Headwaters

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: https://www.instagram.com/stella.nall/

Climate change in Glacier: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/climate-change.htm Dr. Hoecker’s research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378112721009051

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is supported by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Peri Sasnett: This is Headwaters, a show about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else. My name is Peri, and I'm talking to you from the dense forests of northwest Montana. This episode is an interview that my co-host Daniel did with forest ecologist Dr. Tyler Hoecker about how wildfires exacerbated by climate change are upending our forests. This episode is part of a series of conversations we've been having with a wide variety of climate change experts. These episodes don't have to be listened to in any order, each one stands on its own. And they all focus on a particular aspect of the way the world is being altered by the burning of fossil fuels. Over the past century and a half, human activity has released enough greenhouse gases to warm the Earth's climate over one degree Celsius, with only more warming on the way. Throughout 2023, Daniel sat down with experts to talk about how that warming is altering Glacier National Park, our lives and our futures. [drum and synth beat starts to play] I find fire fascinating, so I think this conversation was one of my favorites. I feel like I've heard most of the usual stories about wildfire so many times, so I was really excited to hear about Dr. Hoecker's research on how forests are responding to climate change. It felt like a new angle. I learned a lot, and I hope you do too.

[beat concludes]

Daniel Lombardi: So, Dr. Tyler Hoecker, welcome to Headwaters.

Tyler Hoecker: Thanks so much for having me.

Daniel: It feels pretty good that we're talking today, or auspicious or bad, on like just this week the smoke really rolled into the park. We have several new fires burning right around us. It's very much fire season, so it's a good time to have this conversation. Will you introduce yourself and talk about kind of your job and the work you're doing right now?

Tyler: Sure. So I'm Tyler Hoecker. I'm a research scientist at the University of Montana in Missoula. And right now I'm doing research trying to understand how climate change is changing fire activity across the western U.S. and trying to project how fires and forests might change into the future.

Daniel: How did you get into fire stuff, like how did that become the path for you?

Tyler: I think everybody is sort of drawn to fire, in a, in a weird way, you know, fires are pretty important, has been an important like catalyst, you know, for civilization. And so I think it's sort of just a compelling thing.

Daniel: It's kind of a universal concept, that fire and flames draw your eye and like draw you in.

Tyler: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's hard to think about forests in the West without thinking about fire. I remember as an undergrad, I took a a forest ecology and policy class, and we went to a community fire meeting. And I just remember being really fascinated by the process. And it was clear to me pretty quickly that it was really important at shaping forests in the West. And so I was really interested in understanding it. And, you know, it's sort of interesting to think back on that. You know, that was 2010. And, you know, I think fire scientists probably understood what was what was unfolding in terms of fire in the West. But I don't think anybody would have been able to really predict, you know, what's happened in the last 13 years since in terms of the amount of area burned every year. And, yeah, the types of fire events that we're seeing every summer now.

Daniel: Yeah. So let's jump into some fire ecology. At one point I was hiking up Mt. Brown and it was kind of in the fall, early fall, the fireweed was blooming and like the sun was rising and kind of glowing through it. And there was the cloud layer was like fog all in the forest. And so I was walking through that and it had burned, you know, like a year before. So everything is charred and crisp and like pretty black. There's no living trees. But in that morning light, it was so beautiful. And for me it was kind of like a pivot point. This, like black backed woodpecker, flew down and landed on the tree in front of me and was feasting on beetles that like the fire-killed trees. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like fire is not ugly. The aftermath of fire can be really beautiful. And I knew intellectually that it's al...

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: https://www.instagram.com/stella.nall/

Overview of the park’s glaciers: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciersoverview.htm

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is supported by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Peri Sasnett: You're listening to Headwaters, a show from the icy mountains of northwest Montana about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else. My name is Peri, and this episode is an interview that my co-host Daniel did with glaciologist Dr. Caitlyn Florentine—about how the U.S. Geological Survey studies the park's glaciers. This episode is part of a series of conversations we've been having with a wide variety of climate change experts. These episodes don't have to be listened to in any order. Each one stands on its own. And they all focus on a particular aspect of the way the world is being altered by the burning of fossil fuels. Over the past century and a half, human activity has released enough greenhouse gases to warm the Earth's climate over one degree Celsius, with only more warming on the way. Throughout 2023, Daniel sat down with experts to talk about how that warming is altering Glacier National Park, our lives and our futures.

[background drum and bass music builds]

Peri: Glaciers are the park's namesake. So digging into the details of the science around them feels like the heart of the park's story. I will say this is a fairly wonky and detailed conversation about glacier science. I studied geology, so I loved it. But I think no matter your background, you'll find it thought provoking.

