For The Wild - Dr. SUZANNE PIERRE on Reshaping a Siloed Science ⧸150

00:00:00.000 For the Wild podcast is brought to you in part by support from our partner, the Calliopeia Foundation.

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00:00:28.640 Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.

00:00:33.320 I have developed a certain unexpected patience with myself that really mirrors the way that soil operates,

00:00:45.300 that mirrors the pace at which forests develop and communities, ecological communities change over time.

00:00:53.920 today we are speaking with dr suzanne pierre dr pierre is a uc president's postdoctoral fellow

00:01:02.680 at uc berkeley she is trained as a global change ecologist and biogeochemist and researches the

00:01:10.600 ways that climate change is altering the elemental changes between plants soils and microorganisms in

00:01:17.140 different habitats she started writing about marginalized people's relationships in nature

00:01:22.280 in science in 2013 when she began pursuing a PhD in ecology at Cornell. She's now interested in the

00:01:29.700 ways that human interactions with nature, mediated by science, labor, and freedom, have influenced

00:01:36.400 local and global exchanges of the elements, energy, and social economic power. Suzanne organizes these

00:01:44.100 ideas under the umbrella of critical ecology, a conceptual thoroughfare she is building across

00:01:49.880 the earth and climate sciences histories of science the sociology of the environment you

00:01:55.980 can read some of dr pierre's work on this instagram at critical underscore ecology

00:02:01.340 well dr pierre thank you so much for taking this time to join me today this is a conversation i

00:02:08.900 have been looking forward to for quite a long time so have i and thank you so much for having

00:02:14.200 me. I'm really excited to chat with you. Yes, me too. I want to begin our conversation in

00:02:20.520 recognition of what brought you here, the soil. And in preparing for this interview, I was reminded

00:02:26.960 of what often feels like a great schism between what it means to know something scientifically

00:02:33.500 and what it means to know something intimately. With soil, the scientific approach ultimately

00:02:39.480 feel so reductionist, but it also reminds us of the remarkable properties of soil as a resource

00:02:46.020 for water absorption, carbon sequestration, and as fertile grounds. Yet these reminders still

00:02:53.300 leave something to the imagination. So I'd love if we could begin our conversation with you sharing

00:02:59.420 what it was about soil that brought you to the work that you're doing today.

00:03:04.040 Yeah, there was a book that was really pivotal in my kind of love affair with science and

00:03:10.880 specifically with soil. It's called Dirt, the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Logan

00:03:17.080 Bryant. And a good, good friend gave me that book sometime in high school, where I, at that point,

00:03:24.600 was just really in love with and fascinated by the natural world, but only kind of within the scope

00:03:31.440 of my backyard and maybe kind of the larger area in central New Jersey where I grew up.

00:03:37.880 But after reading that book, something happened kind of emotionally or spiritually where I felt

00:03:45.120 like something that I had noticed or sensed was affirmed in Bryant's words, which is that

00:03:53.160 there is something holy about soil, that it's this sort of repository of everything that has

00:03:59.840 ever been and ever will be. And it's everywhere. It's everywhere that it needs to be. And it's

00:04:06.400 everywhere where something could be, at least as far as biology is concerned. So yeah, there's this

00:04:13.080 sort of potential that was affirmed by Bryant's words. And there's a lot more there that I can

00:04:18.840 get into as far as what that represented to me, like the sort of power that is inherent in

00:04:26.020 realizing that something that looks inert is actually teeming with life and the giver of

00:04:32.380 life. But yeah, I feel like emotionally and spiritually, that's kind of where things got

00:04:36.520 kicked off for me. I hear that. Now, as a trained global change ecologist and biogeochemist,

00:04:45.240 you've spent a great deal of time working in academia and experiencing and witnessing the

00:04:51.160 continued marginalization of groups that make up the minority in the academic space. So I'd like

00:04:57.860 to bring into conversation a passage you wrote for Loam in an article titled Below Ground Activity. 0.68

00:05:04.060 I think about what the scarcity of women of color in ecological sciences means in the context of

00:05:11.900 climate change and moreover under an administration that denies that it is happening. Beyond the

00:05:18.540 intellectual marginalization of Black, Brown, and Indigenous researchers, our scarcity in the

00:05:23.920 natural sciences will impact the communities we come from, end quote. I'd really love to discuss

00:05:29.380 this further, and perhaps you can elaborate on the forced implication of denying people of color

00:05:35.500 access to the ecological sciences in context of climate change. It's very multifaceted, I think.

