Latest / Science Show KY / 8.6.26
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader's
- 0:04Speaker 1: Kelly Taylor. I'll have articles on the topics of science
- 0:07Speaker 1: and nature, But first a reminder. RADIOI is a reading
- 0:12Speaker 1: service intended for people who are blind or have other
- 0:16Speaker 1: disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Our
- 0:22Speaker 1: first article comes from mother Jones. The headline reads New
- 0:26Speaker 1: York tackles the myth that solar is swallowing farmland dated
- 0:31Speaker 1: August fourth. In rural areas across the US, solar power
- 0:36Speaker 1: opponents keep leaning on the argument that utility scale arrays
- 0:41Speaker 1: are gobbling up valuable farmland, but plenty of evidence proves
- 0:45Speaker 1: that's just not true, and now New York is tackling
- 0:48Speaker 1: the misinformation head on. As the Trump administration accused the
- 0:53Speaker 1: state of fast tracking solar farms on prime farmland, Newark
- 0:58Speaker 1: leaders fired back last week, saying that renewables empower our
- 1:03Speaker 1: farmers to keep their land in use and in their
- 1:05Speaker 1: family while avoiding the threat of permanent conversion or abandonment.
- 1:11Speaker 1: That's because farmers can lease a plot to solar developers
- 1:16Speaker 1: and return it to agricultural use at the end of
- 1:18Speaker 1: the array's life. As the state officials explained, in their
- 1:21Speaker 1: eleven page letter quote. A recent study by Cornell found
- 1:26Speaker 1: that the overwhelming majority of farmers who received solar lease
- 1:30Speaker 1: payments used that income to continue or even expand farming
- 1:35Speaker 1: on their land, not to exit farming or scale back operations.
- 1:40Speaker 1: Discouraging or inhibiting property owner's ability to independently make choices
- 1:45Speaker 1: about what they can and cannot do with their land
- 1:48Speaker 1: can cause financial harm and undermine fundamental property rights. In
- 1:54Speaker 1: the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority has
- 1:57Speaker 1: more proof that solar and farming can work hand in hand,
- 2:01Speaker 1: and outlined all that in a major guide book it
- 2:03Speaker 1: released last year. Sheep and cattle are munching below panels
- 2:09Speaker 1: on several New York farms, and the state has zoning
- 2:12Speaker 1: rules and protections in place to preserve undeveloped land. New
- 2:17Speaker 1: York's pushback squares with the findings of a recent report
- 2:20Speaker 1: from the Solar Energy Industries Association. That study shows solar
- 2:25Speaker 1: farms currently take up a mere point one three percent
- 2:29Speaker 1: of New York's roughly thirteen thousand square miles of federally
- 2:34Speaker 1: designated prime farmland, a stat that resonates across the country.
- 2:39Speaker 1: Solar covers just zero point zero seven percent of all
- 2:42Speaker 1: US farmland according to SEIA. That's three times less than
- 2:48Speaker 1: golf courses and six times less than suburban development. And
- 2:53Speaker 1: yet solar panels, not cul de sacs, are the focus
- 2:55Speaker 1: of a particularly potent campaign from upstate New York influence
- 3:00Speaker 1: Answer Alexandra Fasulo. That's Fasulo. Fasulo has amassed more than
- 3:08Speaker 1: a million followers across TikTok and other social platforms where
- 3:13Speaker 1: she's constantly posting posting videos that inflate solar's threats to
- 3:18Speaker 1: agriculture and undeveloped land. Similar sentiments are being spread on
- 3:23Speaker 1: social media by John Rich. He's one half of the
- 3:28Speaker 1: Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy Guys and was recently
- 3:31Speaker 1: hired by the White House to advocate for landowners on
- 3:35Speaker 1: a national scale. These and other antisolar advocates often ignore
- 3:41Speaker 1: the good that the clean energy source can do for
- 3:43Speaker 1: farmers nationwide. In California's Central Valley, for example, years of
- 3:49Speaker 1: drought have led hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural
- 3:53Speaker 1: land to go fallow. Economics and water availability have driven
- 3:57Speaker 1: farmers to stop growing there, but they can still make
- 4:01Speaker 1: money and hold onto their land by leasing their plots
