Eye on the Triangle

Emilia Rivadeneira 0:00
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Good morning everyone. Hope you're enjoying your day. My name is Emilia rival genera, host of Eye on the Triangle. And with further ado, let's get into some news.

Emilia Rivadeneira 0:48
Hello and welcome to WKNC. I am the triangle, your source of local news, where we dive deep into the pressing issues affecting our communities. I'm your host, Emilia Reina, and today I'm here with Robert Scheller, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University. Thank you so much for being here today, Robert, how are you doing? You're welcome. I'm doing well. Thanks. Yeah. So today we're going to be talking about an issue that will seemingly happening far away from our campus and from the triangle area. It impacts us all regardless, and that is the recent wildfires happening in California, and what they mean for the environment, climate change, and even live here on the East Coast. So to get us started, I wanted to ask you so California wildfires have become more frequent over the years. Can you explain some of the key factors driving this trend?

Robert Scheller 1:51
Yeah, fires across the west coast have been increasing, particularly over the last 20 years or so, and it's primarily driven by increased aridity. So we're seeing warmer temperatures, oftentimes less precipitation. And it's a combination, of course, that

is very conducive to wildfires, right? So wildfires are responding to the moisture of the fuels, you know, the leaves and branches that propel a fire, they also increase the odds of ignition, and particularly when we see these cases with really high wind speeds,

creates a Perfect conditions for wildfire,

Emilia Rivadeneira 2:40
right? And also I was reading, actually, some of the recent news in the this specifically, like fire that happened in California,

and it was fueled by powerful winds and dry conditions. And also it was mentioned that it started in a backyard, if I'm correct, like it just started there, and then it kind of like grew into what it was. So what would you say are the kind of immediate and long term effects of these wildfires on California's ecosystems, specifically?

Robert Scheller 3:19
Well, yeah, it's a big question.

You know, of course, the immediate effects are loss of human lives. You know, 1000s of homes destroyed just a surge in air pollution, so incredibly bad for environmental health. You know, it's unlike when a fire burns through a forest where it's primarily burning natural materials, you know, wood and leaves and so on. When homes are burning, you think about all the plastic that's in a home and the PVC pipes

and so on. The pollution coming out of a home is just incredible, you know, just a toxic mix of benzenes and other volatile organic compounds. So the immediate effects are going to be,

you know, they are. It's ongoing right now. People are suffering. People are displaced. Their health is at risk and so on.

You know, the the longer term effects,

you know, immediately around Los Angeles,

you know, and I you asked about the ecosystem,

you know, these are fire adapted ecosystems, and the ecosystems around Los Angeles will be fine. So those areas are dominated by Chaparral and some forest, and they're definitely fire adapted. I'm not worried about the ecosystems in and around Los Angeles. They'll be okay.

You know, longer term for the human communities. You know

we're talking about this being $150 billion disaster. And.

Number just keeps going up.

Many of these folks didn't have home insurance. You know, what does that mean when you don't have home insurance, or if your insurer can't cover these kind of losses?

You know, more more broadly, around California, we're seeing huge increases in fire,

and for a variety of reasons, including climate change, these fires are more severe than we've witnessed in the past, and oftentimes we're seeing the loss of forests. So we're losing some of the iconic forests in and around California. My research particularly touches on the Sierra Nevada, which runs up and down,

you know, the spine of California. And you know, it's just a potential to lose some of those iconic forests. They'll convert more into shrublands over time.

And you know, shrublands have their own value. But those forests in

in the Sierra Nevada are are, you know, really special places that people are invested in, and so, you know, it's a loss of wildlife habitat, just a lot of

consequences to losing so many, so many fires causing so much forest loss, you know, pretty fairly quick amount of time,

Emilia Rivadeneira 6:26
yeah, and I'm glad that you bring up the forest loss specifically, because I wanted to touch on how specifically, just like, forest loss impacts climate change, like the bigger picture of climate change, like,

Speaker 1 6:43
with those, like, wildfires that are happening right now, we're losing trees, we're losing wildlife. And how does that kind of, like, paint the bigger picture on climate change and like, it affects us, like, on the long term? Yeah, great question. So forests are a huge carbon sink, meaning that forests are just pulling a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering that carbon in a pretty stable form over time. And so forests have played a big role in absorbing a lot of the carbon humans have been emitting over the last 150 years, 200 years.

