KBOO
10/3/11

The fires this summer on the northface of Mt. Hood struck a dark chord for many of us who know and love the trails, basins and ridges of this rugged and least-accessible face of the mountain. Yet while we may feel great sadness imagining our favorite places scorched and blackened by the fires, it’s important to remember the vital role that fire plays in regenerating the woods. Read more…

Scientific publications authored or edited by Geos Instiitute staff.

JEFF BARNARD AP Environmental Writer  
July 6, 2009
Associated Press Archive

A new study challenges a basic justification about the threat of wildfires that the Bush administration used to make room for more logging in old growth forests that are home to the northern spotted owl.

The study, appearing in the journal Conservation Biology, found no increasing threat of severe wildfires destroying old growth forests in the drier areas where the owl lives in Oregon, Washington and Northern California.  Read more…

This year, as in every previous year, fires are occurring in the forests of the Western United States. And, as in previous years, we read the predictable headlines about how many acres of forest were “destroyed” by wildland fires.  Read more…

A deadly helicopter crash in Northern California has some people asking if federal agencies should risk firefighters’ lives battling blazes in remote, sparsely populated areas.  Read more…

Twenty years ago today, the Silver fire complex ignited, and forest science has never been the same since

When sizzling lightning storms peppered southwestern Oregon on the evening of Aug. 30, 1987, Dave Perry was already a well-respected forestry professor at Oregon State University.  Read more…

Grim realities loom in the economy and ecology of our region. Libraries close. Congress cuts off generations-old timber funding to Western Oregon counties, leading some to threaten bankruptcy. County sheriff patrols grow thin. Unharvested forests grow thick with flammable understory, while scores of mills have closed. What goes on here?  Read more…