- 4:04Speaker 1: to solar developers. Plus, as New York's Guidebook points out,
- 4:09Speaker 1: farming is still happening alongside solar installations. I recently visited
- 4:14Speaker 1: an Illinois solar farm where sheep were grazing underneath and
- 4:17Speaker 1: around panels and arrangement that the sheep's owners love because
- 4:21Speaker 1: they don't have to maintain expansive pastures back at home. Meanwhile,
- 4:26Speaker 1: researchers have found that tomatoes, saffron, and other crops can
- 4:30Speaker 1: thrive below panels, and so can native plants. That's not
- 4:35Speaker 1: to mention the climate benefits of ditching planet warming fossil fuels,
- 4:40Speaker 1: which are driving droughts, floods, and other weather disasters that
- 4:44Speaker 1: are legitimately threatening farms in the US and beyond will
- 4:51Speaker 1: turn down to popular mechanics. The most dangerous volcanic threat
- 4:55Speaker 1: to America is coming, and it doesn't need an eruption
- 4:58Speaker 1: to begin. After Mount Saint Helens erupted in nineteen eighty,
- 5:05Speaker 1: experts were faced with a precarious question, how can we
- 5:09Speaker 1: best prepare for wind? Not if the next volcanic eruption
- 5:13Speaker 1: in the Cascade Range occurs triggered by a five point
- 5:19Speaker 1: one magnitude earthquake, the Mount Saint Helen's volcanic disaster devastated
- 5:24Speaker 1: nearby communities in Washington, taking fifty seven lives and causing
- 5:28Speaker 1: eight hundred and sixty million dollars in damage to roads, railways,
- 5:33Speaker 1: local infrastructure, and the logging industry. And for researchers, it
- 5:38Speaker 1: was a wake up call for establishing better seismic monitoring
- 5:41Speaker 1: and eruption preparedness. But scientists weren't necessarily figuring out how
- 5:46Speaker 1: to plan for streams of lava or plumes of ash
- 5:49Speaker 1: billowing out of a volcano in the Pacific Northwest region
- 5:52Speaker 1: of the United States. Instead, they knew they needed a
- 5:56Speaker 1: blueprint for taking on a lesser known danger, one that
- 5:59Speaker 1: could wreak havoc on communities without a volcano even erupting.
- 6:04Speaker 1: The ruin brought by the Mount Saint Helen's disaster had
- 6:08Speaker 1: less to do with the eruption itself, but rather the
- 6:11Speaker 1: huge lahar the event generated. Experts warn these violent volcanic
- 6:17Speaker 1: mud flows could be the biggest looming threats to people, towns,
- 6:21Speaker 1: in the environment in the Pacific Northwest, and the race
- 6:25Speaker 1: to analyze lahars before it's too late sit that's the
- 6:28Speaker 1: center of this gripping popular mechanics feature. What makes a
- 6:32Speaker 1: lahar so perilous start with its unpredictable behavior. As the
- 6:36Speaker 1: slurry of sediment, rock, debris, and water begins at the
- 6:40Speaker 1: top of a volcano and travels down slope, moving very
- 6:44Speaker 1: quickly and covering large distances in mere minutes. A lahar
- 6:49Speaker 1: can flow down a volcano and level anything in its path. Quote.
- 6:54Speaker 1: They are complex phenomena that change a lot during transport,
- 6:58Speaker 1: says National Autonomous University of Mexico volcanologist Lazette Caballero Garcia.
- 7:06Speaker 1: They can grow, they can dilute, and there's good reason
- 7:11Speaker 1: why United States Geological Survey researchers have deemed lahars the
- 7:16Speaker 1: most threatening hazard in the Cascades. They pose direct danger
- 7:20Speaker 1: to surrounding communities. For instance, around one hundred and fifty
- 7:24Speaker 1: thousand people live in Washington's Pierce County, in the middle
- 7:27Speaker 1: of the projected lahar path of a volcano at Mount Rainier,
- 7:32Speaker 1: located just around sixty miles from Seattle. But an eruption
- 7:38Speaker 1: or other seismic event doesn't even have to occur for
- 7:41Speaker 1: a lahar to set off, and that's a crucial reason
- 7:44Speaker 1: why scientists have spent decades trying to understand the risks
- 7:48Speaker 1: that communities near Cascade Range volcanoes face. Everything from DAN
- 7:54Speaker 1: failures to heavy thunderstorms have spurred fatal lahars around the world,
- 8:00Speaker 1: and these no notice lahars worry researchers, especially those studying Rainier.