Robert Scheller 7:20
But what we're seeing with these big wildfires, not just the United States, you know, we're talking Canada, around the world, we're seeing incredible increase in wildfire. And so what's happening is this, forests are no longer the sinks that they used to be, that oftentimes they're emitting a lot of carbon now to the atmosphere.

You know, there's two effects. Of course, it's meeting a lot of carbon, so that can amplify climate change, and they're just not able to absorb as much carbon as they used to. When you start losing forests, you know, you're losing that carbon sequestration potential.

So that hampers our ability to deal with climate change over time. So globally, we're starting to see more and more forest becoming carbon sources rather than sinks. Now it's often driven by Wildfire, but drought plays a big role as well. Say, in the Amazon Basin, by the Amazon forest, they're burning, but they're also just being lost due to drought, another climate change induced

Emilia Rivadeneira 8:27
threat.

Yeah, and I wanted to also ask, how does this kind of like impact global warming, specifically, because I know that you mentioned,

you know, like how the forest are more like,

are not as absorbing as much like carbon,

and also like wildfires in the opposite release, just like significant amounts of this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And so, could you explain how this impacts, like efforts to curb global warming nowadays? Yeah. Well, sorry, I mean, planet Earth is blessed with forest and other ecosystems that absorb carbon, a lot of carbon over time, so it's an incredible sink

Robert Scheller 9:20
of carbon, where it's pulling the carbon out of the atmosphere, and it's that carbon in the atmosphere that's really driving global warming.

And so if we lose that capacity to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, it just amplifies global warming. I

Emilia Rivadeneira 9:38
don't know was that good enough? Quick, succinct, no, no, yeah, that that did touch on what I was asking. And kind of like changing to the subject on just like the East Coast, I know that, you know, like the West Coast, like pretty far and you know, like wildfires do not tend to happen here on the.

East Coast. But we have seen instances in the past where smoke from West Coast fires affects just air quality across the country. And so what would be kind of like the potential health implications for East Coast residents?

Robert Scheller 10:16
Well, of course, smoke from Canada, most you know more of that smoke that smoke that we experience here on the East Coast is coming from the north of us, rather than all the way out to the West Coast, but the smoke hazard is real. And you know, in the last couple years we've seen the East Coast blanket with smoke, but we shouldn't rule out increase in fire in the East class the East Coast. So I also do a lot of research in the Appalachian Mountains. And again, as the climate warms, we should expect more and more fire over time. And so some of the research we've conducted here indicates that the amount of fire in the Appalachians could be five times as much fire.

And we've also seen, you know, in the relatively recent past, in 2017 there was

a fire in the Appalachians that burned into Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and 30 people died. So the East Coast is not immune to the effects of wildfires, and we expect that to increase over time and layering on top of that, there's, you know, we're never going to have as much wildfire as the West Coast. It just does not, you know, we have a just a lot more humidity and rain over the summer. We don't have a long, prolonged dry summer like they do on the West Coast, right? But what's different is the population is much higher here in the East so we have a lot more people living in and around our forests here in the east coast. So most of the land in the East Coast is privately owned and heavily developed. That's really different from the west coast, where most of the land is federally owned and not developed.

And so when we do have fires in the East Coast, it puts

more people at risk. And we also see some of the same hazards here in the East Coast that we have seen in the West Coast. You know, this fire in Los Angeles, there's certain neighborhoods where they have very poor evacuation routes. And so really, rugged terrain means that there's just not a lot of roads going in and out of these neighborhoods. We have the same situation in the Apple actions, where, again, really rugged terrain

that causes a couple different problems. One is that rugged terrain can funnel wind and accelerate wind speeds. And, you know, higher elevations, you often have higher wind speeds. So we have that same risk. It's not as high as California, where they have the Santa Ana winds, which are just incredible, but there is a risk for high wind speeds here in the Appalachians,

and that can really excel, you know, accelerate fires.

