Olivia Sanderfoot, a global change ecologist at Cornell University, studies how wildfire smoke affects wildlife, particularly birds. During a visit to Western Massachusetts, she noted that while birds sang freely in the morning despite past smoke from Canadian wildfires, little is known about the long-term impacts of such toxic exposure. Sanderfoot aims to establish "smoke ecology" as a new field of study, focusing on how smoke disrupts animals' natural behaviors and habitats over large areas affected by distant fires.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-10-06,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
Wildfire smoke affects animals in unique ways.
asserted
smoke → affect → ways
Scientists are trying to understand it
asserted
Scientists → try → it
Olivia Sanderfoot stands on a flower-freckled hillside in Amherst in Western Massachusetts.
asserted
Sanderfoot → stand → Massachusetts
She listens for a moment — and a volley of birdsong flutters forth.
asserted
volley → listen → birdsong
"It's just magical," she says with an air of reverence.
asserted
she → say → reverence
Fluffy fledglings are darting about, learning the ways of the world.
asserted
fledglings → dart → world
"Every day that I get to start birding is a good day," she says.
asserted
she → get → ?
"If you want to get the widest range of species and hear the most songs, you want to be out here in the morning."
asserted
you → want → morning
Sanderfoot, a global change ecologist at Cornell University, knows that for the birds that live here, not every morning is this idyllic.
asserted
morning → know → birds
Over the summer, this area was suffused with toxic smoke from distant wildfires in Canada.
asserted
area → suffuse → Canada
Fire season is starting earlier, lasting later, burning more land — and as a result, producing far more smoke.
asserted
season → start → smoke
"Smoke can blow hundreds to thousands of miles away from that burn site," Sanderfoot explains.
asserted
Sanderfoot → blow → site
"That means that the footprint of a smoke event greatly exceeds that of any fire.
asserted
footprint → mean → fire
How do birds deal with that?"
This is the central question animating Sanderfoot's desire to form a new field of study called "smoke ecology."
asserted
This → deal → study
The goal, she says, is to understand how the smoke billowing off of wildfires may be disturbing wild places and creatures — and whether anything can be done to prevent possible harm.
uncertain
anything → say → harm
Sanderfoot's curiosity about how birds cope with smoke emerged in 2018 when she was living in Seattle and wildfires blazed in Eastern Washington.
asserted
wildfires → cope → Washington
"The air smelled acrid," she recalls.
asserted
she → smell → ?
"The city was just blanketed in this sickly yellow, gray haze."
asserted
city → blanket → haze
She was told it was a one-time event — yet the same thing happened two years later.
asserted
thing → tell → ?
"I remember walking outside and my eyes were just burning," Sanderfoot says.
asserted
Sanderfoot → walk → ?
"And I thought, 'What on earth are animals doing? Are they OK?'"
asserted
they → think → earth
Very little was known apart from anecdotes — like the absence of birdsong or the arrival of droves of birds to a backyard, famished and parched.
asserted
little → know → backyard
"Smoke is a toxic soup of substances," she says.
asserted
she → say → substances
"It's not just about what [birds are] inhaling, which is inevitably bad for them.
asserted
which → inhale → them
It's also about how the cues that they use to navigate their world are upended when it gets smoky outside.
asserted
it → use → world
"
To puzzle out what was going on, Sanderfoot realized that she needed to collaborate with researchers from a range of other disciplines, including conservation biology, statistics, ecophysiology, and atmospheric chemistry.
asserted
she → puzzle → biology
"Real-world problems don't map cleanly onto the same academic silos that have been set up for decades," says Tracey Holloway, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the lead of NASA's Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Team, and a colleague of Sanderfoot's.
asserted
Holloway → map → Sanderfoot
"We need to be tackling new problems with new partnerships.
asserted
We → need → partnerships
For instance, in order to understand what birds are inhaling, one has to know what's moving through the air in time and three-dimensional space.
asserted
what → understand → time
"It depends on which way the winds are blowing," says Holloway, "what chemical processes are happening in the air, and also patterns of rainfall and where the emissions are coming from."
asserted
emissions → depend → where
The science depends on air quality monitoring, satellite data, and evermore sophisticated computer modeling.
asserted
science → depend → monitoring
Birds are especially sensitive to smoke in large part because of how they breathe.
asserted
they → breathe → part
A human being has soft lungs that allow inhalation and exhalation of air.
asserted
that → have → air
By contrast, birds have rigid lungs surrounded by a collection of air sacs that act like bellows, pushing air continuously through the system.
asserted
that → have → system
"This allows birds to take up about twice as much oxygen with each breath that they inhale compared to us," says Sanderfoot.
asserted
Sanderfoot → allow → us
"This means that they're vulnerable to all the other things that are in the air, too."
asserted
that → mean → air
Morgan Tingley, an ecologist at UCLA, is another member of the burgeoning smoke ecology cohort.
asserted
Tingley → burgeon → cohort
"What we're trying to do is getting smoke to be recognized as a disturbance in and of itself distinct from fire that is worthy of our concentrated attention," he says.
asserted
he → try → attention
For much of his career, Tingley has studied wildfires — events with a clear start and stop, and defined borders.
asserted
Tingley → study → start
But the smoke produced by those wildfires can present its own unique set of problems, as it can spread far from the original blaze.
asserted
it → produce → blaze
…and 34 more, not listed.
The Aporia
