FishXing (fish crossing), a computer aided stream crossing culvert model designed to analyze fish passage through culverts was compared with results of an Oregon Department of Forestry fish passage monitoring report. FishXing was created at Humboldt State University through sponsorship from the US Forest Service, USDA, Stream Team, Six Rivers...
The Rural Studies Program (RSP) at Oregon State University (OSU) and the OSU Libraries collaborated to create a Rural Communities Explorer portal (phase 1). (www.oregonexplorer.info/rural).
The West Fork Cow Creek Watershed assessment has two goals:
1) To describe the past, present, and potential future conditions that affect water quality and fish habitat within the West Fork Cow Creek Watershed; and
2) To provide a research-based action plan that suggests voluntary activities to improve fish habitat...
The Tiller Region assessment has two goals:
1) To describe the past, present, and potential future conditions that affect water quality and fish habitat within the Tiller Region; and
2) To provide a research-based action plan that suggests voluntary activities to improve fish habitat and water quality within the Tiller...
Concerns about the extent to which major Pacific Northwest floods over the last decade might have been exacerbated by logging have heightened the need for a better scientific understanding of the role of forest maturity on snow accumulation and melt. To address this need, a multi-scale field and modeling study...
This paper describes the application of aerial photography and GIS technology to develop flexible and transferable methods for multi-spatial scale characterization and analysis of riparian corridors. Relationships between structural attributes of riparian corridors and indicators of stream ecological conditions are not well established. As part of a research project focused...
HUC: 170900.
Bounding coordinates: West Bounding Coordinate: -123.769586; East Bounding Coordinate: -121.631074; North Bounding Coordinate: 45.941295; South Bounding Coordinate: 43.350360.
This report summarizes accomplishments of the McKenzie River Focus Watershed Council (MWC) in the areas of coordination and administration during Fiscal Year 2000. Coordination and administration consist of prioritization and planning for projects; project management and implementation; procurement of funding for long-term support of the Council; and watershed education/outreach program...
Oregon's perspectives, differences, and objectives as they pertain to monitoring biodiversity. Presented at the Regional Biodiversity Monitoring: Partnership Workshop on May 18, 2006.
The Biodiversity Monitoring Workgroup which consists of federal, state, university, NGO’s, and private landowner stakeholders who are involved in aspects of monitoring biodiversity in the states of Oregon and Washington—conceived of the idea of exploring the possibilities of creating a Regional Biodiversity Monitoring Partnership.
The purpose of the Greater Sisters Country CWPP is to protect human life and reduce property loss due to catastrophic wildland fire in the communities and surrounding areas of the Sisters/Camp Sherman, Black Butte Ranch, and Cloverdale Rural Fire Protection Districts. Although reducing the threat of wildland fire is the...
The Crook County Wildfire Protection Plan documents the community planning process in Crook County and includes the following components:
-- Background information on the Community Wildfire Protection Plan purpose and process, community profile information and fire behavior in Crook County;
-- Risk assessment of communities and critical infrastructure;
-- Recommendations...
The Grant County CWPP is the result of a countywide effort initiated to reduce forest fire risk to citizens, the environment, and quality of life within Grant County. Citizens, fire districts, county staff or elected officials, and agency representatives have worked together to create a plan that would be successful...
The mission of the Greater La Pine Community Wildfire Protection Plan is to protect against loss of life, property and natural resources as the result of wildland fire. This CWPP outlines priorities, strategies and action plans for fuels reduction treatments in the wildland urban interface. It also addresses special areas...
This document outlines the priorities, strategies and action plans for fuels reduction treatments in the greater Bend wildland urban interface. This CWPP also addresses special areas of concern and makes recommendations for reducing structural vulnerability and creating defensible spaces in communities at risk. It is intended to be a living...
