Full Suppression in Central Oregon

     I haven't had much hands-on experience with wildland fire while it is burning, but I have done a lot of observation of post-fire effects in Central Oregon. I spend a lot of time in Bend in the summers and enjoy hiking and backpacking in the area and also more to the west near Sisters and throughout the east-side of the Cascades. When travelling through these areas year after year I like to take the time to check out how the landscape has recovered from fire and the differences in successional stages that follow from high to low severity fires. I like walking across and landscape imagining a recreation of the fire behavior and hypothesizing why it transitioned from surface to  crown fire in certain areas or why it may have scorched in one stand while the canopy across the trail is untouched. One of my favorite places to do this is in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness where there has been no suppression and a more natural fire regime that has been minimally influenced by human hands. Wilderness areas still provide us a glimpse into the forests of Oregon before man-influenced fire regimes.

     Making guesses about natural versus man made changes in fire regimes and behavior is easier as you move farther east over the cascades. The role of full suppression becomes apparent when these arid ecosystems receive a dose of high severity fire because of the toxic human-influenced mix of abundant surface and ladder fuels due to suppression, combined with dry summer weather and mountainous topography. Hiking east of Bend it is apparent that the full suppression common in this area has lead to conditions that are more primed for a severe fire and lasting negative impact than it would have been if the natural regime was allowed to be carried out.