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Sustainable Living

The decisions we make in our everyday lives and in our homes can help to promote a greener, healthier Northwest. From installing a rain garden to buying less stuff to opting for public transit or biking when possible, small everyday actions by engaged, informed consumers accumulate to big impacts.

Latest Research

Sustainable Living

Sightliners’ 2023 Giving Tuesday Recommendations

At Sightline Institute, our efforts focus on building sustainable communities throughout Cascadia; we believe we are all in this place together, sharing its burdens and benefits, rising or falling as one. Sightline stands for strong communities. To ensure our communities thrive, we must also work together to support the unique …

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Cascadia’s Entire Housing Debate in Two Two-Minute Videos

Hi, I’m Mike—a new senior fellow at Sightline, based in Portland and writing in the coming months mostly about ways …
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The Seattle Pipeline Expansion You’ve Never Heard Of

The Seattle area is home to a gas pipeline project with the potential to increase Washington’s carbon emissions by a …
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Two Cascadian Cities Extend Greater Welcome to ADUs

May has been a big month for small housing in Cascadia. Two cities—Bellingham and Portland—reaffirmed the region’s growing welcome to …
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Weekend Reading 5/11/2018

Kristin What makes a good life? This 12-minute TED talk from a 75-year study (which originally only included men, but …
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Are Outdated Notions of “Industrial Areas” Hiding a Giant Housing Opportunity?

Editor’s note: For full disclosure, Jeff Thompson is a contributor to Sightline Institute. (Of course, many people concerned about sustainable …
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Weekend Reading 5/4/2018

Eric ICYMI, reporters with the New York Times tracked down a number of instances when false rumors on Facebook led …
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Meet your researcher

Kathryn (Kate) Anderson

Senior Researcher

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Research Collections

Long Rotations Forestry
Wildfire Management
Climate-Smart Farming

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Meet the Team

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Meet the Team

Michael Andersen

Senior Housing Researcher and Transportation Lead.

Michael leads Sightline’s work transitioning Cascadia away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner energy sources.

Catie Gould

Senior Researcher

Laura is a fellow with Sightline Institute, focused on energy policy, particularly natural gas infrastructure and building decarbonization.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Farms and forests cover much of the Cascadia bioregion, and how we care for these lands is key to a sustainable future. Rural land owners, managers, and workers are devising ways to work with nature, regenerating and protecting healthy soils, rich biodiversity, and clear and bountiful water. All the while, they are supporting thriving rural economies and producing healthy foods and plentiful timber. 

Unfortunately, such approaches are not yet widespread. On our farmlands, we often rely on practices that tax both the land and workers. In places, these methods have eroded our soils and polluted our rivers. Agriculture could be a carbon sink, but instead it’s a major carbon emitter. In our forests, short timber harvest rotations and careless clear-cuts pollute and desiccate water sources, disrupt habitat, and imperil the most carbon-rich bioregion on earth. 

Sightline’s Farms & Forests program spotlights and supports the innovators who are restoring our working lands and rural economies. 

We identify the barriers that hold these innovators back, researching and promoting strategies, especially in public policy, that help Cascadia’s rural leaders scale up their solutions for the environmental and economic challenges of Cascadia’s working lands. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Meet the program lead

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Kathryn (Kate) Anderson, Senior Researcher. Follow her on Twitter: @CollaborKate.

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Select projects and resources 

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Managing wildfires 

Cascadia is trapped in a wildfire catch-22: the more we suppress fires, the worse they get; and the worse fires get, the more we suppress them. Sightline examines how the region could interrupt this cycle, from fire hardening homes and reintroducing beneficial fire to the land, to making hard decisions about where and how to build our communities. View our wildfires research. [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Long rotations logging 

“Long rotations,” or the practice of delaying logging and growing forests past a short life, can deliver not just greater timber yields, but also greater carbon storage and water and habitat benefits. But foresters face barriers, financial and otherwise, in trying to make the switch from the typical 40-year rotation to a longer 80-year harvest cycle. Read more, including ways to support the shift. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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