And just the risk of topography, where you have these just, you know, narrow roads in and out of these areas, particularly areas I don't know if you spend a lot of time in the Appalachians, but it's kind of Airbnb Central, where they have all these folks who have

little familiarity with the landscape. They certainly don't have familiarity with fire, and they don't understand how quickly fires can move across the landscape. So this is one of the big risks in the East Coast, is that we have more people out on landscape, and these people are very unfamiliar with fire. So people in the West Coast, a lot of people have a go bag. So they have a bag with all their most precious things, you know, documentation, you know, like the deed to their house and other important

Speaker 1 13:48
personal items in a bag that they ready to evacuate at a moment's notice. They, most of them, often know their evacuation route, not always like we saw in Los Angeles, people did not know their evacuation routes, but they're just a lot more you know, fire prepared on the West Coast. Here on the East Coast, we are very unprepared for fires. People don't have experience with them. We don't have a lot of the infrastructure and planning in place. Should a big fire break out here in the East Coast, yeah, and that's really interesting that you mentioned, um, the Appalachian Mountains. And, like, I didn't even thought about that, and thought about, like, you know, the potential of wildfires happening here in the East Coast, in the Appalachian I feel like a lot of people just assume that that's never going to happen here? And they're just like, oh, that's happening in the West Coast. And that's, that's it has happened here. Yes, there is risk in the east coast for wildfires, as we saw in 2016

Robert Scheller 14:51
with a big fire that in went from North Carolina into Tennessee and caused 30 the death of 30 people.

And it's not just the Appalachians. I should point out the Appalachians is the area I study in the east coast, but I think it's a risk up and down, you know, the broader Appalachian range. You know, anywhere where you have this rugged topography,

where there's fewer roads and more continuous forests, that's where the risk is. Oak forests are also part of the risk, and pine forest accentuate the risk,

you know, but that's not all of these coasts. Parts of the East Coast, say, eastern North Carolina, are much less at risk, not that a fire couldn't start there under the right conditions, but that's an area with a lot of roads, and it's relatively flat, so it'd be much easier for firefighters to get in there and control a fire in eastern North Carolina, but it's where you have that rugged terrain, and you know, very continuous forest. There's not agriculture, of course, on top of the Appalachians that you have just continuous fuels, they get big fires happening in the East Yeah. And what are the difference between, like, you know, the West Coast and the East Coast, like it, for example, in like causes of these fires, and like, the Appalachian Mountains, like, what's some sort of like distinction? No, you're good.

Emilia Rivadeneira 16:23
What was the word you use? The difference, yeah, kind of like the difference in causes of these wildfires, the cost, yeah, the cost, no, no, not the cost, but the cost of the wildfire. Is it the same causes that start the same. You know, how do they start? Yeah,

Robert Scheller 16:47
yeah, the causes of fire are fairly similar between the east and west coast, which is humans. Humans cause most fires. So most ignitions are human caused. There's, you know, some slight differences. You do get more lightning ignited fires in the West Coast than you do in the East Coast. They get dry lightning in the West Coast, whereas in the East Coast is generally like a heavy rainstorm when you get when we're having lightning. But in both places, it's it's largely human ignitions.

And you know, most of those are accidental ignitions. Of course, you know, and it could be someone burning a brush pile, careless camper. Arson is sometimes a cause of,

you know, probably more arson than we would

Emilia Rivadeneira 17:38
care for. Of course, any arson is bad arson, but there's more than people expect as far as arson as a cause, but it is primarily humans causing fires. And how could people from the East Coast kind of prepare? I know that you mentioned, for example, in the West Coast, these wildfires every year, or something that, like, residents are kind of not expecting. But like, you know, like, they know that it happens and they have, like you mentioned, like their bag, like, with their documents and stuff. But like, here residents on the East Coast, like they're not thinking about that type of stuff. Like, usually it never happens. So like, what would be kind of like a recommendation for them to kind of like, follow, yeah, well, that's a good question. You know, for the individual, I don't know that I have any recommendations for just an individual. A lot of these, a lot of this preparation has to happen more at an institutional level,

Robert Scheller 18:42
in other words, making sure that we have firefighting equipment available where places are at risk, making sure that we're monitoring the weather and the fuels on the ground to make sure, you know, If we enter a condition that we're,

you know, a heightened condition, a condition where the risk is high that we're putting, you know, resources in place, firefighting equipment in place, and so on.

