7.17.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Radio Wise Diary of Science and Nature. Your
reader's Kelly Taylor, and I have some articles on the
topics of science and nature. But first a reminder that
radioi is a reading service. It's intended for people who
are blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult

(00:23):
to read printed material. Let's start with an article from
BBC Science Focus magazine. The headline is quote doomsday tsunami
is ready to strike the US. The Cascadia Subduction Zone,

(00:44):
a massive fault line stretching from northern California to British Columbia,
has been eerily quiet for three hundred years. When it
finally ruptures, it's expected to trigger a colossal earthquakes. They
could rattle the Pacific Northwest for minutes. Even worse, tsunami

(01:06):
waves up to thirty meters or one hundred feet high
will likely crash to the shore, unleashing destruction along the coast.
But according to a new study published in the Proceedings
of the National Academies of Science, that will only mark
the beginning of Cascadia's cataclysm. If a wave the same

(01:27):
size as Indonesia's two thousand and four Boxing Day Mega
tsunami wasn't bad enough. The new analysis reveals that a
land along the coast could drop by more than eight
feet in a matter of minutes. Quote. We talk about
climate driven sea level rise, which is occurring at three
to four millimeters a year, and that does eventually add up,

(01:51):
says doctor Tina Dura, lead author of the study. But
here we'll have two meters of sea level rise in minutes.
Why aren't we talking about that. The Cascadia subduction zone
marks the boundary where the oceanic Juan de Fuca plate
is slipping beneath the North American plate. But rather than

(02:15):
moving smoothly, these plates tend to get stuck, and as
they lock together, the strain grows over centuries. When it
finally releases, the result is a powerful earthquake. Cascadia is
capable of producing quakes of magnitude nine point zero or more,
with major events thought to strike every four hundred and

(02:37):
fifty to five hundred years. The last one occurred on
January twenty sixth, seventeen hundred, and based on geological records
and contemporary reports, its magnitude was likely between eight point
seven and nine point two. According to the United States
National seismic hazard model, there's now a fifteen percent chance

(03:00):
of a magnitude eight or greater earthquake along the zone's
margin in the next fifty years. A twenty twenty two
planning exercise by Federal Emergency Management Agency predicted that such
a quake could directly cause fifty eight hundred deaths and
a further eight thousand from the subsequent tsunami. More than

(03:26):
one hundred thousand people could be injured, and over six
hundred and eighteen thousand buildings damaged or destroyed, including more
than two thousand schools and one hundred critical facilities. The
projected economic cost one hundred and thirty four billion dollars.
This is going to be a very catastrophic event for

(03:47):
the US for sure, said Dura. While the earthquake and
tsunami would be devastating, Dura and her colleagues warned that
the long term aftermath could be just as damaging and
is far less understood. By combining geological records of past
Cascadia quakes with numerical models, the researchers assessed how the

(04:09):
coastal landscape could be reshaped by subsidence, the sudden sinking
of land during an earthquake. If a Cascadia quake happened today,
land at twenty four estuaries from southern Washington to northern
California could permanently drop by zero point two three to

(04:31):
two point sixty seven meters that's three quarters to eight
and three quarters feet. This would dramatically expand one hundred
year floodplains areas expected to flood at least once every
hundred years, by as much as one hundred and fifteen
square miles. That means more homes, roads, and infrastructure would

(04:53):
be pushed into the flood zones. Under high subsidence scenarios,
the team estimates that flood exposure could more than double.
It's a dual threat, said Durap. The tsunami is going
to come in and is going to be devastating. But
with tsunamis, we also know that some places are going
to be very hard hit while other places are probably

(05:15):
not going to feel as severe effects because of the
way the coast is configured, but those areas can still
be in the zone of subsidence. In seventeen hundred, there
was little infrastructure to damage. To day, the region is
packed with critical systems that would be left vulnerable to flooding.

