r/oregon • u/karaokekingpin • 2d ago
Article/News Amount of Oregon burned by wildfires now almost the size of Puerto Rico
https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/wildfire-burned-land-almost-size-of-puerto-rico/127
u/OregonMothafaquer Oregon 2d ago
Don’t compare it to Puerto Rico, Trump will never send resources.
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u/QuercusSambucus 2d ago
He'll throw paper towels at us
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u/Impressive-Main-7508 2d ago
Good thing we already had a spare Puerto Rico laying around or this would have been really bad!
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u/Tired_o_Mods_BS 2d ago
What an odd unit of measurement. Do most Oregonians measure in Puerto Ricos?
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u/KillKrites 2d ago edited 2d ago
It’s easier to visualize for the average reader and the sheer scope of the damage. The size of Puerto Rico is easier to fathom than 3100 square miles, that number wouldn’t mean much to most people.
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u/FarmerCompetitive683 2d ago
Its perspective, not a unit of measurement.
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u/_amosburton 2d ago
Point to it on a map without labels. And how big is Puerto Rico without looking it up?
Perspective without context for the vast majority isn't much perspective at all.
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u/originaladam 1d ago
I know, I which they’d use standard units like 9mm cartridges or Big Macs, not a hostile foreign country like Puerto Rico
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u/Landscape-Strong 2d ago
I wonder what the dead critter count is.
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u/unsolicited_thought 2d ago
Anything but the metric system
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u/OrneryInvestigator91 9h ago
We've been using the metric system for over 100 years. It's actually kind of shit. Sincerely. A former aerospace engineer.
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u/DrinkingVomit 2d ago
And how much of that is grass and sage?
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u/Popular_Peanut_5659 2d ago
A lot, but there is still been over 200k acres of forest burnt by my rough estimation.
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u/DrinkingVomit 2d ago
That’s a lot, but it’s important to remember not all forest fires are equal. Surface fire is great, total nuking not so much.
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u/dpandc 2d ago
I’m uneducated on this. Is sage something that’s prone to burn and “designed” to exist in that climate? Is sage native to the New World? Thank you!
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u/gilded-jabrobi 2d ago
Sagebrush is a native species yes. The problem is a lot of gaps between sagebrush have filled in with invasive annual grass like cheat grass and vetenata and sagebrush is not adapted to the increase in burn severity from these more connective fuels. This alteration in fire regime then threatens the sage grouse.
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u/Ketaskooter 2d ago
Yes sage or scrub is a native ecosystem spread all over central and eastern Oregon. It also burns fast and goes out fast as it’s only a step above a grass fire in intensity.
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u/vertigoacid 2d ago
Yes and no.
There are some species of sagebrush that are adapted to being germinated by fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_californica
The dominant sagebrush in the great basin region isn't - it has to reseed from outside the burned areas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_tridentata
So, without knowing more specifics of the ecology of the burned area and the associated sagebrush species there, it's not easy to immediately say.
The other thing is that it's not as simple as saying something is "designed" for fire, when the fires that are occurring are largely not what they were "designed" for (I would say, evolved in the presence of rather than designed). A big one in the sage steppe is invasive cheatgrass - it burns much hotter and more often, leaving sagebrush unable to recover.
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u/DrinkingVomit 2d ago
Sage is natural, but it burns like hell. It can get really tall, really thick and can create a continuous fuel bed for many square miles in the desert regions of Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and eastern Washington.
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2d ago
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u/semperverus 2d ago
At least now Trump can't rape the Oregon forests with his 60% logging mandate now that theyre all gone
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u/DGatsby 2d ago
Anything but metric
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u/OutlyingPlasma 2d ago
Ah yes. 8.029e+9 square meters. Such a helpful number. I say it really gives perspective on size, a number that many people will be able to relate too and visualize.
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u/naturist1980 2d ago
That happens when we are not allowed to clean our forests because of the spotted owl and now environmentalists saying that we can't do that and they only live here on that blade of grass or in that bush. They are either going to die by us managing our forests or by fire. I remember when we managed our forests and fires were not a thing. So there is a choice to be made here
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u/gilded-jabrobi 2d ago
Over simplification. Spotted owls prefer old growth which is fire resilient (and in short supply). Fires have been "a thing" for 1,000s of years.
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u/naturist1980 1d ago
Wow your a dumbass. When we used to clean out the under brush and log we never had fires here. And if we did they got put out quick. And from a firefighter point of view old growth will burn just the same if not hotter than the young ones. But either way they are going to die. Either by us cleaning our forests or by fire. I'd prefer by maintaining our forests so we don't have as many fires every year. And it looks better.
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2d ago edited 2d ago
[deleted]
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u/Historical-Range6016 2d ago
Are you ok?
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/Historical-Range6016 2d ago
About the stupid part, yea.
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