- 8:07Speaker 1: A landslide beginning on the western side of Rainier, scientists say,
- 8:11Speaker 1: could demolish the towns of Ortein, pully Up and Sumner
- 8:17Speaker 1: in just half an hour, and it would effect over
- 8:20Speaker 1: sixty thousand residents. No notice lahars are the thing that
- 8:25Speaker 1: goes bump in the night, says former Cascades Volcano Observatory
- 8:29Speaker 1: geophysicist Andy Lockhart. Quote it creeps me out in quote.
- 8:35Speaker 1: That's why it's vital to keep researching lahars and get
- 8:38Speaker 1: better at forecasting their volatile behavior. To improve their analysis
- 8:43Speaker 1: of lahar destruction and impact, scientists have developed some key
- 8:47Speaker 1: experimental sites, including a custom flume in Oregon's H. J.
- 8:51Speaker 1: Andrews Experimental Forests funded by the USGS, for replicating l
- 8:57Speaker 1: lahar flows. The d has also created an extensive network
- 9:03Speaker 1: of monitors throughout the Cascade Range to not only detect
- 9:07Speaker 1: lahars and volcanic activity, but also relay signals back to
- 9:11Speaker 1: emergency managers in impacted communities so they can take appropriate action.
- 9:17Speaker 1: But when could the next lahar or an other seismic
- 9:22Speaker 1: event occur. Researchers warn that it could be scarily imminent,
- 9:28Speaker 1: and that possibility keeps scientists going working to evolve lahar
- 9:33Speaker 1: research in hopes that with another disaster like Mount Saint
- 9:36Speaker 1: Helen's will be better prepared to respond and react. To
- 9:40Speaker 1: explore more about monitoring in the Pacific Northwest, it will
- 9:46Speaker 1: continue this series to prepare for the threat posed by lahars.
- 9:55Speaker 1: Now will turn to Science Alert. There's one predator that
- 10:00Speaker 1: terrifies bears and mountain lions alike. This is from August fitth.
- 10:06Speaker 1: The wilds of North America can be a hazardous place.
- 10:09Speaker 1: It's there that some of the most intimidating predators make
- 10:13Speaker 1: their home. Black and brown bears that could eviscerate a
- 10:16Speaker 1: person with one swipe of a mighty paw, and mountain
- 10:20Speaker 1: lions that stalk almost silently on padded feet. Many hikers
- 10:25Speaker 1: will gird themselves against the possibility of an attack from
- 10:28Speaker 1: one of these feared beasts. But as two new papers explain,
- 10:33Speaker 1: there's an animal out there that even the most formidable
- 10:36Speaker 1: predators will try to avoid us. In fact, attacks by
- 10:43Speaker 1: these animals are so uncommon that in North America people
- 10:46Speaker 1: are far more likely to be struck by lightning. The
- 10:50Speaker 1: research suggests one reason why bears and mountain lions go
- 10:54Speaker 1: to remarkable lengths to stay away from humans whenever they
- 10:58Speaker 1: can quote. These discoveries change the narrative about human carnivore conflict,
- 11:05Speaker 1: writes Yale University ecologist Oswald Schmidtz, tying together two studies,
- 11:11Speaker 1: one on bears and the other on mountain lions. In
- 11:14Speaker 1: North America, brown or grizzly bears attack on average around
- 11:19Speaker 1: eleven humans per year, mountain lions attack just four to
- 11:23Speaker 1: six people per year, and the rate of black bear
- 11:26Speaker 1: attacks is unknown, but just sixty three human fatalities due
- 11:31Speaker 1: to black bear attacks were documented between nineteen hundred and
- 11:36Speaker 1: two thousand and nine. By contrast, between the US and Canada,
- 11:43Speaker 1: around five hundred and eighty people are struck by lightning
- 11:46Speaker 1: every year. Looking purely at the numbers, lightning strikes outnumber
- 11:50Speaker 1: bear brown bear attacks by roughly fifty to one, although
- 11:54Speaker 1: of course the actual risk depends on other factors, such
- 11:58Speaker 1: as where you live and how much time you spend
- 12:00Speaker 1: in bearfield woods, So why are these attacks so rare.
