Wednesday, April 12, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
DEADLINE: Skydive
operation appears
to be relocating
25
Severe fires change PNW forest ecology
By Nick Hottman
Continued from page 1
OSU College of Forestry
comes from the discussions,”
he wrote in an email to The
Nugget.
The new deadline coin-
cidentally coincides with
the date of a new Oregon
Department of Aviation hear-
ing on adding Sisters Airport
to Oregon’s list of airports of
state concern. The two pro-
cesses are separate and ODA
will act only on whether the
airport meets one or more of
the three criteria for listing in
Appendix M/Exhibit 2 as a
privately owned, public-use
airport of state concern.
City Manager Rick Allen
informed city councilors on
Monday that the Skydive
Awesome operation appears
to be set to move to Madras.
He quoted an email stat-
ing, “We will be operating
this summer in Madras, OR
while the City of Sisters and
the Sisters airport sorts out
multiple issues regarding
general aviation and jump
operations.”
Allen told councilors that
the email “confirms what I
have heard from the Sisters
Airport Manager and the
Madras Airport, I guess it’s
pretty official. Secondly I
do know that some items in
the drop zone at the Madras
Airport were being cleared
for skydivers to land, I talked
with the gentleman who was
coordinating the removal of
some posts for safety.
“This should decrease the
tensions between the neigh-
bors and airport…”
In another matter, Sara
Kelly, Aquatic Resource
Coordinator for Crook,
Deschutes, Harney and
Malheur counties with the
Department of State Lands
told The Nugget that DSL
plans to make a site visit to
the airport during the last
week of April to evaluate the
status of a paved “runout”
on the airport runway. The
runout sits on common area
owned by the adjacent Eagle
Air Estates subdivision and
may have been built on lands
mapped as wetlands.
CORVALLIS — Over the
last 30 years, the landscape
annually affected by forest
fires has slowly increased
across the Pacific Northwest,
and in some regions, severe
blazes account for a higher
proportion of the area burned
than in the past.
As a result, the ecology of
some of the region’s forests
is changing in unprecedented
ways.
Scientists calculated that
less than one-half of one
percent of the region’s for-
est is subject to fire in any
given year. But in a project
using satellite imagery and
ground-based tree invento-
ries, they also found that, in
areas historically dominated
by low- and mixed-severity
fires, nearly a quarter of the
burned landscape was subject
to patches of high-severity
fires that often exceeded 250
acres in size.
Studies of fires prior to
1900 suggest that severe fires
occurred over smaller patches
of forest and accounted for a
much smaller proportion of
the total burned area than they
do today.
To reach their conclusions,
researchers analyzed images
taken by the LANDSAT satel-
lite between 1985 and 2010.
The study evaluated burned
area and fire severity in seven
different ecosystems, ranging
from high-elevation subalpine
forests to those dominated by
western hemlock, ponderosa
pine and Douglas fir. Since
high-severity fire kills trees
outright, the scientists were
able to link fire-related tree
mortality to changes in images
from year to year.
They published their find-
ings in the journal Ecosphere.
“Large fires can have sig-
nificant social and economic
costs, but they are also playing
an important role in the ecol-
ogy of our forests,” said Mat-
thew Reilly, lead author and a
post-doctoral researcher in the
College of Forestry at Oregon
State University.
“From a regional biodi-
versity perspective, they are
enhancing diversity by creat-
ing early seral habitats (the
first stage of forest develop-
ment dominated by grasses,
forbs and shrubs). These pro-
vide important habitats for
species that depend on open
conditions and fire-killed
trees (or snags). Such habitats
are very rare and dispersed
across the region but are con-
centrated in hotspots of high-
severity fire like southwest
Oregon, Santiam Pass in cen-
tral Oregon, the North Cas-
cades in Washington and more
recently the Blue Mountains,
following the Canyon Creek
Complex fire near John Day.”
About 98 percent of forest
fires are put out before they
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Holy Th ursday, April 13:
Mass of the Lord’s Supper, 7:00 p.m.
Good Friday, April 14: Stations of the Cross, 3:00 p.m.
Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, 7:00 p.m.
Holy Saturday, April 15: Easter Vigil, 8:30 p.m.
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have a chance to grow, said
Reilly.
“Our study is really about
the other two percent that tend
to burn during the hottest, dri-
est, windiest conditions,” he
said. “Suppression tends to be
more effective when it’s cool
and wet.”