00:05:43.000 the ways that marginalized or minoritized groups in, let's start with just the United States,

00:05:50.920 the way that these groups are kind of separated from nature, I feel, is the starting point of

00:05:57.320 also being marginalized intellectually within science and potentially having that marginalization

00:06:03.620 trickle down to the types of solutions that will be directly beneficial to marginalized communities

00:06:10.540 at large. So it kind of, for me, in my view anyway, starts with the fact that we are kind of estranged

00:06:18.220 from the natural world in so many ways. And that estrangement begets this sort of unfamiliarity

00:06:25.920 and discomfort that in my argument is by design so that we do not have the emotional kind of

00:06:34.900 cultural and physical connections with land that other groups, especially those that are

00:06:41.520 more wealthy and often white and often male as well, have in their experience. And so all of

00:06:49.260 that is kind of the groundwork for being excluded from a sort of intellectual conversation that is

00:06:56.460 pretty much at the core of solving climate-related and ecological problems. And so if we're already

00:07:04.660 estranged and we also don't have this sort of entry point into the scientific world, can these

00:07:10.760 minoritized groups, and I mean, obviously I'm speaking for myself as well, can we ever meaningfully

00:07:17.700 steer the academic and scientific conversations towards questions that directly relate to our

00:07:25.520 lived experiences on the land and in this current climate? And I think the answer is no. And so it's

00:07:31.420 sort of this domino effect of estrangement from the earth. Thank you, Suzanne, for speaking to

00:07:37.600 that. I'm particularly interested in bringing in this idea of the knowledge commons, something

00:07:43.780 you've referenced to, which can be read on your Instagram at critical underscore ecology.

00:07:49.280 If we acknowledge science as a Western colonial institution, which will always struggle to work

00:07:56.140 outside of that framework, then it begs us to ask whether or not there is any benefit in trying to

00:08:02.620 reform it, or instead should there be a complete investment in the knowledge commons? My idea of

00:08:10.000 knowledge commons is relatively nebulous, and there's a reason for that. When I use the phrase

00:08:18.160 knowledge commons, I don't mean that there should be or there is sort of one repository that's open

00:08:25.120 for all people to access. That might be a really good idea in and of itself. But when I said that

00:08:33.080 we need a knowledge commons, I more so meant that there needs to be an open exchange between the

00:08:39.580 sort of academic or scientific world and the broader world. And then that knowledge becomes

00:08:47.060 a commons, which is a place, right? Like a commons is actually a physical destination.

00:08:53.000 What I guess I would argue is that the knowledge commons could also be community.

00:08:58.340 Relational kind of estrangement, I feel, is at the heart of so many of these questions about who can participate and how different people are affected in the environment.

00:09:08.920 And so the knowledge commons is also just a way to describe a sense of sharing and community that is both kind of intellectual, but is also sort of both ways, right?

00:09:22.700 Like it's, it's bi-directional where scientists should also have access to and hold onto kind

00:09:31.220 of the cultural understandings and the spiritual understandings that are coming from actual

00:09:37.580 communities, especially frontline communities.

00:09:40.280 The knowledge commons is, is a little bit more of like a metaphor, I guess, for that

00:09:45.100 relational status.

00:09:47.340 And in the article of yours, I previously mentioned below ground activity.

00:09:51.340 you go on to write, quote, the unique experiences and circumstances of working poor people of color

00:09:58.580 are actively ignored as the majority white, wealthy, and male scientists set the agendas

00:10:04.760 for climate change and sustainability research. The most important research involves questions

00:10:10.660 scaled to the continent or the globe, and data are then abstracted into national policy

00:10:17.540 recommendations, end quote. Now, this is a topic that I don't believe we've broached on for the

00:10:25.400 while before, in part because initially it seems like a conversation that would be relegated to

00:10:31.960 the scientific world, but it's so critical that all of us engage with this. Now, as someone with

00:10:39.020 firsthand knowledge of how national policy is being shaped by science, can you talk a little 0.63

00:10:44.700 bit more about what it means for all of us when middle to upper class white people are the guiding

00:10:51.880 hands behind climate research. I'm a preface person, and I always preface what I say with 0.55

00:10:58.980 a little bit of context, and I want to offer that first. When it comes to my comments about

00:11:05.340 how global scale research and models and these predictions influence national and

00:11:14.160 international policy, I want to be clear that these types of research and findings are very,

00:11:23.100 very important to our understanding of globally what's happening in our atmosphere. And we need

00:11:30.380 that information and there's no doubt that it's necessary. But there's also the point that you're

00:11:37.680 kind of honing in on that once these data are collected or once these predictions are made,

00:11:45.620 they are used and applied to policies that are agnostic of the experiences of very specific

00:11:56.060 cultural, economic, and kind of honestly justice contexts. And so when I say that the findings

00:12:07.120 and the predictions for future climate and current climate are making it into policy,

00:12:15.360 what I mean there is that they're divorced from the specific communities that will then be affected

00:12:21.660 by those policies. And so this is a little bit of a question of scale. And it is also a question

00:12:28.060 like you're bringing up of who's actually involved in the table, in that exchange between the

00:12:35.640 scientists and the IPCC and the broader international community and then the U.S.

