Climate change will continue to have wide-ranging effects on communities across Oregon, depending on where they are, how many people live there, and how much money their local governments have on hand.
A stark line between burned and unburned land on the hills surrounding I-84 east near Durkee, Ore., July 31, 2024. The Durkee fire was started by a lightning strike in mid-July and burned nearly 295,000 acres of grassland over the course of two weeks.
Anna Lueck / OPB
That’s among the key takeaways from a draft of the state’s first-ever climate change vulnerability assessment that published this month.
The Oregon Coast faces sea-level rise, algal blooms and shellfish biotoxins. The northern Willamette Valley faces heat waves, higher landslide risks and increased water demands as the population grows. Northeastern Oregon faces longer fire seasons, scorched crops and increasing numbers of destructive pests.
As part of a 2021 legislative directive, the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development partnered with climate researchers to illustrate these changes in a poster series, which was presented at public workshops and online surveys in 2022 and 2023.
“We wanted to make them more real to people’s lives,” said Erica Fleishman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute. “So, to not only think about how is climate changing, but what are the cascading effects on people’s lives.”
Researchers used the workshops and surveys to gain a better understanding of how climate change is affecting Oregonians’ health and well-being in eight different regions of the state. The team published their findings in a draft assessment that remains open to public input through the end of the year.
Researchers focused much of their attention on rural areas, where government resources for addressing climate change — like improving water treatment plants and roads, or creating wildfire response plans — are more scarce.
Christine Shirley, climate change resilience coordinator for the land conservation department, said she expected to get pushback from people who didn’t want to discuss climate change.
“We did not,” Shirley said. “People are feeling the effects, and they want to talk about them, and they want to talk about what they need in their local communities to respond to those changes.”
Another takeaway: Oregonians love being outdoors, but smoke from wildfires and oppressive heat are making it harder for them to hike, camp, fish or host outdoor gatherings.
“Every place we went to, people mentioned how important it was to have those things to build community” Shirley said. “Because of being sequestered inside — because of COVID-19, or wildfire smoke, or heat — they were seeing fractures in the community because they weren’t interacting with their neighbors.”
The assessment is intended to be a resource for state and local governments as they develop programs and plans for mitigating the effects of climate change. It will also help climate researchers determine where to focus their attention.
“It’s really helpful to know — in this comprehensive way in different parts of the state — what really matters to people,” Fleishman said.
This draft report will also guide the state’s update of its natural hazards risk assessment. That document outlines how the state should mitigate the affects of climate change and where it should focus investing public dollars. It’s closely tied to the state’s natural hazards mitigation plan, which needs to be updated every five years in order to access some federal disaster funds. The state’s current mitigation plan expires in September 2025.