- 12:05Speaker 1: The answer, according to the two studies, is that these
- 12:09Speaker 1: animals don't simply react to humans showing up. Instead, they
- 12:13Speaker 1: actively changed their behaviors to avoid us. In a study
- 12:17Speaker 1: led by wildlife biologist Philip Manlake of the USDA Forest Service,
- 12:22Speaker 1: researchers studied black and brown bears feeding along salmon streams
- 12:26Speaker 1: in southeast Alaska. Motion triggered speakers played recordings of either
- 12:33Speaker 1: goal calls off road vehicles or human voices. Whenever a
- 12:39Speaker 1: bear approached, cameras recorded what happened next. The bears were
- 12:44Speaker 1: twice as likely to beat a hasty retreat when they
- 12:47Speaker 1: heard vehicle sounds compared to the gull sounds. They were
- 12:52Speaker 1: almost ten times more likely to flee from the sound
- 12:56Speaker 1: of human voices. This has implications far beyond bear human interactions.
- 13:02Speaker 1: Bears take the salmon they catch into nearby forests, leaving
- 13:06Speaker 1: behind decaying remnants that helped fertilize the ecosystem. Disrupting that
- 13:11Speaker 1: nutrient transport has knock on effects on other ecosystem processes.
- 13:16Speaker 1: The Mountain Lion paper, led by environmental scientist John Morgan
- 13:20Speaker 1: of the University of California, Santa Cruz told a similar tale.
- 13:25Speaker 1: The researchers analyzed six years of GPS data collected from
- 13:29Speaker 1: thirty six tagged wild mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
- 13:35Speaker 1: They mapped this data against data from the GPS fitness
- 13:38Speaker 1: tracking app Strava, which showed where and when people were hiking, biking,
- 13:43Speaker 1: and using trails. The mountain lions didn't just respond to
- 13:47Speaker 1: the presence of humans. Rather, they seemed to anticipate where
- 13:51Speaker 1: and when human activity was likely to be heavy and
- 13:55Speaker 1: proactively avoided those places at all times. Even when mountain
- 14:00Speaker 1: lions lived in areas with lots of human activity, they
- 14:03Speaker 1: were not more likely to attack any Higher attack rates
- 14:07Speaker 1: in those areas were better explained simply by more frequent
- 14:10Speaker 1: encounters between people and mountain lions. Taken together, the two
- 14:16Speaker 1: studies suggest that the animals take actions that indicate they
- 14:20Speaker 1: perceive humans as a significant threat. Bears abandon their feeding opportunities,
- 14:27Speaker 1: mountain lions plan their movements around predictable human routines. They're
- 14:32Speaker 1: already doing a lot of the heavy lifting that prevents
- 14:35Speaker 1: dangerous encounters with our own species for our end of
- 14:40Speaker 1: the bargain. The Mountain Lion study suggests we can try
- 14:43Speaker 1: to avoid forcing them into situations where their avoidance strategies fail.
- 14:49Speaker 1: The popular image of the relationship between humans and carnivorous
- 14:53Speaker 1: predators is that the predator is the aggressor and the
- 14:57Speaker 1: human is the helpless prey that stands to lif lose
- 15:00Speaker 1: the most from an encounter. In reality, Schmidtz argues, humans
- 15:05Speaker 1: have not just the power, but the responsibility to do
- 15:08Speaker 1: all that we can to keep those animals safe. Quote.
- 15:11Speaker 1: By being cognizant of how they shape the landscape of
- 15:15Speaker 1: fear experienced by carnivores and their preise species, humans can
- 15:20Speaker 1: proactively adjust their behavior and spatial use of landscapes in
- 15:25Speaker 1: ways that can transform the carnival relationship from one of
- 15:30Speaker 1: conflict to one of coexistence and thereby rebalance the attendant
- 15:36Speaker 1: cascading effects that human fear effects have on wildlife, communities
- 15:42Speaker 1: and ecosystems. We now have an article from earth dot
- 15:50Speaker 1: com dated July thirty one. The gigantic pile of clothes
- 15:58Speaker 1: that appeared in the Atacoma Desert has been visible from
- 16:01Speaker 1: space since January twenty twenty two, but no one has
- 16:05Speaker 1: been able to figure out how much it actually weighs.