00:12:42.580 government. And so if more diverse voices are not represented at that scale in climate science and

00:12:51.820 also in climate policymaking, the likelihood that those policies and the interpretations

00:12:59.000 for those data are relevant to the frontline communities that are most at risk and often

00:13:06.940 most disenfranchised, it's super low. It's very unlikely that those policies are responsive to

00:13:13.840 the on-the-ground needs of those communities. So I think that is my main criticism. And I say

00:13:20.860 that criticism with love for science at the same time. You don't criticize something that you don't

00:13:28.000 want to see get better. And so I think that is sort of another contextual point I always want to

00:13:34.600 make. And I also wonder what science in the same vein gets funded depending on who are the

00:13:45.280 scientists chosen or what departments or what universities. Like when I think about public

00:13:51.260 policy, I wonder, well, who is choosing what gets studied and where? And how does that affect

00:13:59.460 people on the ground? Like for instance, maybe there's a refinery or a toxic spill and what are

00:14:08.020 the elements of that disaster that's getting studied and who gets to actually have that

00:14:13.880 knowledge if parts are studied and how does that relate back to the communities that are being

00:14:18.340 affected. I think about that even with forest research. And sometimes I wonder, well, who's

00:14:24.340 paying for that forest research and what is the end goal of it and who gets to benefit? Is it the

00:14:29.560 logging companies? Is it the communities in the area? Is it the salmon people? And so, yeah, I

00:14:36.640 kind of sometimes get lost in that vortex of what is actually even being chosen to be studied.

00:14:42.840 You're asking a really good question about the stakeholders involved in different types of science making. So I guess I'll say first that there are a lot more researchers now and maybe in the last 20 years that have been dedicated to and successfully getting funded questions, scientific questions and research questions that are related to the communities

00:15:12.220 that are being affected. And that's from climate change effects. This is in cases of extreme

00:15:18.880 weather. This is in terms of kind of risk assessment for climate impacts, even questions

00:15:25.280 like you're mentioning with land use effects of things like logging or clear cutting or dam

00:15:31.800 creation and impacts on sort of the biology and the ecology that results. So there are researchers

00:15:38.680 who are dedicated to actually asking questions that bridge the gap between the purely ecological

00:15:44.780 or the purely sort of earth science and the people, both local and indigenous, who are

00:15:51.360 interacting with those phenomena. But are they the most flashy or well-funded labs? Are they the

00:16:01.300 most kind of reputable or I guess those that get the most sort of credibility as being top

00:16:09.320 scientific labs? No, not always. And so that's the transition point that I want to see.

00:16:15.940 I think that if there aren't people, scientists and their collaborators pushing forward

00:16:23.780 to get work that is community oriented and community engaged done, there will never be

00:16:30.460 this sort of tipping point of, hey, we actually recognize a geoscience lab that's doing the basic

00:16:37.340 science only as highly as a lab that is doing community-informed work about soil toxins,

00:16:45.100 for example. So it feels like an uphill battle, but I guess I'm just trying to make the point that

00:16:51.540 it's not that those types of researchers don't exist. It's that they just are underappreciated

00:16:56.980 in a lot of cases, but persistent, and I support their persistence.

00:17:26.980 the ground

00:17:28.740 and if it didn't

00:17:33.020 hurt would you be this

00:17:35.020 strong now

00:17:36.800 so don't

00:17:40.940 be afraid to fall

00:17:43.200 a wire

00:17:44.600 a wire

00:17:46.700 a wire

00:17:48.860 we're made to rise

00:17:50.760 above a wire

00:17:53.120 a wire

00:17:55.260 Don't be afraid to love

00:18:00.340 Promise that you're in love

00:18:10.520 Sometimes it feels like the world is crashing down

00:18:20.220 now there is another part of this conversation that feels incredibly important to begin naming

00:18:32.020 and exploring which is this narrative around inclusion of people of color as a response to

00:18:38.680 the legacy of science stem as a hostile space or to combat narratives of exclusion in the academy

00:18:47.000 And while I recognize that this may not be the intent, it seems that the tokenization that takes place occurs under the pretense that the perspective of people of color is only brought forth to be in conversation with whiteness, race, or racism.

