When an ice storm warning went out to central Willamette Valley residents in mid-February, I recall the term “significant icing” standing out to me as I read the warning. I would soon come to discover this meant that I and my family would spend an entire night lying awake listening to trees crack, topple and fall due to that significant icing. It sounded like firework explosions for 12 hours straight, or thunder without any lightning. In the light of the next morning, the full story of destruction and devastation was revealed.
Our home was unscathed, but many Oregonians had damage to their houses, cars, trees and forested properties after the storm. The aftermath looked much like hurricane damage, with hundreds of power poles and lines on the ground and tree debris everywhere. Many central Willamette Valley residents spent the first few hours and days following the storm clearing driveways and roads to allow safe passage. As with many natural disasters, communities and neighbors came together. Many checked that their neighbors were warm and fed, since thousands were without power, and made safety and welfare a first priority. For one neighbor of ours, I’m not sure if she was more thankful for the neighborhood crew that cleared her long driveway, or for the delivery of some hot coffee and breakfast.
As the ice thawed and roads cleared, I made my way to the Rediscovery Forest, a 15-acre demonstration forest inside The Oregon Garden in Silverton that OFRI has helped manage for the past 20 years. The conifer trees in the Rediscovery Forest vary in age from young seedlings to about 50 years old. When I surveyed the storm damage in the forest, it was the younger conifer trees – varying from teenagers to into their twenties – that seemed to be the most affected, with broken tops and trees uprooted or snapped. The older conifer trees also lost a lot of limbs and some tops, and a few of these trees also came down in the storm.
In the rest of The Oregon Garden, it was heartbreaking to see some of the several-hundred-year-old Oregon white oak trees had either snapped or been uprooted, broken or damaged. In general, hardwood trees seemed to sustain some of the worst damage. The Oregon Garden’s Signature Oak, a heritage tree, remained standing, but many of its branches were damaged.
What happened to the Rediscovery Forest and The Oregon Garden is just a reflection of the thousands of acres in Oregon forests that were impacted by last month’s ice storm. Some of it even overlapped with the burned areas from the Labor Day Fires in 2020.
“Winter storms are a naturally occurring phenomena in our region’s forests, but they can have many negative impacts, including increased susceptibility to insects and pathogens, fire risk from added ground fuels, habitat loss for fish and wildlife, damaged or blocked roads and culverts, safety hazards for landowners and forest workers, and reduced aesthetic value and economic losses,” reports Brad Withrow-Robinson of Oregon State University’s Forestry & Natural Resources Extension program. Find out more about storm safety and recovery here.
Many people who were affected by the storm have lamented a favorite tree being impacted, or how hard it was to decide to cut or save a tree. The Oregon Department of Forestry’s Urban Forestry Program has put together a list of useful resources and information on tree care after a storm.
Some clean-up after the storm can be done using hand tools and a lot of sweat equity. In other cases, especially with anything that is potentially hazardous, it’s better to call in a trained arborist. You can find an arborist in your area through the International Society of Arboriculture.
It’s also never too early to start thinking about what you might plant to replace trees lost in the storm. If you live in a more urban setting, consult with your local ordinances and make sure to think about the right tree for the right place; many cities have tree-species preference lists. For those who live in a more remote forest landscape or own forestland, OFRI offers a useful guide called Establishing and Managing Forest Trees in Western Oregon that includes tips on selecting the right species to plant and how to properly plant seedlings. You can also find technical assistance for your area by visiting KnowYourForest.org, a website aimed at Oregon forest landowners that’s managed by OFRI and other members of the Partnership for Forestry Education.
Oregonians and our forests are resilient, but it has been a challenging year for both. From now on, I would prefer if “significant icing” were only used in reference to desserts and cakes.
From the woods,
Julie Woodward
Senior Manager of Forestry Education
In light of 2020’s devastating fire season, I was recently asked these two questions. To answer them, I turned to data published by the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis program, or FIA, and employed a bit of creative math.
The 2020 Labor Day fires burned approximately 1 million acres of Oregon forestland. To estimate how many trees were burned in these fires, I needed an estimate of how many trees we had in Oregon before the fires, and how many trees per acre of forestland we have.
To estimate the number of trees killed in the Labor Day fires, I used an estimate of trees per acre (tpa) to go with our acreage estimate of 1 million acres. Table 18 from FIA’s Oregon’s Forest Resources, 2006–2015: Ten-Year Forest Inventory and Analysis Report gives us an estimate of 10.28 billion trees on Oregon forestland before the Labor Day fires, and Table 5 provides an estimate of 29.656 million total acres of forestland. Dividing the number of trees by the number of acres gives us an estimate of 347 trees per acre on Oregon forestland.
Combining this number with the estimate of 1 million acres burned in the 2020 fires, and assuming that the acres burned in a similar manner across the tree size classes, gives us an estimate of 347 million trees killed in the Labor Day fires. Using the estimate of 10.28 billion trees before the Labor Day fires and subtracting the estimated 347 million trees killed in those fires leaves an estimated 9.93 billion trees. That means the trees burned in the 2020 wildfires represent about 3.5% of the trees growing in Oregon.
