OREGON — The 2021 floods in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley caused upwards of $14 billion in damages. Since then, communities have brought lawsuits against logging companies and the provincial government, blaming them for logging practices that made flooding worse. Over the past 50 years throughout B.C., clear-cut logging has been the primary method of timber extraction across watersheds of all sizes. Floods are happening more often and are becoming more expensive, and unlike the storms that help trigger them, clear cutting and the associated cumulative impacts are something we can manage. When watersheds are assessed for flood risk, the question often asked is a simple one: How much of the watershed has been logged? …Our new study in Oregon, which has a similar climate to coastal B.C., suggests that the proportion of a watershed that is logged is not the only factor that determines flood risk. The landscape and climate matter too.