As much as 70 percent of California was covered by wildfire smoke during parts of 2020 and 2021, according to a new study.
As much as 70% of California was covered by wildfire smoke during parts of 2020 and 2021, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. The study, published today in the journal, combined lake-based sensors with satellite imagery to find that maximum smoke cover has increased by about 116,000 square miles since 2006.
"We're looking at a scenario where for the next 100 years or longer, smoke will be a feature on the landscape," said senior author Steven Sadro, a UC Davis limnologist and associate professor in the department of Environmental Science and Policy."What does that mean for fundamental ecology? What are the implications of those changes? Those are the big questions we're focused on in aquatic systems."Answering those questions requires a bit of serendipity.
"We were measuring things like temperature, light and oxygen in the water," said lead author Adrianne Smits, a research scientist in the UC Davis Environmental Science and Policy Department."These are all components of lake productivity and health. We were interested in how those things change under smoky conditions."
"We're seeing changes -- often decreases -- in photosynthesis and respiration rates that drive almost everything else," said Smits."Food webs, algal growth, the ability to emit or sequester carbon -- those are dependent on these rates. They're all related, and they're all being changed by smoke." Co-authoring institutions include the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center; UC Davis Land, Air and Water Resources; University of Nevada-Reno; and Universidad Nacional del Sur in Argentina.Adrianne P. Smits, Facundo Scordo, Minmeng Tang, Alicia Cortés, Mary Jade Farruggia, Joshua Culpepper, Sudeep Chandra, Yufang Jin, Sergio A. Valbuena, Shohei Watanabe, Geoffrey Schladow, Steven Sadro.
Marine Biology Nature Biology Wildfires Ecology Air Pollution Water
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