Climate and History with Elizabeth Villano

A conversation with Dr. Tyler Hoecker, who studies forest ecology and the changing dynamics of fire as the climate warms. This episode was recorded in August of 2023.

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.

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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...