Fire in OregonWhere it happens.
Why it matters.
Fire is part of this landscape.
The records tell different stories.
Learn how fire shapes different Oregon landscapes. Find a place you know, follow a documented story, or explore prescribed burns and wildfire history. See what happened—and what the evidence can tell us about better choices.
Explore the mapOne state. Many relationships with fire.
Start with the landscape. Then ask what fire changes—and what people want to protect.
Room for fire. Room for big trees.
In many dry pine forests, recurring surface fire helped maintain open stands. Fire exclusion can allow small trees and surface fuels to accumulate. The objective may be to restore a more open forest and reduce damaging fire effects.
What fuels have accumulated, and which trees should survive?
A treatment can change fire effects without preventing a wildfire. Weather, terrain, treatment age, and follow-up all matter.
Where did it reach?
A perimeter outlines a fire event. Some ground inside may not have burned.
What changed?
Severity describes effects such as vegetation change. One fire can leave a mosaic.
Was it beneficial?
That needs a local objective and evidence: habitat, surviving trees, community impacts, and recovery.
Start with somewhere
you know.
A town, a home base, a place you return to. Find the documented fires and treatments in the surrounding landscape.
426 Oregon places · Census 2025The landscape remembers.
See recent wildfire boundaries alongside the burns we plan.
2022–2026
Perimeters can include unburned ground. Overview boundaries are simplified. Select an outline to read its source record. These time controls affect fire scars; record filters below affect the list.
Updating wildfire boundaries…
Refine records Dates, agency, method & purpose
Source records, not a count of unique fires. Includes records with unknown dates.
Estimated forest land, across public and private ownership.
A fire leaves a pattern.
Its meaning depends on the place.
Wildfire can do ecological work as well as cause harm. A single perimeter can contain surviving forest, lightly burned ground, and patches where most vegetation changed. The severity layer helps reveal that pattern.
Where fire reached
A perimeter outlines an event. It may contain ground that did not burn.
What changed
Satellite assessments describe vegetation change. They don’t, by themselves, establish ecological benefit.
What comes next
Forest type, repeat fire, regeneration, and local monitoring give those changes meaning.
How much of the landscape has had “good fire”?
That percentage is not yet established. A meaningful progress bar needs a defined landscape, an ecological objective, a time period, and reviewed evidence of outcomes. Prescribed fire and wildfire can both contribute when the evidence supports it. We do not subtract fire acreage from forest area or treat every forest as needing to burn on the same schedule.
What actually happened here?
Objectives, observations, and the questions that remain. Every story has a source.
Two units. Two restoration goals.
In October 2025, OSU students burned two units with different objectives: releasing oak and madrone in one, supporting Willamette Valley ponderosa pine in the other.
Read OSU’s accountOSU College of Forestry · April 3, 2026Choose the objective
The account identifies the vegetation each unit was intended to support, rather than offering one generic reason for burning.
Release oak and madrone; support Willamette Valley ponderosa pine.
Burning and patchy effects described in OSU’s published account.
Verified unit boundaries, repeat vegetation measurements, costs, and comparable alternatives.
Regional context only. Burn-unit geometry has not been verified; we do not place a pin on these units.
The fire ends.
The landscape keeps changing.
Compare real, dated NASA imagery. Watch the burn scars appear, then look again five years later.
New scars interrupt the green.
NASA documented extensive new scars after the 2020 fires. Compare their shapes with the dated perimeter records, rather than assuming every dark area burned.
Why don’t we just burn more?
The right opportunity is a combination of conditions, preparation, people, and purpose.
Rain can open a window—or close it.
Changing moisture and weather can create opportunities before fuels become too wet. The Willamette Valley refuge program reports most burning in late summer or early fall.
Conditions must fit this particular plan.
Wind, humidity, temperature, and the forecast influence fire behavior. A seasonal opportunity is not an approval to burn. Conditions must continue to be monitored after ignition.
Choose the goal.
Then ask for the evidence.
“More acres burned” measures activity. Success depends on what a particular place and its communities need.
Is this forest better able to sustain its intended functions?
- Surviving trees, regeneration, and species composition
- Surface fuels and the need for repeat work
- Drought, later fire, and observations over several years
A returning vegetation signal is one measure. Tree structure, species, and fuels can follow different paths.
These options are not interchangeable or universally available. Decisions depend on ownership, policy, ecology, weather, and protection needs. A useful project review also names who decided, alternatives considered, costs, and public participation opportunities.
For each story above: an explicit objective, a documented observation, and the missing evidence. Costs and measured local outcomes are shown as missing when we have not obtained them. We have not calculated an Oregon-wide “good fire” percentage.
Smoke in your sky?
A fire near you is not automatically the source of your smoke. Use current official information alongside this historical atlas.
Understand smoke tradeoffsWhat’s here. What’s missing.