(05:35):
These include five airports, eighteen emergency facilities, for example, hospitals, schools,
fire stations, eight wastewater treatment plants, one electric substation, and
fifty seven potential contaminant sources such as gas stations and
chemical storage facilities. These submerged roads and flooded emergency hubs

(06:00):
would make recovering from the disaster extremely difficult, and the
salt water could ruin farmland soil, causing lasting economic damage.
At the same time, natural flood defenses like intertidal wetlands
may drown or erode, weakening protection against future storm surges.
Rising tidal ranges could worsen high tide flooding, and already

(06:24):
eroding sandy coastlines would likely shrink even faster. Quote after
the tsunami comes and eventually recedes, the land is going
to persist at lower levels. Dura said that floodplain footprint
is going to be altered for decades or even centuries.
While on earthquake hitting at any moment would be bad,

(06:46):
the longer Cascadia stays quiet, the worse the eventual disaster
might be. Researchers modeled what might happen if the earthquake
struck in twenty one hundred. Thanks to climate change sea
level rise to make everything more destructive. Global mean sea
level has already risen by eight to nine inches since

(07:07):
eighteen eighty, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projections suggests
it will rise by another two feet or more by
twenty one hundred. In Cascadia, however, the story is slightly
more complex. As the wand I Fuca slips under the
North American tectonic plate, the continental land has been slowly

(07:28):
pushed upwards, masking the effects of global sea level rise,
but that slow uplift won't last. Eventually, climate change will
catch up and sea levels in the Pacific Northwest will
begin to rise just like everywhere else. Slowly, but surely
two disasters tectonic and climate are converging. Quote, during the

(07:53):
next earthquake, when the land drops down, you're going to
suddenly have to contend with multiple centuries of equivalvalent sea
level rise in minutes, Dura said. By twenty one hundred,
even without an earthquake, the researchers estimated that floodplains could
expand by forty square miles. Combine that with subsidence from
an earthquake that hits in twenty one hundred, and flood

(08:16):
exposure could triple compared to today, expanding floodplaines by up
to one hundred and forty five square miles. Faced with
this compounded threat earthquake, tsunami, subsidence, and sea level rise,
what can communities do to prepare? Dura acknowledge there are
no easy answers. Quote Cascadi opposes a unique challenge because

(08:39):
it's so seismically quiet. She said, it's hard to keep
residents aware of the hazard without undue panic. How do
you get people prepared without scaring them away? At a
starting point, Dura's team recommends integrating their findings into flood
hazard and tsunami maps and working across agencies to improve preparewareness.

(09:01):
Key actions include identifying critical infrastructure in future flood zones
and planning how to relocate or adapt them to make
them flood resistant. Increasing public awareness will also be key,
as well as promoting nature based solutions such as wetland restoration.
New infrastructure developments in high risk areas should also be reconsidered.

(09:26):
Is all hope lost? Not at all? Dura said, But
the clock is ticking quote. There are definitely people working
on it, and I don't want to diminish the hard
work of those individuals, she said. I think we just
need more people on the problem. But we're all trying
to work together, and there's a lot of new science
coming out. Now. Okay, now we'll go to USA today

(09:51):
and they have an article that is headlined Meet the robobunny.
This tiny furry robot is taking on invasive pythons in Florida.
This from July sixteenth. Among the Cyprus and sawgrass of
South Florida. A new weapon in the state's fight to
remove invasive pythons lurks waiting to entice its prey. Yes,

(10:15):
it's a mechanical rabbit, just don't call it the energizer Bunny.
Researchers at the University of Florida have outfitted forty furry
fake toy rabbits with motors and tiny heaters that work
together to mimic the movements and body temperature of a
marsh rabbit, a favorite python meal. The Fluffy Army's mission

(10:41):
helped conservationists remove the highly destructive serpents that have invaded
the state's ecosystem. The bunnies spin, they shake, they move randomly,
and their creation is based on more than a decade
of scientific review. That began with a twenty twelve study
that transported rabbits into Everglade's National Park to see if

(11:03):
and how quickly they would become python prey. The rabbits
didn't farewell, said Robert McCleary, University of Florida professor Wildlife,
Ecology and Conservation, who's leading the robot bunny study. Subsequent
studies revealed that pythons are drawn to live rabbits in
pins that pe ns with an average python attraction rate

