Bend's Air Quality Index easily tops polluted Beijing

Not a pretty picture.The good news (or more bad news)...Portland at 158 and Seattle 161.
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Apart from heat jokes...a serious water situation in Central Oregon

             How hot is it?
              It’s so hot the chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs.

            The early August heat wave that has smacked Central Oregon brings to mind corny old jokes from late night TV.

            For days on end the region has suffered through temperatues in the 90s with some touching and crossing 100, while a smokey grayish-brown haze from southern Oregon and California wildfires has settled on the horizon to obscure mountain views.

            Besides the discomfort, though, a more ominous consequence is developing throughout Oregon, with the entire state classified as in “abnormally” dry or drought conditions. Moderate drought or worse is designated for 90% of the state, and 67%, including Central Oregon, is listed as in severe drought. Only northeast Oregon and a small eastern part of the state has escaped a drought classification.

            Reservoir levels in the Deschutes River basin confirm the worsening situation, resulting mostly from a low snowpack in the Cascades the past winter, early snowmelt into tributaries feeding the basin and the extremely hot and dry summer.

Deschutes Basin reservoir levels Aug 13

            The water gauges for Wickiup Reservoir, the largest in the region, on August 13 showed a level of only 44,460 acre feet, slightly more than 50% below the same date of 2017 and 51% under the average. The reservoir was only 21% full on the date.

            Wickiup provides water for the basin’s North Unit irrigation project, NUID, which serves by far the largest agricultural users of the region in Jefferson County north of Redmond.

            Crane Prairie Reservoir, which empties into the Upper Deschutes above Wickiup, was more than 17% below 2017 levels, but still nearly 17% above average and 68% full. The reservoir serves the Central Oregon Irrigation District, COID, the second largest water user in the basin.

            A May 2017 report by Headwaters Economics notes that NUID provides water for approximately 60,000 acres and CUID to 45,000 acres, with the districts together accounting for 84% of water diverted from the Deschutes River.

            Whereas NUID relies on the 200,000 acre feet of storage in Wickiup, COID has storage rights in Crane Prairie for up to 26,000 acre feet. But COID also diverts water directly from the Deschutes River using its senior water rights.

            COID’s average 304,195 acre feet of total irrigation diverted in the basin irrigates an average of 44,784 acres, according to the economics report. NUID’s diversion of 188,046 acre feet serves 58,868 acres.

            The report estimates that the North Unit, whose rights are “junior” to COID and several other districts, has achieved an “efficiency” average of 93.8% in using water through such conservatoin measures as lining canals, drip irrigations systems, pressurized pumps and piping of laterals off main canals. COID’s efficiency is 42.9%, the report notes.

            With the lowest estimated efficiency in the basin COID has been acting aggressively to pipe its canal system and achieve other conservation goals, working through a collaborative process with the Deschutes Basin Board of Control invoving also NUID and other districts along with federal and state agencies.

            Hanging over the effort is the listing of the Oregon spotted frog as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, as well as attempts to restore salmon and steelhead runs disrupted by the 1960s  construction of the Round Butte and Pelton dams on the Deschutes below its confluence with the Metolius and Crooked Rivers.

           

           

This Land is Your Land...This Land is My Land, and the Cows

            With the continual conflicts between many ranchers and the federal government over rangeland a new analysis by Bloomberg sheds new light on use of 1.9 billion acres in the lower 48 states.

            And the conclusion: Over one-third of all land in the country is pasture or grazing land, or 654 million acres, with 25% of that managed by the federal government which allocates grazing rights for a fee.

            Combine the grazing/pasture land with 127.4 million acres of cropland gowing animal feed and the total is 41% or 781.4 million acres..

            One animal is by far the largest beneficiary of the combined acreage – cows. Sheep and goats are a distant second followed by horses and “farmstead” animals.

            Perhaps most signficant in the Bloomberg analysis is the relationship of lower 48  land use and economic output. Although comprising only 3.6% of land used urban areas carry the weight of the country’s economy, 40% of the GDP (gross domestic product) from the 10 largest metro areas in 2016.

            Other breakdowns:

• Although agricultural land makes up about  20% of the country, or 391.5 acres  that used for food crops is much smaller, 77.3 million acres. A third of ag land is in ethanol production.
• The country enjoys an agricultural trade suplus but imports 15 percent of food and beverage products. Most fresh produce comes from Canada and Mexico, while land used for citrust fruits is larger than Rhode Island.
• Of 168.6 million acres categorized as special use areas for parks, wildlife, highways, railroads and military bases, 100 million acres is in parks and wilderness. A little more than one-fourth of the special use land is deserts, quarries & wetlands, 37 million is in the other uses
• Forestland, public and private, accounts for 538.6 mllion acres, or abourt 28%. With 12.4 million acres, or 2.3%, Weyerhauser Co. is the largest private timberland owner. Although the US Forest Service estimates 11 million acres are harvested each year with regrowth the inventory increases by about 1% annually.
• And, maybe of particular interest to Central Oregon, 3 million acres are laid out in golf courses.
• While urban land use is growing by an estimated 1 million acres annually, since 2008 ownership by the nation’s 100 largest owners has increased from 28 million to 40 million-the approximate size of Florida, as cited from The Land Report.

           

            The Bloomberg report relies on data from the US Department of Agriculture Economic Rsearch Service’s Major Uses of Land (MLS) statistics and estimates from the National Land Cover Database.
View the complete report: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/