Now that we’ve estimated how many trees we had before the fires, how many were killed in the fires, and thus how many trees we have left after the fires, we can figure out if we still have more trees than we did 100 years ago. To do this, we need to look at the amount of forestland in Oregon now versus 100 years ago, how the size distribution has changed over time, and how that has affected the number of trees.
Forest Resources of the United States estimates the total amount of forestland in various states over time. The closest estimate we have for total forest area in Oregon 100 years ago is 1920, when Forest Resources of the United States estimates we had approximately 30.3 million acres of forestland. Based on the report’s findings, we can see that in 2017 we had about 29.6 million acres of forestland, nearly 98% of the forestland area we had in 1920. Unfortunately, the only data we have for 1920 is an estimate of forest area. However, we do have excellent estimates of timber volume by state back to 1953, and estimates of net volume for regions by tree-diameter classes back to 1953. The forests of 1953 are not exactly the forests of 1920. However, the 1953 data says we had 30.3 million acres of forestland in Oregon – the same as the estimate for 1920.
Another helpful estimate from Forest Resources is the net volume of timber by tree-diameter classes and regions for 1953 through 2017. The relationship between diameter class and trees per acre allows us to estimate the number of trees in 1953 at 8.17 billion trees (I’ll spare you this math).
Although I’m unable to accurately estimate how many trees there were in Oregon 100 years ago, my conclusion is that there are many more trees in Oregon today than there were in 1953. In fact, my estimate is that we have about 1.76 billion more trees today than in 1953.
Now that I’ve done the math, I think it’s safe to say that we have upwards of 2 billion more trees in Oregon today than we did 67 years ago, even after losing nearly 350 million trees in the Labor Day fires. Some good news after such a rough fire season that had a devastating impact on our state’s forests and communities.
For the forest,
Mike Cloughesy
Director of Forestry
“Make it specific to our students, or we can’t use it.” That was the advice given to us several years ago at a teacher focus group. The teachers said they wanted publications that were written specifically for the age of the students they teach. They all agreed that materials written with a broader approach were of no use to them.
Their advice has echoed in the thinking and strategy of the Oregon Forest Resources Institute’s K-12 education programs ever since. We’ve been working to make sure we have one or more educational publications that are appropriate to every K-12 grade level. Student cognitive development and maturity at different ages makes it critical to write to their interest and reading abilities, as well as the grade-level standards that need to be met. That’s why a general K-12 approach does not work.
Using this approach, we have steadily produced publications geared to specific grade levels and associated standards. Some examples include Explore the Forest for third- and fourth-grade students, Into the Forest for fifth- and sixth-grade students, Life in the Forest for middle school students and Inside Oregon’s Forests, a curriculum for high school students.
One group that still needs a publication written for them is the beginning or “early” readers. These are primary school-age students who are just beginning to read. I’ll note that while our Sounds of the Forest publication is meant to engage students in that age group, it’s intended to be read to them by an older student or an adult.
Early reader publications are considered a stepping stone from picture books and “learn-to-read” books. The intent is to tell a story that engages the student with familiar vocabulary and appealing illustrations – and is also written simply enough that they’re able to read it by themselves.
We have begun to develop an early reader and the “story” in our new publication will be about the wildlife that live in each layer of the forest, such as the forest floor, the understory and the canopy. There will be abundant illustrations, and each page will include insets to provide a bit more information for adults to read to children.
The publication is in production now. If you have a beginning reader in your life, you’ll soon be able order them a new book from OFRI!
Norie Dimeo-Ediger
Director of K-12 Education Programs
The Oregon Forest Resources Institute recently released a newly updated edition of Oregon Forest Facts. The pocket-sized booklet packed full of the latest data and statistics on Oregon’s forests and forest-based economy is one of our most popular publications. We began producing this biennial favorite in 2009, and this is our seventh edition. We think it keeps getting better and better.
There are two easy ways for you to catch up on the latest Oregon forest statistics, including information on forest ownership, timber harvest levels, forest-based employment, wildfire trends and much more. You can review or order the new Oregon Forest Facts 2021-22 Edition, or check out the newly updated OregonForestsFacts.org. Both have the most up-to-date data about Oregon’s forests.
Here are some examples of the “forest facts” found in the Oregon Forest Facts 2021-22 Edition and on OregonForestFacts.org:
· Timber harvest levels in Oregon have remained relatively stable over the past 20 years. Currently, Oregon annual timber harvest averages around 3.8 billion board feet.
· About one-third of Oregon’s forests are privately managed, and these lands produce three-quarters of the state’s timber harvest.
· Oregon is the number-one state in the country for softwood lumber production, plywood production and the total number of engineered wood product manufacturing facilities.
· Oregon’s forests support more than 61,000 jobs, from scientists to nursery managers to mill workers. That’s 3% of Oregon’s total workforce. That number climbs to 10% in rural Oregon counties.
· Wages for forest-related jobs in rural Oregon counties are higher than the average county wages.
· The 2020 fire season in Oregon burned more than 1.3 million acres, including the roughly 1 million acres that burned during last year’s Labor Day fires. That’s a 234% increase above the average fire season over the last 10 years.
To learn more about Oregon’s forests, download or order a copy of the new Oregon Forest Facts 2021-22 Edition or visit OregonForestsFacts.org.
For the forest,
Mike Cloughesy
Director of Forestry