In March of 2005, Jefferson County decided to complete a Community Wildfire Protection Plan. The CWPP for Jefferson County covers the entire county except for the area covered by the Greater Sisters Country CWPP in the southwest corner of Jefferson County. It also includes that portion of Crooked River Ranch...
The Morrow County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) is the result of a countywide effort initiated to reduce wildland fire risk to communities and their citizens, the environment, and quality of life within Morrow County. Citizens, fire districts, county staff or elected officials, and agency representatives have worked together to...
The Clackamas CWPP is a consolidated reference documenting wildfire hazards, prevention and response efforts, and resource sharing information for all participating local, state and federal fire agencies. It improves upon historical fire planning efforts by providing a more localized and accurate approach for determining wildfire hazards and implementing best practices...
Executive Summary: As the 2005-06 Chair of the Western Governors' Association, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano placed special emphasis on issues surrounding sustainable development.
As part of that initiative, she directed WGA staff to develop a white paper on the use of
negotiated compromise federal legislation as a tool both to...
Report completed by the Workforce Capacity Work Group for the 2004 Oregon Fire Program Review. Technical editing by the Institute for Natural Resources at Oregon State University
As part of the 2004 Oregon Fire Program Review, the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) formed the Forest Fuels and Hazard Mitigation (FFHM) Committee to assess hazardous fuel loading issues, and recommend ways to reduce risk, and improve and strengthen the multiple hazard mitigation strategies in Oregon.
A statewide wildfire...
About 6 million acres of Oregon wildlands have no organization responsible for suppressing wildfires. Most of these lands are in remote areas of the state with low population density and relatively low resource values. Some wildfires on these lands become large fires that damage adjacent landowner resources and property, threaten...
The purpose of this report is to review existing wildfire prevention activities and recommend strategies to reduce the number and severity of human-caused wildfires in Oregon.
Oregon’s forest protection system was created in 1911. At that time, timber harvesting, forest management, and other land-clearing activities were the predominant uses of...
Oregon’s Protection from Fire Program is the largest program within the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF). The program provides wildfire protection on about 15.8 million acres of mostly privately-owned Oregon forestland. Private and state interests in protecting Oregon forests from fire have been intertwined since the early 1900s when ODF...
The Wallowa County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) enhances collaboration with wildland fire protection agencies to reduce the impact of wildfire on lives, property, and the landscape and to coordinate management of Wallowa County wildland-urban interface (WUI) lands in a manner that protects communities and local values at risk from...
This plan will not be legally binding in any way; its role is to be viewed as a working document that serves as a planning tool for the fire and land managers of Baker County (see the Promulgation Statement on p. i and the Signature Page on p. ii of...
Fish viewing station at Winchester Dam in Winchester on the North Umpqua River. This project was implemented by the Project Leadership class of 2000, and the project cost was $100,000.
This log placement project took place on Argue Creek, a tributary to Big Creek in the Smith River Basin. ODFW habitat biologists designed and inspected this project in 2004.
This project included 8 miles of fencing, 18 stock water tanks, 10 acres of riparian planting, 1 hardened crossing and 1 culvert crossing. Six landowners participated in the project.
Two Rapid-Span bridges were installed on property owned by Donna Woolley. The total project cost was $130,000. The bridges have concrete running surfaces over two large I-beams.
This pipe was installed in 2005 by Johnson Rock Products. The culvert has aluminized weir plates welded to the inside of the pipe at 10-foot intervals. The tributary on which this culvert was installed flows into Paradise Creek, a tributary to the main Umpqua west of Drain.
The Jordan/Alder Watershed is a 2,459-acre watershed located in southwest Oregon immediately west of Canyonville in Douglas County. This watershed--a portion of the O'Shea Creek HUC6, or sixth-field watershed--lies within the bounds of the South Umpqua River HUC5, or fifth-field watershed. Jordan Creek is a tributary to the South Umpqua...