Counts below describe the latest complete import for each source, after location and publication checks. Rolling-feed history may contain additional records.
| Source | Coverage & limitations | Import status |
|---|---|---|
| BLM prescribed fire treatments BLM · primary | Historical treatment units on BLM lands; Oregon-intersecting features from the OR/WA service. Treatment polygons are not observed burned footprints. Planning-document identifiers are often missing. Repeat treatments remain separate. | 36,675 records2026-09-19 06:22 UTC1900–202925 held for review |
| USFS FACTS fire treatments USFS · primary | Oregon hazardous-fuels fire treatment records on national forests. Includes planned treatments consumed by wildfire. Purpose codes are administrative; they do not fully explain site selection. Accomplished treatment acres do not measure fire footprint. | 19,323 records2026-09-19 06:24 UTC1965–20261218 source records lack mapped locations |
| PNW prescribed fire tracker USFS / partners · primary | Oregon-intersecting units in the regional planning and accomplishment tracker. Contains planned, in-progress, monitoring, and completed statuses. In Progress does not establish that ignition has occurred. Units can disappear without cancellation. | 595 records2026-09-26 06:20 UTC2025–20261 source records lack mapped locations |
| ODF daily plans ODF / registrants · enrichment | Rolling forest-management smoke records; public locations are points. Not all Oregon burning or all burn permits. A unit may have multiple ignitions. Empty responses do not establish no burning. Daily feeds enrich the three-day feeds and are not counted again. | 0 records2026-09-26 06:20 UTC |
| ODF daily accomplishments ODF / registrants · enrichment | Rolling forest-management smoke records; public locations are points. Not all Oregon burning or all burn permits. A unit may have multiple ignitions. Empty responses do not establish no burning. Daily feeds enrich the three-day feeds and are not counted again. | 0 records2026-09-25 18:21 UTCRefresh overdueLatest refresh failed; previous complete import retained. |
| ODF three-day plans ODF / registrants · primary | Rolling forest-management smoke records; public locations are points. Not all Oregon burning or all burn permits. A unit may have multiple ignitions. Empty responses do not establish no burning. Daily feeds enrich the three-day feeds and are not counted again. | 0 records2026-09-26 06:20 UTC |
| ODF three-day accomplishments ODF / registrants · primary | Rolling forest-management smoke records; public locations are points. Not all Oregon burning or all burn permits. A unit may have multiple ignitions. Empty responses do not establish no burning. Daily feeds enrich the three-day feeds and are not counted again. | 0 records2026-09-25 18:21 UTCRefresh overdueLatest refresh failed; previous complete import retained. |
| WFIGS recent wildfire perimeters NIFC · primary | Year-to-date wildfire perimeters intersecting Oregon; previous successful snapshots retained. Provisional boundaries can include unburned islands. Not all fires have a perimeter. Boundaries do not measure burn severity or ecological benefit. | 400 records2026-09-26 06:21 UTC2026–2026 |
| Oregon Explorer recent wildfire perimeters OSU INR · primary | Compiled Oregon wildfire perimeters through 2025. Perimeter coverage is incomplete, especially for small and older fires. Perimeters and occurrence records are different views of fires, not additive counts. | 4,606 records2026-09-11 19:57 UTC2000–2025 |
| Oregon Explorer early wildfire perimeters OSU INR · primary | Historical perimeters before 2000. Perimeter coverage is incomplete, especially for small and older fires. Perimeters and occurrence records are different views of fires, not additive counts. | 4,844 records2026-09-11 20:05 UTC1800–1999 |
| FPA FOD · seventh edition USFS Research · primary | Cross-agency wildfire occurrences, 1992–2024; Oregon subset. Occurrence points can be approximate. The catalog map-service link still serves edition six; this importer requires the seventh-edition SQLite download. | 78,781 records2026-09-11 19:59 UTC1992–2024 |
| WFIGS recent wildfire occurrences NIFC / IRWIN · primary | Year-to-date wildfire occurrence reports; retained snapshots preserve our observed history. Operational records are provisional, not a complete statewide count. Fire points are not perimeters. Historical years after FOD coverage require additional archives. | 1,897 records2026-09-26 06:21 UTC2026–2026 |
| ODF Smoke Data System history ODF · Acquisition pending | Historical registrations, authorizations and individual accomplishments to request. Export has not been received. No coverage inferred from annual totals. | Not importedSource identified; records pending |
| DEQ ecological burn permits DEQ · Acquisition pending | Habitat and wetland restoration permit records. Permit approval is not evidence a burn occurred. Records not yet obtained. | Not importedSource identified; records pending |
| LRAPA / Rivers to Ridges LRAPA · Acquisition pending | Lane County ecological burn permits and unit map. Underlying GIS and historical accomplishments not yet imported. | Not importedSource identified; records pending |
| Agricultural field burns ODA · Acquisition pending | Willamette Valley field registrations, daily permits and accomplishments. Records not yet obtained; not a statewide agricultural-burning census. | Not importedSource identified; records pending |
Know the story of a burn?
We’re looking for records, burn plans, explanations, and corrections. Contributions are reviewed before publication. We seek agreement with the relevant programs before publishing identified tribal or cultural burns.