More high-severity fires
occur in hotter, drier years,
the scientists said. But in dry
areas east of the Cascades,
fires burn a smaller portion
of the landscape than they did
before 1900. Consequently,
forests are becoming denser as
vegetation accumulates, creat-
ing what scientists call a “fire
deficit.”
“In the ponderosa pine
forests in eastern Oregon, we
estimated it would take about
380 years at the current rate
for fire to cover the whole
region,” said Reilly. “But his-
torically, we know that those
forests were subject to fire
every 12 to 28 years.”
The scientists’ results are
consistent with other studies
that document a fire deficit
in the forests of the western
United States, but this is the
first study to document how
recent fires vary in different
ecosystems across the Pacific
Northwest.
“There’s no one out there
who thinks that fire will play
the historical role that it used
to. We just can’t really have
that,” Reilly said. “But we
need to figure out how to let
the low- to moderate-severity
fires burn in forests where
fire was frequent historically.
There is growing consensus
among scientists that use of
managed wildfire may be one
way to do this, especially in
cool, wet years.”
Researchers at the Univer-
sity of Vermont, the USDA
Forest Service and the College
of Earth, Ocean, and Atmo-
spheric Sciences at OSU were
co-authors on the paper. Fund-
ing for the study was provided
by the USDA Forest Service.
Can You FreeYourself of Some
Investment-Related Taxes?
Tax Freedom Day generally falls around this time each year. Th is is the
day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay off its total
tax bill for the year, according to the calculations made by the Tax Founda-
tion. So you may want to use Tax Freedom Day to think about ways you can
liberate yourself from some of the investmentrelated taxes you may incur.
Of course, Tax Freedom Day is something of a fi ction, in practical terms,
because most people pay their taxes throughout the year via payroll deduc-
tions. Also, you may not mind paying your share of taxes, because your tax
dollars are used in many ways – law enforcement, food safety, road main-
tenance, public education, and so on – that benefi t society. Still, you may
be able to reduce those taxes associated with your investments, leaving you
more money available to help you work toward your important goals, such
as a comfortable retirement. Here are some suggestions for making investing
less “taxing”:
• Contribute regularly to tax-advantaged retirement plans. Contrib-
ute as much as you can aff ord to your IRA and your 401(k) or other employ-
er-sponsored retirement plan. Traditional IRA earnings grow tax deferred,
and your contributions may be tax-deductible, depending on your income.
(Taxes will be due upon withdrawal, however, and withdrawals made before
you turn 59½ may be subject to a 10% IRS penalty.) Your 401(k) or similar
plan also provides the opportunity for tax-deferred earnings growth. Roth
IRA contributions are not deductible, but your earnings are distributed tax-
free, provided you don’t take withdrawals until you’re 59½ and you’ve had
your account at least fi ve years.
• Follow a “buy-and-hold” strategy. If you sell investments you’ve owned
for less than a year, and their value has increased, you will have to pay capital
gains taxes at your personal income tax rate, which, in early 2017, could
be as high as 39.6%. But if you hold investments for at least a year before
selling them, you’d be assessed the long-term capital gains rate, which tops
out at 20%. Be aware, though, that the Trump administration and Congress
seem likely to change the tax rates. Early plans call for a maximum personal
income tax rate of 33%, with the top rate for capital gains and dividends
either staying at 20%, or possibly being reduced to 16.5%. In any case, you’ll
still come out ahead, tax-wise, by holding your investments long enough to
receive the long-term capital gains rate.’
• Consider municipal bonds – If you are in one of the higher income
brackets, you might benefi t from investing in municipal bonds, which are
typically used to fi nance public projects, such as roads, schools, airports
and infrastructure-related repairs. Interest payments from “munis” are typi-
cally exempt from federal income taxes and may also be exempt from state
and local taxes, depending on the state in which the bond issuer is located.
Interest payments from some types of municipal bonds may be subject
to the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Again, though, watch for devel-
opments from Washington, as both the Trump administration and some
congressional leaders favor eliminating the AMT. When charting your in-
vestment strategy, consider your risk tolerance, time horizon, family situa-
tion and estate plans. But investment-related taxes should also be in your
strategic mix – so look for opportunities to keep these taxes under control
This article was written by Edward Jones for use by your local Edward Jones Financial Advisor.