[music concludes]

Daniel Lombardi: Dr. Caitlyn Florentine, welcome to Headwaters.

Caitlyn Florentine: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Daniel: Can you introduce yourself? What's your job? What do you do?

Caitlyn: Yeah. My name is Caitlyn Florentine, and I work as a glaciologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. I'm a research scientist.

Daniel: So what have you been up to for the past couple of days?

Caitlyn: I've been here in the park doing fieldwork on Sperry Glacier.

Daniel: So you were up up in the mountains for the past couple of days?

Caitlyn: Yes.

Daniel: That's exciting.

Caitlyn: Yes, We had excellent weather.

Daniel: Do you think of yourself as a glaciologist or you study the cryosphere? How do you describe what you do?

Caitlyn: I consider myself a cryosphere scientist, and the cryosphere is the portion of the earth that is frozen. So anything involving frozen water: land, ice, sea ice, permafrost, seasonal snow. So I'm a glaciologist, and I think of it from sort of a geophysical perspective.

Daniel: You approach the study of the cryosphere, you approach glaciology from a very quantitative way. What does that mean?

Caitlyn: Correct. We are interested in being very sort of precise with the numbers. So quantifying the amount of water that's entering and exiting the glacier system, for example. So rather than having a sort of description of the quality of what's happening, we also strive to put numbers to that so that we can start to be a bit more precise and exact in our understanding, which then enables us to connect to other studies and sort of systems of the of the earth.

Daniel: So what made you want to get into this field? How did you get started in the study of the cryosphere?

Caitlyn: I really love the mountains and to be in the mountains and there is a plethora of snow and ice in mountain environments. So I studied geology as an undergrad at Colorado College, and I was really fascinated by earth processes and I knew I wanted to study something on timescales that were relevant to humans. And so I made a choice for graduate school between volcanology and glaciology. And then my sort of recreational interests led to me choosing glaciology ultimately.

Daniel: Oh, that's super interesting. Cool. Yeah, because you could have studied a geology that, you know, spans millions or even billions of years, but you had a desire to keep it on a human scale or closer to a human scale anyway.

Caitlyn: Exactly. My colleagues who study seasonal snow, for example, are inspecting processes that are happening over the timescale of seconds or or hours or days. And it's sort of that opportunity to toggle the window of time that we're considering, I think really captivated me and drew me to the cryosphere.

Daniel: Oh, that's okay. That plus you want to go be able to go up into the mountains for work. So it's a good fit. Well, what makes your work important? L...

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: https://www.instagram.com/stella.nall/

CSKT Climate Resiliency: http://csktclimate.org/

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is supported by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Peri Sasnett: Welcome to Headwaters, a show from Glacier National Park, which is the traditional homelands of many Indigenous groups that still live in this area today. This episode is an interview we did with Mike Durglo Jr, who's a climate leader at the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. We talked about how Native American tribes can lead the way through the climate crisis. This episode is part of a series of conversations we've been having with a wide variety of climate change experts. These episodes don't have to be listened to in any order; each one stands on its own. And they all focus on a particular aspect of the way the world is being altered by the burning of fossil fuels over the past century and a half, human activity has released enough greenhouse gases to warm the Earth's climate over one degree Celsius, with only more warming on the way. [subtle beat begins to play] Throughout 2023, Daniel sat down with experts to talk about how that warming is altering Glacier National Park, our lives and our futures. It's critical to remember that Glacier has been a home for people since time immemorial. This has never been an empty landscape. It has been loved and cared for by people for thousands of years. And to find our way through the next century, we'll need to have a lot more conversations like this one. [synth beat contines to play, then resolves]

Mike Durglo, Jr: I call myself a seed planter because just giving people hope.

Daniel Lombardi: Thanks for joining us, and can you introduce yourself?

Mike: Thank you. [Introduces himself in Salish] Good morning, everybody. My name is Standing Grizzly Bear. That's my given name. My English name or my [speaks Salish] name is Mike Durglo. Currently, I'm the department head for the Tribal Historic Preservation Department for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Working for the tribes for, it was 40 years.

Daniel: Wow. Yeah. Congrats. That's pretty amazing. And so that's just down west, southwest of the park, so one of the park's neighbors. Yeah, well, yeah. Give. Give me an overview, then, of what are the climate change impacts that you're seeing on the Flathead reservation, what you're seeing in this area.