00:19:04.240 And so I'm drawing from an article titled Black Speculation, Black Freedom by Petal Samuel, where they ask, quote,

00:19:13.720 What subtly complexity and richness of human experience is lost when Black life is understood exclusively as a resistance project? Is there room in our scholarly examinations for Black interiority, forms of community, joy, frivolity, or contradiction?

00:19:33.400 I wonder how that thought has come to you in your own experience as well, in that the ecological

00:19:42.740 sciences need a multitude of voices, not just as a response to environmental racism, but to bring in

00:19:49.940 new perspectives altogether. When I was an undergraduate, I was not a science major. I

00:19:56.760 intended to become a journalist, maybe an environmental journalist, but I was very,

00:20:02.340 very uncomfortable with STEM concepts, period. I was always told that I was not a science kid.

00:20:10.140 That's the kind of high school I went to. And I don't think that was out of malice. I think it was

00:20:14.940 just, it was unclear how to relate to science, to relate to math, if you didn't hold an identity

00:20:24.400 that had been put forward as oriented towards those concepts. When I did get around to being

00:20:31.320 an undergrad and thinking about science and thinking about like, well, I love the environment,

00:20:35.740 I love nature, I love soil. Could it be possible for me to pursue this as sort of a career? And

00:20:42.400 one of the reasons that I ended up choosing to go in that direction and eventually become a

00:20:48.160 scientist was because I thought about scientific knowledge held by people who were not typically

00:20:56.680 in the canon of science as being its own sort of revolution not a response and not a resistance

00:21:06.040 but a world in and of itself that I could create simply by existing as a woman who is Black who is

00:21:14.080 of mixed heritage who is also a scientist and I feel like that is connected to the quote you just

00:21:21.400 shared because there is this sort of power in interiority when it comes to science that there's

00:21:29.900 sort of I guess a purity in being able to to show something and to know something and have it be in

00:21:39.640 conversation with other discoveries and thoughts and that not have to be an act of resistance like

00:21:46.980 that is a sort of world making that I wanted to be a part of by becoming a scientist and so I think

00:21:53.800 one of the ways that I am starting to see our like existence as people of color as women as queer

00:22:02.200 people in science one of the ways that I see us changing the way science is as a world is by

00:22:10.200 living our identities as like directly in conversation with the knowledge making and not

00:22:17.120 in a way that is in response or in competition with or as a factor of sort of the larger body

00:22:26.120 of white dominant science. It's almost like an act of non-engagement, like an act of refusal

00:22:32.460 as an act of world making and so that's that's how I sort of revolt against tokenization that

00:22:40.580 I'm not an addition to science I am sort of a new emissary of science altogether and and that's

00:22:49.060 how I see myself that is so beautiful thank you for speaking with such heart and clarity

00:22:57.600 and bravery and this unwillingness to compromise in how you show up. I have chills and I'm just

00:23:06.640 taking that in for a minute. So something that feels relevant is how accessibility to nature

00:23:14.240 serves as a social filter to the ecological sciences. And I feel like you were speaking

00:23:20.100 to this earlier and you've written about this before and environmental experiences have racial

00:23:26.720 roots published by Free Radicals. I'd like to bring it up now because I think it expands the

00:23:33.140 conversation around the whiteness of science in a way that often isn't done. There's much more

00:23:40.900 attention brought to the ways in which STEM itself remains steeped in patriarchy and white supremacy,

00:23:45.840 and there's plenty of work that explores how science has perpetuated its own type of imperialism.

00:23:52.320 but I think less so are people talking about how this is happening before students even get into

00:23:59.640 the classroom so can you speak to the right to know the soil stars and water and access to land

00:24:09.040 in terms of well-being whole being and the implications this has on how knowledge is produced

00:24:15.440 yeah this connects to our last couple of exchanges about world making and about a speculative future 0.59

00:24:24.320 that involves and centers people of color and other minoritized identities because if we are 0.67

00:24:35.260 alienated from that which we are made of, we are poised not to have any stake in what happens to 0.54

00:24:47.160 it. And if we are not stakeholders in that future, we are sort of like a silent majority,

00:24:56.800 a non-voting majority. And you can vote in lots of different ways, right? And obviously there's

00:25:02.580 the civic way, but there's also sort of how you spend your days. And I think that the option

