West-Side Fire and Climate Adaptation Research Initiative

2022 West-Side Fire Initiative Update.

Wildfires have historically been very uncommon in western Oregon and Washington compared to the interior Pacific Northwest. However, when wildfires do occur, they can be extreme. Moreover, climate change is expected to increase the susceptibility of forests to wildfire, leading to increased frequency and intensity.

Much is at stake in west-side forests of Oregon and Washington. More than 70 percent of the population of these two states lives on the west side. West-side forests provide essential ecosystem services such as drinking water, and support major economic resources such as timber and recreation. West-side forests are also vital carbon sinks and provide habitat to numerous endangered species.

The West-Side Fire and Climate Adaptation Research Initiative is designed to bring researchers and managers together to address critical knowledge gaps related to climate-fire relationships, as well as fire ecology, risk, and management in western Oregon and Washington. Historically, most fire-related research has focused on the east side of these states, where forests are drier and fire is comparatively common. Some learning from dry forests can be adapted and applied here, but the west side is biophysically unique, with distinctly different socioeconomic and jurisdictional circumstances. Adapting to potentially novel fire regime characteristics driven by climate change requires a more refined understanding of contemporary socioecological drivers and consequences of west-side fire and projections of how they might change in the future.

Research teams mobilized around three topic areas high on the list of partner information needs:

• Historical, current, and future fire regimes. A diverse set of projects is refining our understanding of historical fire regimes, projecting future changes in fire regime characteristics under climate change, and evaluating the risk wildfire poses to west-side communities.
• Fire- and carbon-oriented management. A pair of complementary social science projects will learn from west-side landowners about forest management strategies they use to adapt to increasing fire risk and what motivates them to adapt. Using this information, a separate project will model possible management prescriptions and evaluate tradeoffs between fire-risk reduction and other land management objectives.
• Postfire management. Three empirical studies are using the 2020 wildfires and others to evaluate patterns and drivers of postfire ecological dynamics, and to study how these dynamics can best be managed to achieve desired current and future conditions.

An aerial shot shows forest burned in the Norse Fire, with a road acting as a fire break. Photo by Mark Stone, University of Washington.

These burned trees are remnants from the 2017 Norse Peak Fire in western Washington. Photo by Mark Stone, University of Washington.

 

 

The science behind 2020's wild season of wildfire

The timeliness of the West-Side Fire Initiative became readily apparent during the 2020 fire season. Labor Day (Sept. 7) 2020 brought with it a storm that knocked out power to more than 100,000 people in the Pacific Northwest. Hot, dry, easterly winds reached hurricane levels. Numerous wildfires that had started in August across California, Oregon, and Washington exploded when fanned by the gusty winds... Read more here. 

A "new normal" for west-side fire in Oregon and Washington 

Learn more about climate-driven changes in the forests of western Oregon and Washington through interactive graphics and video in the story map below. 

Click here to view the story map in full screen.