- 16:09Speaker 1: How does a pile of unwanted clothing become large enough
- 16:12Speaker 1: to show up in a satellite image? Near Alto Hospicio
- 16:17Speaker 1: in northern Chile, discarded garments cover a broad stretch of
- 16:22Speaker 1: the Atacama Desert. A high resolution image acquired in January
- 16:27Speaker 1: twenty twenty two confirmed that the dump can be seen
- 16:30Speaker 1: for morbit The widely repeated claim that one clothing mountain
- 16:36Speaker 1: weighs about sixty six thousand US tons is harder to prove.
- 16:41Speaker 1: Chile's official Textile Strategy says the country still lacks a
- 16:45Speaker 1: complete inventory of illegal textile dumps and has no concrete
- 16:51Speaker 1: figure for the amount discarded this way. A twenty twenty
- 16:55Speaker 1: four joint assessment estimated about thirty three thousand US as
- 17:00Speaker 1: tons spread across roughly seventy four acres. The trail runs
- 17:06Speaker 1: through the Free Trade Zone, where imported used clothing is
- 17:11Speaker 1: sorted for sale. Chile became the world's fourth largest importer
- 17:16Speaker 1: of second hand textiles in twenty twenty one, and its
- 17:20Speaker 1: Ministry of the Environment says the country brought in about
- 17:23Speaker 1: one hundred and forty five thousand US tons in twenty
- 17:26Speaker 1: twenty two. A significant share was unsuitable for reuse or
- 17:31Speaker 1: had no buyer. Garments with value are resold in Chile
- 17:36Speaker 1: or elsewhere in Latin America. The leftovers can become waste
- 17:41Speaker 1: around alto Hospicio, where low quality clothing has been abandoned
- 17:46Speaker 1: or burned at unauthorized sites. Fast fashion means producing cheap
- 17:52Speaker 1: styles quickly and replacing them just as fast, which keeps
- 17:57Speaker 1: adding pressure to that system. Fast fast and garments are
- 18:00Speaker 1: cheap enough to buy constantly, and often too poor in
- 18:04Speaker 1: quality to survive several owners or be recycled. A study
- 18:10Speaker 1: tracked clothing donations in nine wealthy cities, including Austin, Toronto, Melbourne,
- 18:16Speaker 1: and Oslo. Charity shops take in more clothes than local
- 18:21Speaker 1: buyers want. Collectors bail the surplus and ship it overseas,
- 18:26Speaker 1: which lowers a country's waist figures without cutting the waist.
- 18:31Speaker 1: Norway sends out nearly all the used clothing it collects.
- 18:35Speaker 1: The US and Australia export large volumes too. An old
- 18:40Speaker 1: jacket does not simply vanish under the desert sun. Chile's
- 18:46Speaker 1: twenty forty strategy warns that illegal textile disposal can contaminate soil, air,
- 18:52Speaker 1: and water, while fires make the impacts worse. We feel abandoned,
- 18:59Speaker 1: says alt Auspicio mayor, adding that residents believe their land
- 19:04Speaker 1: has been sacrificed for nearby communities. The dump is not
- 19:09Speaker 1: a distant environmental symbol, it is a local burden. In
- 19:13Speaker 1: September twenty twenty five, Chile's first Environmental Court found significant
- 19:18Speaker 1: damage to soil and landscape at illegal dump sites in
- 19:21Speaker 1: Alto Auspisio. It ordered the state to present a plan
- 19:26Speaker 1: within six months to remove waste, restore the soil, and
- 19:29Speaker 1: recover the landscape. The State Defense Council appealed the decision
- 19:34Speaker 1: to Chile's Supreme Court. According to reporting published in July
- 19:38Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, the appeal means the ruling was not
- 19:41Speaker 1: the final word. The clothing did not disappear overnight. Chile
- 19:46Speaker 1: formally added textiles to Extended Producer Responsibility Law in twenty
- 19:51Speaker 1: twenty five. In practical terms, the framework is designed to
- 19:54Speaker 1: make producers and importers organized in finance, collection and recovery,
- 20:00Speaker 1: shifting part of the future wastebill away from cities. The
- 20:04Speaker 1: government began drafting detail collection and recovery rules in March
- 20:08Speaker 1: of twenty twenty six. The follow up report argues that
- 20:11Speaker 1: countries need clearer trade standards so wearable secondhand clothing is
- 20:16Speaker 1: not mixed with textile waste. Second Hand trade can keep
- 20:21Speaker 1: useful clothes in circulation, but shipping unusable garments abroad simply
- 20:26Speaker 1: moves the trash can. The official report was published by
- 20:31Speaker 1: the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and the United
- 20:34Speaker 1: Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Now
- 20:40Speaker 1: from National Geographic How scientists are bringing life back to
- 20:45Speaker 1: a lost underwater paradise July thirty first. In November of
- 20:50Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Tucked inside the archives of the University of
- 20:53Speaker 1: Victoria in British Columbia, marine ecologist Brian Timmer sifted through
- 20:58Speaker 1: yellowing field note boes, smudged penciled margins, and weather worn
- 21:04Speaker 1: survey logs that uncovered what he would later call a
- 21:07Speaker 1: scientific treasure trove, forgotten records that would redefine what scientists
- 21:11Speaker 1: knew about a changing coast. These boxes of aerial photographs,
- 21:17Speaker 1: hand drawn maps, and scuba survey records documented the Kelp
- 21:22Speaker 1: forests of the Northern Salish Sea in nineteen seventy two.
