By Sonia A. Hall In response to the recent—and in California, ongoing—megafires, many have been asking whether the cause is climate change or forest management. Erin Hanan wrote a blog article arguing that this is not the right question, because in many cases both contribute to what is happening. The drivers of fire activity are […]
By Patrick Shults, Washington State University Extension The coastal Pacific Northwest is home to some of the best tree-growing conditions in the world. Fertile soils, plenty of rain, mild temperatures, and short dry seasons allow trees to pack on solid growth each year. These conditions also give them a significant advantage in protecting themselves from […]
By Mengqi Zhao, recent PhD graduate, Washington State University For more than fifty years, individuals and organizations in the Yakima River Basin (YRB) have been working toward improving water availability, especially for agriculture. The mismatch between rainfall (and snowmelt) timing and the irrigation season has focused these efforts on strategies for increasing water storage. However, […]
By Chris Schnepf When it comes to climate change, many people focus on raw physics: how much more precipitation or less, the number of frost free days, how many days a year above or below certain temperatures, the length of the fire season, etc. These dimensions are all important to reflect on and study, but […]
Matthew C. Reeves, U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station The amount of annual net primary production on rangelands forms the forage base upon which livelihoods and billions of dollars of commerce depend. Land managers and livestock producers in the Pacific Northwest deal with high year-to-year variations in net primary production, which often varies 40% […]
By Paris Edwards, USDA Northwest Climate Hub and Amy Garrett, Oregon State University Extension In parts of the maritime Pacific Northwest, climate conditions work well for dry farming, a set of soil preparation and management techniques that allow for growing food with little to no supplemental water. Dry farming has a long history of practice […]
Emily Jane Davis, Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist, Oregon State University Extension, & Sonia A. Hall, Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources, Washington State University Wildfires in rangeland systems across the western United States, including the intermountain Northwest, are not going away. If anything, research and climate change modeling suggest that wildfire activity will […]
By James Ekins, Ph.D., University of Idaho Extension Understanding and managing natural resources and agricultural processes are complex tasks, especially in a rapidly changing world. Community resilience has been described as the “existence, development, and engagement of community resources by community members to thrive in an environment characterized by change, uncertainty, unpredictability and surprise (Magis […]
By Fidel Maureira, Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University A few months ago I wrote an article that gave a preview of the work we were conducting, to explore whether Washington State could become the new California in vegetable production as the climate warms. Results from this work are now in, and the […]
Q&A with Weed Scientist Dr. Ian C. Burke By Doug Finkelnburg, Area Extension Educator, Cropping Systems, University of Idaho Extension In the book “Advances in Dryland Farming in the Inland Pacific Northwest”, the common weed downy brome or “cheatgrass” is identified as potentially problematic for wheat producers as the climate changes. Downy brome is projected […]