And you know, there's things that the governor can do.

You know, as far as instituting burn bans, you know, making it illegal to have any fires whatsoever under these extreme, extremely dry weather conditions.

You know, an individual homeowner can do some preparation if you have a house that's, you know, neighboring a forest or embedded within the forest, is making sure that there's some distance between the house and any vegetation. So

doesn't have to be totally void of vegetation. We want to reduce any low shrubs that could particularly carry fire immediately into a house. And there's also things such as home construction.

What kind of siding does your house have? And other factors that can be done more at an individual level, but it often needs to be incentives and education for people to even know, to, you know, improve their their practices in and around their house,

you know. And it comes down to, we would have to think about evacuation routes and just making sure people are aware, and, you know, maybe even thinking about for these home rentals. You know, Airbnb and VRBO are super popular in Appalachian Yeah, you know, making sure that information is available to people in case fire did break out, like, well, which way, which way do you go? How do you get out of there?

Emilia Rivadeneira 20:42
Yeah. And

Robert Scheller 20:44
a quick question you mentioned, kind of, what are the months in the eats in the East Coast that are most like, dry, dry, what could be considered dry months in which we should be kind of like, yeah, aware of, you know, like all of these suggestions, yeah, the risk is highest in the spring and the fall, generally speaking. So in the, you know, in the winter, there's often, you know, rain or snow, which doesn't evaporate very quickly, you know, just there's a lot less sunshine, a lot less solar radiation, drying out the fuels in the winter. So that's a relatively low risk time. And then in the summer, we have the increasing humidity as well as just the green up of the forest. So now the leaves come out neck. The leaves create kind of a biological barrier to fire. They're not as conducive to burning, you know. So when you have a really green forest, you know, high humidity in the summer, we all know what that is. Here in North Carolina, you know, the risk is also pretty low at that time. And so it's a spring and fall. You know, in the fall you have the freshly fallen leaves from Oak trees and pine trees, particularly pretty hazardous conditions

Emilia Rivadeneira 22:01
in the same true in the spring after the winter is over and that fuel dries out again, is that hazard again, right? And this is kind of like a similar question of my previous one about suggestions, but since you mentioned that it it's mostly like more on the side of like institutional kind of like reforms. I wanted to ask if there are any lessons from the West Coast response to wildfires that could inform kind of climate resilience strategies here on the East Coast, specifically on the institutional level. Yeah. Well, you know, that's a tough question to answer right now, because you look at Los Angeles today, and you would say that they were unprepared. Yeah, yeah. So What lessons do we learn from Los Angeles?

Robert Scheller 22:55
What some of this does have to do with a little bit their lack of preparation, and

it's really the timing is a good to ask that question or answer the question, because people are really suffering right now. And it's now is not a great time to be assigning blame on fire departments or individual homeowners. You know, now's the time to really think about, how do we support people? How do we, you know, help a major metropolitan area dealing with a crisis right now?

That's why it's a tough, tough question to answer,

you know, but after the fires are up, we can start asking these questions about where the homeowners adequately prepared. Were they, you know, practicing good, good practices of keeping the vegetation away from their homes?

Did people know their evacuation routes? Were they prepared for that? Did everyone have their go bags? Did they know where, you know, the elderly parents or grandparents? Were they safe? You know, were all these

good practices in place to keep people out of harm, and we're gonna have to wait till these fires over before we start answering those questions. No, yeah for sure.

Emilia Rivadeneira 24:12
And also for NC State students who, you know, are passionate about addressing climate change, and also just, you know, in general, what would you say are some actions that we can take as students to kind of make a difference, both locally, here on the East Coast and globally, regarding just like climate change? Yeah, well, in regards to climate change, you know, there's,

Robert Scheller 24:43
there's a number of actors. There's, you know, the government sets policy around climate change. Corporations have an important role to play in whether they're promoting wise use of fossil fuels versus extravagant.

Fossil fuels.

