Alan Ager News Today

Oregon State University Human-caused wildfire ignitions in Central Oregon are expected to remain steady over the next four decades and lightning-caused ignitions are expected to decline, but the average size of a blaze from either cause is expected to rise, Oregon State University modeling suggests. Scientists including Meg Krawchuk of the OSU College of Forestry and former OSU research associate Ana Barros, now of the Washington Department of Natural Resources, say the findings can help local ...

The 16,000 acres of trees incinerated in the 2003 Davis Fire were a call to action for Deschutes National Forest managers. The wide-ranging destruction caused by the wildfire convinced them that if they were going to prevent a repeat in the future, they’d have to go big. That fire also destroyed more than 3,700 acres of northern spotted owl habitat, highlighting a lethal hazard faced by the threatened species despite strict logging restrictions imposed on the “late successional reserv...