(11:28):
of about one snake per week. But having multiple live
rabbits and pins spread across a formidable landscape is cumbersome
and requires too much manpower to care for them. So
why not robot bunnies? Quote, we want to capture all
of the processes that an actual rabbit would give off,
McCleary said. But I'm an ecologist. I'm not someone who
sits around making robots instead. Colleague Chris Dutton, also a

(11:53):
University of Florida ecology professor, but more mechanically adept pulled
the stuffing out of a toy rabbit and replaced it
with thirty electronic components that are solar powered and controlled
remotely so the researchers can turn them on and off
at specific times. The rabbits replaced in different areas of
South Florida in July twenty twenty five for a test

(12:16):
phase that includes a camera programmed to recognize python movement
and alert researchers when one nears the rabbit pin. One
of the biggest challenges was waterproofing the bunnies so the
correct temperature could still be radiated. Mcleary was reluctant to
give specific somewhere the rabbit pins are located. I don't

(12:38):
want people hunting down my robo bunnies, he said. Version
two of the study will add bunny sent to the
stuffed rabbits. If motion and heat aren't enough to fool
the snakes, why are Burmese pythons a problem? Burmese pythons
aren't native to Florida. They were introduced to the state

(12:59):
through the pet trade in the nineteen seventies and released
over time into the wild. The snakes gained a foothold
in Everglades National Park by the mid nineteen eighties. According
to a twenty twenty one Florida Python control plane. They
quickly proliferated, threatening other key species in the ecosystem. A
twenty twelve study by United States Geological Survey found the

(13:23):
pythons had contributed to population declines of a half dozen animals,
including raccoons, possums, bobcats, foxes, marsh rabbits, and cottontail rabbits.
The USGS puts the Burmese python population in the Everglades
in the tens of thousands. Pythons have migrated north from

(13:44):
the park, and researchers believed they may be able to
survive as far north as Georgia if temperatures continue to
warm and the snake's burrow during cold snaps. State officials
trying to mitigate the python population have turned to many
stres rategies with varying degrees of success. Renowned that snake
hunters from the Arula tribe in India were brought in

(14:09):
to hunt and share their skills. People have used near
infrared cameras for python detection, an especially designed trap. Some
pythons are tracked by the DNA they shed in water.
The annual Florida Python Challenge has also gained legendary status.
Attracting hundreds of hunters each year, vying for the ten

(14:31):
thousand dollars grand prize. The ten day Challenge was developed
by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to remove the
pythons from state land. This year's challenge runs through July twentieth.
Starting in twenty seventeen, the South Florida Water Management District
and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission also began

(14:54):
paying one hundred bounty hunters hourly wages and bonuses based
on the length of the the snake caught. The hunters
have removed an estimated fifteen thousand, eight hundred snakes since
twenty nineteen and were called the most effective management strategy
in the history of the issue. A district invasive animal

(15:14):
biologist Mike Kirkland. Kirkland oversees the district's hunters and is
involved in other python removal projects, including the robo bunny experiment.
Quote it's projects like McCleary's that can be used in
areas of important ecological significance, where we can entice the

(15:36):
pythons to come out of their hiding places and come
to us, Kirkland said at the board meeting. It could
be a bit of a game changer. Quote McCleary said,
he's pleased state officials are willing to experiment. Quote. Our
partners have allowed us to trial these things that may

(15:58):
sound a little crazy, McCleary said. Working in the Everglades
for ten years, you get tired of documenting the problem.
You want to address it. McCleary said. Researchers did not
name the robot bunnies, although he did bring one home
that needed repair. His son named it bun Bun. Well.

