Dan Lanning details how Oregon is battling air quality issues during practice

Second-year coach Dan Lanning is battling an interesting set of circumstances thanks to the Oregon air quality right now, with Lane County wildfires impacting the Eugene area.

The team moved its practice from outside to the indoor practice facility on Tuesday as a result of the fires.

“Good day today, change of scenery a little bit,” Lanning said. “We’ve been going outside but we had to go in the indoor today just because some of the smoke. Had some really good situational practice stuff at the end, end-of-game scenarios that our guys handled well. But certainly some stuff to clean up.”

A measure of the Oregon air quality shown on Google.com on Wednesday indicated a reading of 111 in the Eugene area, which is unhealthy for sensitive groups. Smoke density is heavy.

Google’s tracking monitors things like particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide. The air quality index is influenced by several other factors, including wind speed and direction, terrain, smoke plumes, traffic and other sources that emit fine particle pollution.

It’s just the latest thing the Ducks have had to deal with in fall camp.

But Oregon is ready and able to adjust on the fly.

“Audible ready, but you have to do it based on what the needs are, what it looks like,” Lanning explained. “Luckily for us we have an indoor we can use when needed and we’re able to keep that filtered out.”

That has allowed Oregon, so far, to maintain its normal routine, even if a practice or two has had to move inside.

Lanning was asked if a situation might arise where the Ducks consider moving practices to a remote location for a few days based on the current Oregon air quality.

“It’s based on the situation,” he said. “If we’re going to run into a situation where we had six days in a row and we couldn’t maybe we’d do something different.”

For now, though, the indoor practice facility will do.

Oregon will open its season on Sept. 2 with a game at Portland State before hitting the road the following week to take on Texas Tech.