This report was written as a resource for water quality managers, watershed councils, municipalities and citizens to help understand the status of watershed conditions in the Willamette Basin. Our interpretations are based on chemical, physical and biological indicators at three different spatial scales: the basin scale, the subbasin scale and...
This prioritization is designed to provide strategic focus for tidal wetland conservation and a restoration actions undertaken in partnership with willing landowners. The study highlights locations in the Siuslaw River estuary where tidal wetland restoration or conservation action may offer the biggest ecological "bang for the buck" - this is,...
This prioritization is designed to provide strategic focus for tidal wetland conservation and restoration actions undertaken in partnership with willing landowners. The study highlights land areas in the Smith River Watershed (within the Umpqua River estuary) where tidal wetland restoration or conservation action may offer the biggest ecological “bang for...
This prioritization is designed to provide strategic focus for tidal wetland conservation and restoration actions undertaken in partnership with willing landowners. The stufy highligts land areas in the Umpqua River Estuary where tidal wetland restoration or conservation action may offer the biggest ecological "bang for the buck" - that is,...
This prioritization is designed to provide strategic focus for tidal wetland conservation and restoration actions undertaken in partnership with willing landowners. The study highlights land areas in the Nehalem River estuary where tidal wetland restoration or conservation action may offer the biggest ecological “bang for the buck” – that is,...
This project surveyed and prioritized 36 tidal and freshwater wetland sites totaling 733 ha (1811A) in the Elk and Sixes River basins of Curry County, Oregon. Sites surveyed included emergent, scrub-shrub, and forested wetlands. The goal was to prioritize these wetland sites for voluntary conservation and restoration actions by willing...
The Western Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus) breeds along the coast of the Pacific Ocean in California, Oregon, and Washington and at alkaline lakes in the interior of the western United States (Page et al. 1991). Loss of habitat, predation pressures, and disturbance have caused the decline of the coastal...
Various mollusks, including small bivalves and gastropod snails, are a common food source for intertidal crabs. Prey opening techniques used on hard-shell prey are dependent on claw size and morphology. For example, large, strong claws can crush a snail outright while smaller, weaker claws leave characteristic peels, pulls and upper...
This project was part of the Siuslaw Watershed Restoration Initiative. We designed and established a monitoring program at five sites totaling 319 A: two tidal wetland restoration sites (97A) and two reference sites (205 A) in the Siuslaw River estuary, and one 17 A reference site in the Yaquina River...
"This guidebook is intended to serve as a reference to help local governments plan for the protection of wetlands and meeting the requirements of statewide planning goals, particularly Goal 5. This guidebook does not create any new policy; it only seeks to explain existing statutes and administrative rules. Background and...
The United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet accessing enough healthy, fresh food to meet basic nutritional needs is a critical issue faced by millions of Americans. There are a number of reasons for food insecurity in the United States, the primary causes being lack...
HARNEY COUNTY HISTORY PROJECT
AV-Oral History #469
Interviewee: Eileen O'Keeffe McVicker
Interviewer: Karen Nitz
Subject: Homesteading on the South End of Steens Mountain
Date: October 16, 2008
Place: Chester & Helen Felt Recording Room, Harney County Library, Burns, Oregon
INR’s long-term goal with this and other projects is to help revitalize rural economies and contribute to rural sustainability, while increasing ecosystem restoration and thoughtfully developing ecosystem services markets. To assist in meeting these goals, this project aims to understand and overcome a significant hurdle on the supply side of...
The purpose of this report is to characterize the December 2007 storm and long-term storm variability along the Oregon and Washington coast, present the results of a rapid assessment of randomly selected OWEB restoration projects (restoration activities including large wood placement, fish passage, and riparian planting), and based on the...
The Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center (Oregon BEST), an independent nonprofit organization, is a catalyst for research and university-industry collaboration in green building and renewable energy to create business opportunities and jobs in Oregon. Oregon partnered with the Institute for Natural Resources (INR) to conduct a series of...