Mike: You know, you think about the air quality and what's what's been happening, and even even this year, earlier smoke. I mean, it was early. A few years ago I was driving to my office to work, and there was so much smoke that I couldn't even see the mountains. I live right there, you know, at the base of of the mountains at McDonald Peak, and my office was only like eight miles from my house. But I'm thinking, my grandson had doubles this morning, football practice, double practices. And I'm thinking, I hope that those kids are not outside playing, you know, practicing for football right now in this.

Daniel: Because the air is so toxic.

Mike: Right. And, you know, it was not just the kids, but the elders, and the people that are most vulnerable to the all the smoke. And so we had I don't remember if it was the the Earth Day event that you came to, but it was one of our gatherings where Dr. Lori Byron and her husband attended that. Anyway, I talked about that. I told I shared that story and I shared my concern for the people being out in that smoke. And a few months later, Dr. Byron calls me and says, Mike, would you be interested in putting up some Purple Air monitors? I said, Heck yeah. I didn't really, you know, I was like, So what do we do? And I don't know if you're familiar with them, but they're only about this big, they're inexpensive and they measure PM 2.5 air quality, and they give you real time data. So she sent me seven monitors. We're putting them up around the reservation at seven schools. They have a what's called a flag program that you can, the kids can put out a flag. So if it's a bad air day, they can put out a red flag. If it's a good day, it's the green flag. And there's all these different ones in the middle. And just this year we're putting up I don't remember how many, 14 more? We're going to put them in, inside and outside.

Daniel: So that's great. Yeah. And so that's a kind of climate adaptation, the dealing with air quality, which can be degraded by just burning fossil fuels and cars and stuff. Around here, it's often caused by wildfire, which itself is exacerbated and expanded by climate change.

Mi...

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: https://www.instagram.com/stella.nall/

Overview of the park’s glaciers: https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/glaciersoverview.htm

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Peri Sasnett: You're listening to Headwaters, a show about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else. My name is Peri, and this episode is an interview that my co-host Daniel did with longtime park ranger and educator Diane Sine about telling stories about our glaciers to park visitors.

Peri: This is one in a series of conversations we've been having with a wide variety of climate change experts. They don't have to be listened to in any order. Each one stands on its own and they all focus on a particular aspect of the way the world is being altered by the burning of fossil fuels. Over the past century and a half, human activity has released enough greenhouse gases to warm the Earth's climate more than one degree Celsius, with only more warming on the way. Throughout 2023, Daniel sat down with experts to talk about how that warming is altering Glacier National Park, our lives, and our futures.

[Theme music fades in.]

Peri: This is one of my favorite interviews in a long time. Diane is an amazing person, a local legend, really. And I found her stories surprising and resonant. She's been visiting the park's glaciers for decades and has seen so much change firsthand. I think you'll really enjoy this conversation.

Daniel Lombardi: So, Diane Sine, welcome to the podcast, welcome back to the podcast.

Diane Sine: Thank you, Daniel.

Daniel: Will you remind people who you are, where you work, how long you've been doing it?

Diane: My name is Diane Signe and I work at Many Glacier. I'm the lead interpreter over there and I have been in the park for quite a while. I've been in interpretation pretty much all my adult life during the summers here and even before that, when I was a college student, I worked at the Many Glacier Hotel. So I've been hanging around Many Glacier since 1980.

Daniel: Wow. So maybe let's start with what is many glacier for someone who's, like, never been to Glacier. And then I am curious to hear about your first time visiting many Glacier.

Diane: So Many Glacier as a region of the park with a rather confusing name. Yes, we get the fact that it's improper English, "Many" is plural, "Glacier" is singular. So there's one of the first problems right there, but it's simply a region of the park. The Many Glacier Hotel is there. And the name came about in the early years of the park, simply referring to the fact that there were multiple glaciers at the head of the valleys, pretty much a glacier at the head of each one of the valleys.

Daniel: Yeah. Which is like four or five glaciers or something. It's not like many, many glaciers, right? A few, right? It's Many Glacier.

Diane: And it sort of sounds like "mini" glacier, as in "tiny glacier." So we get confusion about people thinking that it's "mini glacier." Sure. Hey, maybe that's an appropriate name in some ways.

[Music fades in and then concludes.]

Daniel: What is a glacier? What makes Grinnell Glacier actually a glacier?

Diane: Remember, I'm not a geologist. I'm an elementary teacher. So a glacier, whether we're talking about those massive ice age glaciers that were thousands of feet thick, that carved out these valleys in Glacier National Park, or whether we're talking about the comparatively small glaciers that were here. Well, are here today. And we're part of the Little Ice Age. Places such as Grinnell Glacier.