(16:21):
Back to USA today and the headline for this one
is the Grand Canyon fire exploded in size, catching officials
off guard why. This is from July sixteenth, when a
lightning strike ignited a wildfire on the Grand Canyon's north rim.
Fire officials allowed it to burn for several days as
they set up containment lines and urged the public that

(16:44):
it was not a threat, But then a dangerous shift
in the weather occurred, turning the seemingly low risk fire
into a fast moving blaze that jumped containment lines and
torched dozens of buildings in the park over the weekend,
including a historic lodge. What fueled the explosive growth of

(17:05):
the Dragon Bravo fire was a mix of gusty winds,
dry air, and above normal heat weather conditions experts described
as atypical for this time of year, when monsooner moisture
typically tamps down wildfire risk across Arizona. Quote it was
a break in the monsoon pattern, says Robert Ricky, science

(17:30):
and operations officer with National Weather Service. Rather than having
daily afternoon showers, we had a period of several days
without that. Instead we had extremely dry, warm conditions. Since
its rapid expansion over the weekend, the wildfire has torched
over fourteen square miles of land, making one of the

(17:51):
largest wildfires to break out in the National Park since
twenty twenty one. No one has been injured. As a
North Rim and nearby key communities were evacuated last week
because of a separate fire. Officials also shut down the
North Rim, which receives only ten percent of all park visitors,

(18:11):
for the rest of the year. In recent days, members
of the state's congressional delegation and Arizona Governor Katie Obbs
criticized the National Park Service's decision to initially treat the
fire as a controlled burn, a practice that's regularly employed
who reduced wildfire risks and promote healthy plant growth. The

(18:32):
Park Service has said the wildfire was expertly handled, blaming
quote historic in quote winds for the blaze's explosive growth
and highlighting the evacuation of hundreds of residents, tourists, and
park employees. After the fire started on the fourth of July,

(18:54):
the National Park Service decided to manage the blaze as
a controlled burn to benefit the land, but by July tenth,
the threat of expansion set in as a dry trough
of low pressure passed over northern Arizona, pushing out monsoon
moisture and bringing in drier air and gusty winds. Relative
humidity dropped into single digits. The winds shifted, blowing twenty

(19:19):
miles per hour from the west and northwest, fanning the
flames and driving them across the north rim. Temperatures climbed
to the upper eighties and low nineties, about ten degrees
above average for this time of year. On Friday, junely eleventh,
the fire expanded by more than eight times its size.
The rapid growth continued Saturday night, as peak winds around

(19:42):
forty miles per hour pushed the flames to buildings in
a row of cabins that firefighters had sought to protect
the combination of weather conditions is unusual during the regions
of monsoon season, which officially runs from June fifteenth to
September thirtieth, as heavy moils, sure and thunderstorms drive up
humidity levels and limit the risk of wildfires. Quote, during

(20:07):
the monsoon season, we usually have high pressure sitting in place,
so we're not often dealing with strong west or northwest
wind events. Ricky said this pattern just happened to line
up in a way that really fueled the fire. The
contain slash confine strategy that the National Park Service employed

(20:27):
in the initial days the wildfire is not uncommon, especially
in national forests, said Susan Pritchard, research scientists specializing in
wildfire ecology at the University of Washington. Pritchard said such
a decisions reached through extensive calculation, with authorities employing risk
models and simulations to analyze the potential fire spread. If

(20:52):
it's considered low risk, fire managers will let a wildfire
burn so it can chip away at fire fuels and
limit the danger of future blazes. On the Grand Canyon's
north rim. The method worked for several days until gusty
winds combined with low humidity and high temperatures to set
the stage for extreme fire growth. Quote. I feel bad

(21:15):
for the managers here because unfortunately the winds were not
as predictable as we wish, and they got an outlier event,
Richard said. She added that research supports the use of
let it burn practices, but said the damaging wildfire and
its handling should be investigated. Quote fire is a blunt tool,

(21:37):
so everything is risky, she said. But when there's an
outcome that's so far from what was expected, we need
to learn from it. End. Quote. Now we'll go to
BBC Wildlife and this article is headlined five weirdest dogs
on the planet, including one that can climb a tree

(21:57):
like a primate and another that looks like a cuddly bear.
This is from July seventh. When you think of wild dogs,
chances are you don't think of a species able to
climb trees like a primate, or one that eats a
lot of fruit, or even one that looks like a bear.
But just like any other family, the canine family has
its weird members too. The maimed wolf isn't so much

(22:22):
a walking contradiction as a portmanteau creature assembled from parts
of other animals. For a start, it isn't a wolf,
and it doesn't behave like one. It eats a lot
of fruit for a start. In addition to its supermodel
legs and endearing long black socks, this canid's most striking

(22:42):
characteristics are its huge ears, made of charcoal fur, and
brushy white tail. It's often described as a fox on stilts,
but that doesn't do it justice. The largest canid in Africa,
African wild dogs are neither wolf snore dogs. Despite their name.