- 21:26Speaker 1: The materials offered something marine scientists rarely have a detailed
- 21:31Speaker 1: snapshot of an underwater ecosystem that existed half a century ago.
- 21:36Speaker 1: Using these fifty year old records, Timer, who was also
- 21:39Speaker 1: a National Geographic Explorer, worked with his colleagues to reconstruct
- 21:44Speaker 1: what bull Kelp forests looked like in the nineteen seventies.
- 21:48Speaker 1: Then just over fifty years later, they returned to the
- 21:51Speaker 1: same waters. Their findings, published in the journal Ecological Applications,
- 21:57Speaker 1: showed that expansive underwater forests disappear decades ago with little
- 22:01Speaker 1: notice or public documentation. In the early nineteen seventies, the
- 22:06Speaker 1: study area contained roughly thirteen hundred acres of bull Kelp forest,
- 22:11Speaker 1: nearly twice the size of New York City's Central Park. Today,
- 22:15Speaker 1: it contains none quote. Climate change has been impacting kelp
- 22:19Speaker 1: forests decades before we thought. Timber says, we have historical
- 22:24Speaker 1: climate indicators like tree rings and shells that tell us
- 22:27Speaker 1: about past temperatures, but it's incredibly rare to have detailed
- 22:31Speaker 1: records of what was happening underneath the ocean at the
- 22:34Speaker 1: same time. In this case, he says, the historical data
- 22:38Speaker 1: show the true magnitude of loss and provide a rare
- 22:41Speaker 1: smoking gun linking long term ocean warming to the disappearance
- 22:46Speaker 1: of kelp forests. After combing through these newfound archives, Timber
- 22:51Speaker 1: and his team repeated the scuba cert surveys documented in
- 22:55Speaker 1: old reports. He worked with the Hakkai Institute, an independent
- 23:00Speaker 1: coastal research group, to fly identical flight line Identical flight
- 23:05Speaker 1: lines there we go used in the nineteen seventy two
- 23:08Speaker 1: aerial photos to capture modern images of the coastline. Nearby
- 23:14Speaker 1: lighthouse records also provided a log of daily ocean temperatures
- 23:18Speaker 1: taken by hand since nineteen fifteen and were compared with
- 23:22Speaker 1: global warming trend data from Noah, which dates back to
- 23:27Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties. Satellite imagery dating back to nineteen eighty
- 23:31Speaker 1: four already showed no detectable kelp canopy in areas that
- 23:35Speaker 1: Timber and his team were studying. The culprit appeared to
- 23:39Speaker 1: have been a large shift in Pacific ocean climate during
- 23:43Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies, when regional waters warmed dramatically. Quote
- 23:49Speaker 1: The Northern Salish Sea is a global hotspot for ocean warming.
- 23:54Speaker 1: Timmer says temperatures there have increased faster than about ninety
- 23:58Speaker 1: percent of the world's oceans. Small pockets of kelp may
- 24:02Speaker 1: have persisted in cooler refuges, such as near the southern
- 24:06Speaker 1: tip of Denman Island, which rests just off the eastern
- 24:10Speaker 1: flank of Vancouver Island, separated by a narrow channel, but
- 24:14Speaker 1: they were sparse enough to escape satellite detection. In twenty fifteen,
- 24:19Speaker 1: a massive marine heat wave along the West Coast, which
- 24:23Speaker 1: scientists dubbed the Blob, was the final blow to remaining
- 24:28Speaker 1: kelp forests that had been hanging by threads for decades.