From 3 April – 23 September 2009 we monitored the distribution, abundance and productivity of the federally Threatened Western Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus) along the Oregon coast. From north to south, we surveyed and monitored plover activity at Sutton Beach, Siltcoos River estuary, the Dunes Overlook, North Tahkenitch Creek,...
The Vital Signs Indicators Project incorporates multiple goals, most particularly:
1. Provide a tool upon which to base statutory assessment of the effectiveness of the Management Plan in implementing the Scenic Area Act;
2. Increase performance accountability and tie Commission actions to the purposes of the Act;
3. Foster dialogue...
The project focuses on nonequilibrium ecosystem dynamics, a body of scientific research that characterizes and interprets ecosystem change. INR summarizes knowledge from this field, describes ways in which the current management framework may be inconsistent with scientific findings, and helps identify options for future management. This paper is designed to...
The research reported here was conducted to identify interests and needs among various sectors of the Oregon agricultural community regarding sustainable agriculture. The study also sought to gauge potential for establishing a program in Oregon to serve those needs.
This chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section discusses land cover map development. It begins by providing background information on the regional division of labor and the regional land cover legend. It then focuses on our land cover mapping methods, including a description of data sources, the...
The purpose of the study is to gauge the scope of bioenergy opportunities by identifying and profiling bioenergy projects and potential projects in Oregon, and learning directly from developers the key challenges and issues this nascent sector faces. Bioenergy projects are defined as projects that would produce biofuels (ethanol and...
ORNHIC maintains extensive databases of Oregon biodiversity, concentrating on rare and endangered plants, animals and ecosystems. The program is managed by OSU, but has been a
cooperative project, with significant support from The Department of State Lands, The Nature Conservancy in Oregon, USFWS, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the...
The Oregon University System, working in partnership with the Oregon Economic & Community Development Department, commissioned a bio-fuels industry readiness survey for Oregon. This report serves as one component of the readiness survey. The report has three primary sections:
• An overview of the current forest products industry in Oregon...
From 3 April – 21 September 2007, we monitored the distribution, abundance and productivity of the federally Threatened Western Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus) along the Oregon coast. From north to south, we surveyed and monitored plover activity at Sutton Beach, Siltcoos River estuary, the Dunes Overlook, North Tahkenitch Creek,...
This classification lists the native plant associations known to occur in Oregon, and includes both successional and climax vegetation types that were an important part of the presettlement landscape of Oregon. It serves as an index to the diversity, distribution and relative rarity of the state's native plant associations, and...
This guide provides keys, descriptions, and stand tables for 122 native freshwater plant associations (14 forest and woodland, 28 shrub, 78 herbaceous, 2 nonvascular) in northwestern Oregon, based on analysis of data from 1,992 plots distributed throughout the study area. Descriptions are provided for eight other plant associations for which...
The structure and components of riparian areas influence the rate, amount, and timing of water, nutrients, organic debris, and inorganic materials that enter streams and rivers. The energy of floodwaters and their ultimate volume, timing and erosive power is influenced by the soils, vegetation and geomorphology of fluvial surfaces within...
The Governor’s Advisory Group on Global Warming developed this Oregon Strategy for Greenhouse Gas Reduction.1 Governor Ted Kulongoski appointed the Advisory Group early in 2004 to perform this task. This Strategy, if implemented, will complement the agenda of the West Coast Governors’ Global Warming Initiative undertaken by the governors of...
From 2 April – 14 September 2006, we monitored the distribution, abundance and productivity of the federally Threatened Western Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus) along the Oregon coast. From north to south, we surveyed and monitored plover activity at Sutton Beach, Siltcoos River estuary, the Dunes overlook, North Tahkenitch Creek,...
Once lost, a species can never be recovered, and there is no way of knowing how useful it may have been. We do know that human beings and many of their industries depend on plant and animal products. About 50% of all pharmaceuticals have a natural component as an active...