Diane: To have a glacier, you simply have to have a place where more snow falls every winter then can completely melt during the summers. So over the years, that snow builds up, it accumulates. It actually recrystallizes fairly quickly and it forms a dense ice. And once you have this thick, dense ice, you eventually get—and there are lots of variables—but say when it gets to 70 to 100 feet thick, there is so much mass or so much weight pressure that it actually starts to flow. And so the bottom of the glacier starts to flow and there's actually movement. So a glacier is a mass of a moving ice. And that confuses people sometimes. Sometimes they think, well, is it rolling down the valley? And in the case of all these glaciers in Glacier National Park, they're actually becoming smaller all the time. But there's movement within the mass of ice. There's more accumulation of ice at the upper elevation of the glacier, and then the ice flows through. So whether a...

Glacier Conservancy: glacier.org Frank Waln music: www.instagram.com/frankwaln Stella Nall art: stellanall.com

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy: Headquarters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Peri: Welcome to Headwaters. I'm Peri.

Madeline: And I'm Madeline.

Peri: Headwaters is a science and history show about Glacier National Park. And this is a special bonus episode for those of you considering coming to the park this summer or fall. And today we have for you a series of breaking news headlines, each followed by some fashion advice from Madeline.

Madeline: That's right.

Peri: We should just play the little like breaking news. *Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun* [Newscaster music starts] Going-to-the-Sun Road is open all the way to Logan Pass. And do remember you need a vehicle reservation if you're coming in from the west side between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. Madeline, what fashion advice would you give to someone driving the road?

Madeline: I think people hear "driving," and they're like, all I need are my driving flip flops, what they don't think about is you're going to want to get out of your car. At least once I'd say.

Peri: At least once.

Madeline: Statistically.

Peri: Probably.

Madeline: So pack your hiking flipflops as well.

Peri: Great advice.

Madeline: Thank you.

Peri: All right. [Newscaster music] As of July 3rd, the Highline Trail is not open. The upper half of the Grinnell Glacier Trail is also not open, and something to keep in mind is that even trails that are open, anything at high elevation you may encounter snow, including on the trail to Hidden Lake Overlook. Snow is always wet. It's always cold. It can be pretty slippery or even dangerous, so keep that in mind for at least a few more weeks if you're hiking in the park. Madeline, what do people need if they're hiking on snow?

Madeline: I have two boxes in my head. I've got waterproofing and traction. There's a lot of ways to accomplish that. Maybe hiking boots.

Peri: Sure.

Madeline: If you don't have hiking boots, maybe you have grocery bags and soccer cleats. Why not combine those? So put those grocery bags on your feet. Put those feet in your soccer cleats. Suddenly you're checking those boxes.

Peri: I love that. It's very childhood snow day chic. [Newscaster music] The free shuttles are up and running for the season. You can take the shuttle bus instead of driving, and you don't need a vehicle reservation for that. And you can stop at a bunch of different places along going to the town road. Do expect the shuttles to be full and busy, though. They're quite popular. Madeline, what should people consider wearing for the shuttle bus?

Madeline: The tagline for that whole experience is see and be seen. There are strangers around you. Suddenly you're part of the attraction of the road. If that is something you care about, just wear your favorite outfit.

Peri: Totally. [Newscaster music] In other news, park lakes are open to paddling. Lake McDonald, Bowman, Kintla, Two Medicine are all open to personal non-motorized watercraft if you get them inspected before heading out to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species. Some park lakes are also open to motorized boats, but those require more extensive inspection. Madeline. What fashion advice do you have for people doing paddling?

Madeline: Everyone knows that you're on water. I don't think enough people are thinking about water getting on you. So maybe think about a poncho.

Peri: Love a poncho.

Madeline: Preferably clear, so that others can see your life jacket and be inspired by your sartorial example.

Peri: Love that. [Newscaster music] The longest running Indigenous speaker series in the National Park Service is in full swing for the summer. That means almost every night somewhere in the park one of Glacier's Tribal partners is giving a public presentation for free. Madeline, what do you wear when you go to an NAS program?

Madeline: I want to be able to focus, so bug protection is top of mind for me.

Peri: Yes.

Madeline: This is the time for a head to toe bodysuit. Pull that out of the back of your closet. If you don't have that, bug net over a wide brimmed hat. Ankle protection. Close toed shoes.

Peri: Yes. Protect the hands and feet.

Madeline: The probisci of the mosquito here? They're strong and they're long. [Peri laughs] And you don't want that getting anywhere near your skin.

Peri: That's great advice.

Madeline: Thank you.

Peri: Finally, our last headline. [Newscaster music] The fishing season is open for summer 2024. Within park boundaries, you do not need...