
My last company was just a forest carbon project developer. They didn’t own any land; they worked with landowners who reached out asking for help establishing a project to model a baseline scenario for them.
Since we do all our own internal data gathering and analysis, we have access to so many more resources. Our baseline is much more justifiable than baselines that rely on other people’s data, which allows us to develop really high-quality credits.
Have you had any bumps in adapting along the way?
Each forest carbon project has an extremely long and complex workflow, especially at the beginning. And there have been times I made a silly mistake at the beginning that cascades and ends up creating completely unrealistic results at the end! I can only dust myself off, correct the errors and carry on a little more carefully.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Still here at Weyerhaeuser, for sure. I love my work as a forest carbon biometrician, but maybe I’d look at something with a different focus within biometrics, like operational harvest scheduling or working with LiDAR. For now, I’m really happy where I am.