The Department of Administrative Services (DAS) and Oregon State University (OSU) are collaborating to develop an orthoimagery portal application to allow for the distribution of digital aerial imagery for the State of Oregon. The near-term objective of this project is to develop an Imagery Portal that serves the
2005 half-meter...
The Biodiversity Monitoring Workgroup (Appendix 1)—which consists of federal, state, university, NGO’s, and private landowner stakeholders who are involved in aspects of monitoring biodiversity in the states of Oregon and Washington—conceived of the idea of exploring the possibilities of creating a Regional Biodiversity Monitoring Partnership. The Workgroup’s idea of hosting...
This report examines the Bridge Program efforts undertaken, methods used, obstacles encountered, accomplishments, and lessons learned. It is not a performance evaluation; it is a case study focusing on the social, organizational and institutional dynamics of transforming a vision for environmental streamlining into a working program. The Bridge Program is...
This report documents an Oregon Department of Forestry pilot project conducted through the Institute for Natural Resources at Oregon State University on a science synthesis method known as systematic review- a rigorous, transparent literature review technique developed and now widely used in clinical medicine. A systematic review focuses narrowly on...
In 2008, the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) asked the Institute for Natural Resources (INR) to assess whether the Oregon Land Use Program, as designed, is helping the state meet its land use goals. More specifically, this intensive but highly time-limited research effort set out to answer the...
The purpose of this project was to conduct a preliminary examination of the environmental use of plants in Oregon by gauging the breadth of opportunities and challenges faced by growers, users, and researchers who are involved in the general area of the environmental uses of plants. More specifically, the project...
In order to reduce long-term idling along the Oregon I-5 corridor, the US Environmental Agency entered into a collaborative research and implementation program with Oregon State University, the Oregon Climate Trust, and Shurepower (producers of truckstop electrification equipment) to install Shurepower stations at truck stops in Oregon. This research component...
The purpose of this briefing document is twofold: (1) to provide a general overview of key environmental issues at the global, regional, and local levels; and (2) to provide examples of long-term environmental goals that have been adopted by businesses, governments, and other organizations. This document is not meant to...
INR’s mission is to provide Oregonians with ready access to current, science‐based information and methods for better understanding resource management challenges and developing solutions and after the 2004 release of the Governor’s Advisory Group on Global Warming (GAGGW’s) extensive report, The Oregon Strategy for GHG Reductions, INR recognized the need...
A systematic review of evidence was conducted concerning the effects of large wood placement on salmonids. In contrast to a general literature review, a narrowly focused question was targeted. The question was formulated before the review commenced and specified the subject, treatment, and outcomes of interest. The primary review question...
The purpose of this study is to summarize the technical information on aggregate mining in Oregon including updates of supply and demand since the last comprehensive forecasting of aggregate demand completed by Whelan (1995). Aggregate is a term that numerous definitions, but as used herein, aggregate is sand, gravel, and...
The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient, Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) has established two new research programs – the Surface Transportation Environment Planning (STEP) Cooperative Research Program and the Future Strategic Highway Research Program II (F-SHRP II). The creation of these new programs provides an opportunity for transportation...
Over the last 25 years numerous approaches, understandings, and perceptions about natural areas have changed – changes which affect the relevance of programs such as the Heritage Program. As one participant stated, “the complexity of science in general has been humbling”. The last 25 years has shown many assumptions and...
Development of the prototype website is an integral part of OWEB’s strategy for information systems development. Specifically, the Board, INR, and the Department of Administrative Services Information Resources Management Division (DAS) were directed by the Legislature to develop a statewide information system for natural resources. In addition, the Oregon Geographic...
From 1 April – 24 September 2008, we monitored the distribution, abundance and productivity
of the federally Threatened Western Snowy Plover (Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus) along the Oregon
coast. From north to south, we surveyed and monitored plover activity at Sutton Beach, Siltcoos River
estuary, the Dunes Overlook, North Tahkenitch Creek,...