(23:02):
Like wolves and dogs, African wild dogs do belong to
the canaday family, that's Cnidae. However, gray wolves, coyotes, dogs
and jackals are all in the Canis genus, whereas African
wild dogs are the only living species in the like

(23:25):
Chaon genus genus. With its streamlined body and sturdy long legs.
During chases, the wild dogs can reach top speeds of
sixty to seventy two kilometers per hour and are specially
adapted to dealing with heat stress with their trademark long,
large circular ears. Unlike other dogs, wild dogs have four toes.

(23:49):
Instead of five. The gray fox moves like a cat,
climbs like a primate, and spends much of its time
high up in trees. It's anatomy is notable for features
seemingly borrowed from across various mammalian orders. Like primates, it
has rotating wrists that enable it to grip the sides

(24:10):
of trees to climb branchless trunks. Its long curved claws
and large, spreadable paws resemble those of cats, again useful
for gaining traction on essentially vertical surfaces. With oversized ears,
big dark eyes, and a petite frame built for desert life,

(24:32):
The finnic fox, the smallest wild dog in the world,
is one of the nature's most adorable and fascinating creatures.
One of its weirdest features is its oversized ears. They
have large ears, the largest ears relative to the body
size of any member of the family Caniday, which can
grow up to fifteen centimeters in length. They help keep

(24:53):
the little mammals cool by radiating body heat, enabling them
to cope with living in the day. Their ears also
allow them to listen to and track prey underneath the sand.
The bush dog is a species that looks more like
a small bear than a dog. Native to the Amazon

(25:15):
Basin and other parts of South America and Panama, bush
dogs are small, unusual canids, weighing little more than four
to seven kilograms, about the size of a red fox,
and which more closely resemble many bears than other dogs.
They live in packs of up to twelve individuals and
hunt cooperatively, frequently driving their prey, which can include rodents

(25:39):
such as puckas, towards water or other pack members. By
hunting in groups, they can also, despite standing no higher
than a basset hound, take down much larger species such
as armadillos, copy beara, and even the ostrich like rheas.
And now we go to ours Nica. The ISSS is

(26:03):
nearing retirement, So why has NASA still gone the hole
about Starliner? From July sixteenth? After so many delays, difficulties,
and disappointments. You might be inclined to think that NASA
wants to wash its hands of Boeing's troubled star Liner spacecraft,
but that's not the case. The manager of NASA's Commercial

(26:23):
crew program, Steve Stick, told reporters Thursday that Boeing and
its propulsions supplier aerojet rocket dying are moving forward with
several changes to Starliner to resolve problems that the devil
to test flight last year. These changes include new seals
to plug helium leaks and thermal shunts, and barriers to

(26:45):
keep the spacecraft's thrusters from overheating. Boeing, now more than
two billion dollars in the hole to pay for all
of Starliner's delays, is still more than a year away
from executing on its multi billion dollar NASA contract in
beginning crew rotation flights to the International Space Station, but
NASA officials say Boeing remains committed to Starliner. We really

(27:10):
are working toward a flight as soon as early next
year with Starliner, and then ultimately our goal is to
get into crew rotation flights with Starliner, stick said, and
those would start no earlier than the second crew rotation
slot at the end of next year. That would be
eleven years after Boeing officials anticipated the spacecraft would enter

(27:31):
operational service for NASA when they announced the star Liner
program in twenty ten. The next star Liner flight will
probably transport only cargo to the ISS, not astronauts, but
NASA hasn't made any final decisions on the matter. The
agency has enough crew rotation missions booked to fly on

(27:53):
SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft to cover the space station's needs until
well into twenty twenty seven or twenty twenty eight. Well
that's all for today's Diary of Science and Nature. Your
reader was Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for the Health
Corner on RADIOI