Are they being honest with the public about, you know, risks of climate change. So corporations play a role, but individuals also play a role. We, each, you know, can, through our individual actions, reduce climate change. And you know, I get it not any one individual probably isn't going to be important. But if we collectively act, change our behaviors, that's gonna be huge. And people's behavior changes, corporate behavior, we have to realize, you know, if we stop buying things with a large carbon footprint, then corporations will start selling things that have a smaller carbon footprint,

you know, leading into, you know, what, where? What should individuals be doing? You know, it's, it's well known. And, you know, I don't have the resources right at my fingertips, but you can look up what are the primary carbon sources from any individuals behavior. One of it is, you know, what kind of proteins do you eat?

Beef is widely known to be absolutely the worst source of proteins in regard to carbon emissions, beef and lamb in particular, that

doesn't mean you have to give up. Me, there's a lot of meat me set of, you know, much, much lower carbon footprints than beef.

You know, reducing air travel, another huge activity people can do, particularly international air travel, just a huge emitter of carbon.

People should think about, what is their commute time? How you know, how far are they commuting? How frequently are they commuting?

Those are some of the few off the top of my head, really big

individual behaviors that lead to higher carbon emissions,

Emilia Rivadeneira 26:56
that lead to more climate change. Yeah, and another thing that I wanted to ask, I know that it's very easy to feel overwhelmed with climate news and by climate news, so to you specifically kind of what gives you hope when it comes to our ability to adapt and to address all these challenges, specifically with wildfires and just in general, climate change.

Robert Scheller 27:28
Yeah, without a doubt, it can be,

you know, tough, you know, particularly when you're witnessing a catastrophe, like where you are right now or earlier this year, with western North Carolina and the hurricane to be optimistic and hopeful.

But you know, climate change is going to be a multi generational fight,

and so we need to look at, you know, what are the longer trends that are? You know, happening over the last 30 years and that will happen over the next 50 years. So we have to think longer term horizons. And you start looking at longer term horizons, and that's where I start to see the hope,

which is that we have really developed all the technology we need to bring our carbon emissions down. I don't know that will ever hit net zero, to be honest, but we can bring it down to a level that climate change will not be the dominant story in our lives. We have all this technology, and it's just about deploying the technology. And the great news is we have been deploying this technology just incredibly rapidly. Now, it's going to take, you know, 1015, 20 years before we really get it scaled up to where it needs to be. But we are rapidly moving forward and thinking about, you know, solar panels, of course, batteries that can store renewable power, a grid that can handle renewable power, those are the big things that really give me hope. We have these technologies. We're deploying them so rapidly right now, just they're just taking off like crazy. And so that's really helpful.

You know, we also need to change some of our behaviors. Again, as far as you know, meat consumption and other behaviors, and some of those might take longer than these, you know, deploying solar panels, but we're making progress.

And so, you know, you got to look beyond the bad news of the day and start looking at, you know, our collective efforts, we are,

you know, turning the corner on this. It's still going to be another again, I think 4050, years before we're totally out of the woods, and we'd see some devastating things in the meantime. But yeah, that's in your lifetime. Anyways, maybe not in mine. You.

But in yours,

Emilia Rivadeneira 30:02
yeah, I hopefully Yes. And I mean, that's another thing that it's like, the multi generational

thing that you mentioned, I think, like, I agree with that, and it's just like, it has to be changed through, like, all of these generations like that are coming and like it's just all about change. So yeah, yeah, but yeah. Is there anything else would you like to add before we wrap up?

Robert Scheller 30:36
I guess I would add that we could all play a role, everyone. There's a lot you can do. One of the biggest things you can do is vote

and,

you know, just always look for the opportunities to contribute when you can, and how you can, and where you can, and we absolutely, you know, I think one of the biggest battles is to fight against despair. We don't want people giving up. We are making progress, but it is going to be a long fight, and you know, there's going to be setbacks along the way,

but we just need everyone you know moving in the same direction and doing what we can, where we can, and that's what you know fills me with hope, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Emilia Rivadeneira 31:27
On that note, thank you all for tuning in to WKNC, I in the triangle, and thank you Robert for accompanying us today. It was great to have you on the program. You're very welcome. Yeah. Thanks. Take care. Take care. Bye.

This has been your host, Emilia Renee, thanks for listening to Eye on the Triangle for back episodes of the show. Go to wknc.or/podcasts

you music in today's episode is Krakatoa by Noah Stark, licensed under creative commons. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai