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A new study finds that smoke from large wildfires in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington produce most of the wildfire smoke that affects residents across the Western U.S. The key to reducing the impacts of those summer wildfires is to hold more prescribed burns of 1,000 acres or more in the springtime.
The study, published in the journal Earth's Future, looked at smoke patterns in 2018 and 2020, two large wildfire seasons in the West. Researchers concluded that prescribed burns in Arizona and central Oregon have been effective at mitigating wildfires.
BLM Restoration Landscapes: Upper Bear River and La Barge
In celebration of the Bureau of Land Management’s $161 million investment in Western landscape restoration projects, Look West is highlighting Restoration Landscapes each day. Today's landscapes are the Upper Bear River on the Utah/Wyoming border and Wyoming's La Barge. These landscapes are both habitat for the imperiled greater sage-grouse, and the Bear River is the primary source for the shrinking Great Salt Lake. BLM's investment of nearly $20 million dollars will restore 1.4 million acres of land across both areas.
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While we've seen this incredible surge of getting more people outside, we now need to figure out how to really instill this ethos of responsible recreation in everyone. If we aren't doing our part collectively, those lands suffer and they get degraded – and they then do become under threat.”