- 24:34Speaker 1: The scale of decline that can happen within a human
- 24:37Speaker 1: lifetime and effectively go unnoticed is really striking, says kelp
- 24:41Speaker 1: ecologist Sam Starko of Curtain University in Australia. Quote Forests
- 24:48Speaker 1: that fifty years ago covered several hundred hectares are now
- 24:52Speaker 1: essentially gone, Starko says, and the timing matters because we
- 24:56Speaker 1: often think of modern marine heat waves as a recent
- 24:59Speaker 1: driver of help of kelp decline, but this shows the
- 25:03Speaker 1: climate change process has been underway for decades. Across the
- 25:09Speaker 1: Pacific coast. Kelp forests are essential nurseries and feeding grounds
- 25:15Speaker 1: for species such as orcas, sea otters and abalony in
- 25:20Speaker 1: the Saltish On the Salish Sea, kelp forests are a
- 25:23Speaker 1: habitat for lucrative species that define the region, including herring, salmon,
- 25:28Speaker 1: and rock fish and sea stars. In warmer regions, ocean
- 25:32Speaker 1: warming often leads to tropicalization, where warm water species expand
- 25:37Speaker 1: into new areas, but the sea sits far from the
- 25:41Speaker 1: tropics instead. Timber and starco are among a broader research
- 25:45Speaker 1: consensus that the region may be experiencing ecological retreat, with
- 25:50Speaker 1: cold water species disappearing in fewer replacements. Moving in that
- 25:55Speaker 1: kind of ecological retreat doesn't just thin out coldwater species,
- 25:59Speaker 1: its the kelp anchored food web itself, eroding critical migration
- 26:05Speaker 1: corridors for Pacific salmon and stripping away nursery and feeding
- 26:09Speaker 1: grounds that sustain everything from zoel plankton to hering to rockfish. Timer,
- 26:16Speaker 1: who is from the Chawatiel First Nation on his father's side,
- 26:22Speaker 1: says that the kelp forests documented as lost in this
- 26:24Speaker 1: study once helped sustain the salmon that for thousands of
- 26:28Speaker 1: years nourished his ancestors along the Fraser River, the largest
- 26:33Speaker 1: river entering the Solish Sea. As a scuba instructor, Timer's
- 26:39Speaker 1: favorite pastime was sitting quietly along the seafloor and looking
- 26:43Speaker 1: up through the distorted sunlight, observing the towering columns of
- 26:47Speaker 1: kelp drifting above him. I watched firsthand as all of
- 26:52Speaker 1: the kelp forests had, all of my favorite dive sites
- 26:54Speaker 1: disappeared within a single year. Timer says. That's why, in
- 26:59Speaker 1: addition to his recent search, Timor is working with other
- 27:01Speaker 1: scientists and First Nations organizations in an effort to restore
- 27:07Speaker 1: the kelp along parts of the Pacific coast. The effort
- 27:10Speaker 1: spans a broader coalition of partners working to restore these ecosystems.
- 27:17Speaker 1: Quote Kelp forest used to be incredibly abundant, says Connie Crocker,
- 27:22Speaker 1: a First Nation's liaison for the Kelp Rescue Initiative. Quote
- 27:27Speaker 1: I completely took for granted how wonderful and plentiful it
- 27:30Speaker 1: was in the early nineteen seventies, she says. Underneath the
- 27:34Speaker 1: kelp was the richest area biologically. It's where all of
- 27:39Speaker 1: the fish were living, and we realize now how much
- 27:42Speaker 1: it supported everything else. Quote. As kelp forest disappeared, she says,
- 27:47Speaker 1: communities at once fished herring among their fronds and wove
- 27:51Speaker 1: with Kelp lost not only a source of food, but
- 27:56Speaker 1: a thread of cultural continuous all Right, that's all for
- 28:02Speaker 1: today's Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader was Kelly Taylor,
- 28:06Speaker 1: and stay tuned for further programming on RADIOI