The Lookout Creek Old Growth Trail no longer matches its signpost.
Instead of thick, mossy undergrowth under a canopy of stately, ancient trees, spears of blackened trunks now point skyward. The only green is the fireweed and low shrubs at our feet.
We’re on the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a U.S.D.A. Forest Service site on Willamette National Forest land, just north of Blue River Reservoir in eastern Lane County. Oregon State University is a partner, collaborating as co-administrator.
Seventy percent of this forest was affected by the Lookout Fire. Some of it, like this area, quite severely.
Mark Schulze, the forest director who lives on site, said he was within sight of Lookout Mountain on Aug. 5, 2023 when a lightning bolt hit just below its peak. Pointing to the strike location, he says it was the only lightning all day. Shortly after, his radio crackled with a smoke report.
“I was racing around. I actually came here, and I could just barely see some puffs of smoke,” he said. “But there was a little bit of rain with the lightning. What often happens is there's so much vapor, water vapor, and there's just a little bit of smoke. It can be hard to pick it out, but I did see it.”
The fire held steady in a remote area for a while, but on Aug. 18, fresh wind and a new storm blew the inferno into the area where we’re standing. The Lookout Fire ended up burning nearly 26,000 acres.
The blaze melted hundreds of sensors in the research forest and wiped out some projects entirely. But in a bittersweet way, what remained was the perfect canvas for large-scale wildfire experiments.
The 16,000 acre H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest hosts one of the longest-running forest research areas in the country. Now, scientists can also examine the effects of wildfire on everything from water quality and carbon storage to biodiversity and regrowth.
“It was a really useful fire from a scientific standpoint,” said Matt Betts, the Principal Investigator for Long-term Ecological Research here, “because we can compare up to, what, 80 years before the fire and then the fire, and now we're at right about three years post-fire.”
While the loss of some of the old-growth forest still stings, Betts said the study plots have been re-established, equipment replaced, and work has re-started.
In fact, some research projects feel eerily convenient. Schulze noted the impacts on a log decomposition study that’s been ongoing since the mid-1980s.
“There were six replicate sites and three burned and three didn’t, so it's almost like someone designed it.”
The distribution of the fire was also fortuitous … scientifically speaking, that is.
“We actually have some unburned forest that's up high, all the way down actually on that side of the watershed is either unburned or less burned,” Betts said, gesturing to the north. “And then on this, southern side of the watershed, it's in some places very severely burned.”
Funding for sites like this has been under scrutiny recently, yet the Forest Service only had a 4% budget reduction this year. The next budget review comes up in October, and officials at the Andrews Experimental Forest hope to have their next cycle of funding approved before then.
Experiments Abound
Driving to various sites, you can’t ignore that this is an experimental forest. Instruments are dotted throughout the landscape, PVC pipes with sensors sample the waterways, and many trees and logs are tied with various colors of flagging.
Betts said hundreds of studies take place here, many of which can benefit from pre- and post-fire information. For instance, they’ve had access to sophisticated imaging measurements called lidar from before and after the fire.
“And the kind of details that gives us,” Betts said, “total above-ground biomass, how much ladder fuels there are, how high the canopy is. All sorts of just scientific gold, and management gold.”
He said it’s extremely rare to have such rich information. As another example, one student is assessing pre- and post-fire micro-climate data across hundreds of locations. As far as Betts knows, it’s the first time in the west that someone’s been able to look at that kind of information.
Regeneration is another large area of research. We see young big-leaf maples, tiny, flowering rhododendrons, and a few seedling conifers among the small flowers and shrubs, but there’s a lot to learn about managed forests.
“We still don't really know how forests respond following fire of different severities,” Betts said. “Whether you can keep them productive or whether they're going to flip into some alternative state that's more shrubby.”
Changes to animal life have been followed for decades at the Andrews. Betts is involved in a long-term bird study tracking the roughly 100 species that come here for breeding season.
“The fire came, and we had about six or seven species we’d never recorded here,” Betts told KLCC. “And those included fire specialists like black-backed woodpecker — they eat beetles that are associated with recently burned trees — and mountain bluebird that really likes burned forest and young forests.”
He said bird species associated with deep forests, such as the hermit warbler, have had steep drop-offs since the fires. He thinks their numbers may keep declining as some of the burned-but-standing trees continue to fall.
However, Betts pointed out that when a forest burns, it doesn’t go away.
“The reality is, most of these trees are still here right now. And even down to the fine twigs, really. And it’s only recently that the needles have fallen off and in some cases they’re still on. So it’s remarkable how little carbon is gone from this system.”
Betts says the Andrews was initially set up to understand what happens to water after forests are logged. For more than 50 years, researchers have tracked clear-cut, partially cut, and control forests. Now, they can add burned areas to those studies: Lookout Creek ultimately feeds Eugene’s water supply.
