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. After the fire the forest comes back, but it takes time. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with forest ecologist Dominick DellaSalla about the vital role that fire plays in the cycle of life and death in a forest. We'll also discuss how we've interrupted those cycles through livestock grazing, high grade logging, post-fire logging and fire suppression, that changes the fire regimes in many places so that fires burn hotter when they do eventually burn. We'll look at how climate change is also exacerbating the intensity and frequency of fires.
Dominick DellaSalla is President and Chief Scientist at the Geo Institute in Ashland, Oregon. He is an internationally renowned author of over 150 technical papers, co-author of four books on biodiversity and sustainable forest management, subject editor for the Natural Areas Journal, guest editor for Conservation Biology, author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World – Ecology and Conservation, and serves as the President of the North American Section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
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