00:25:09.800 has existed for white people in the modern world to be scientists. And that not only is that sort 0.82

00:25:18.200 of a somewhat reasonable path, but, you know, a valorized path as well. Like the fact that that

00:25:25.080 has existed for one subset of the earth's sort of population means that there's a whole kind of

00:25:33.580 constituency of the earth, of the climate, of ecology that's non-voting. I'm saying this kind

00:25:40.460 of over and over again, but I kind of don't care because it feels like the message that I want to

00:25:47.880 share with people is that there are a bunch of moments in our shared cultural history that have

00:25:54.680 alienated us from land and have made us sort of uncomfortable or distrustful in some cases

00:26:01.820 of land. But by rekindling that relationship, we kind of step back into the voting body.

00:26:13.460 And then we have the opportunity through relationship to an experience like going

00:26:20.220 for a walk in your neighborhood and paying attention to what the trees are doing in that

00:26:26.840 season or paying attention to what birds are flying around in your neighborhood you know

00:26:33.400 sticking your toes in the creek that runs behind a school those types of ecological interactions

00:26:42.580 and experiences are the ways that we kind of we are re-enfranchised that gives us the opportunity

00:26:48.940 as once minoritized and marginalized people to vote with our lives, right? So by becoming

00:26:54.900 scientists, we vote with our lives. By becoming activists, we vote with our lives. By becoming

00:27:00.800 farmers, by becoming educators. And so I feel like there's just this really fine but important

00:27:11.760 connection there between the actual experience and normalization of that experience. And then

00:27:18.920 And our ability to act and be on the land in a way that is voting yes for the land.

00:27:26.000 And I want that back for us.

00:27:27.260 I just do.

00:27:29.800 I love voting with our lives, voting with our bodies.

00:27:34.420 I love the image of dipping the toes in the creek.

00:27:37.320 I think sometimes our world, this dominant culture, can make things really complex, which they are, of course.

00:27:45.960 But then there is also this beautiful simplicity of just being alive and being human and what that means to reconnect and how reconnection can actually be so simple and so quiet.

00:28:00.740 and that type of space that we can give ourselves to be in that quiet space to reconnect is so

00:28:11.440 powerful and that's kind of the energy that i'm i'm hearing from you right now and i'm really

00:28:17.460 grateful to you for it that you're able to juggle so much complexity and also bring the message to

00:28:24.940 this simple and gentle connection point. I think it's really unique that you're able to hold so

00:28:32.100 many pieces and weave them together in this way, and thank you. During your keynote speech at the

00:28:40.360 2018 Healing the Earth Conference at the University of California titled Ecology as a Locus for Social

00:28:48.460 change. You address the researcher's relationship to space. And since listening, I've really been

00:28:55.580 thinking about this topic, how scientists are afforded transcendence in their mobility through

00:29:02.160 place because of the perceived objectivity of their field. I also think back to my interview

00:29:09.080 with M. Jackson as she spoke about how glaciologists often participate in a very

00:29:15.000 extractive form of science that is akin to anthropology. And I wonder how now more than

00:29:21.760 ever, with the rise of climate change studies as a field, how do we need to disavow this idea

00:29:28.160 of objective science as paradoxical as that may sound? Man, to me, it is not a paradox at all.

00:29:36.920 it's a reckoning it would be finally truth-telling really I think you'll notice like in a lot of

00:29:45.420 places in sort of our culture and sort of how society works right now obfuscating truth is

00:29:53.340 a way of getting things done right we find that fake news like we are comfortable with that

00:30:00.920 concept all of a sudden, right? Like there's an active practice of disinformation that is important

00:30:08.480 for how politics operates, how economics and financial markets operate. But I guess I just

00:30:16.340 want scientists and those who care about how science operates to recognize that there's a

00:30:24.520 bit of that in what we do too. And there always has been, and I'm a party to it, right? Like I'm

00:30:29.660 not saying that I'm apart from it and looking down at it or across some kind of chasm. I mean

00:30:36.560 to say that we depend on the lie of full objectivity as a way of doing what we do with

00:30:47.880 a smoothness and a frictionlessness that aids us surely in getting the information we need

00:30:56.260 to publish and find, you know, scientific discoveries and make them known. But we have

00:31:03.180 something to own up to, which is also that the sense that our roots of our disciplines, so I'll

00:31:11.440 just stick with maybe plant science, for example. We know what we know about plants because of

00:31:21.220 movement and because of borderlessness within science, right? There is no way that we would be,

00:31:28.280 at least in the Western science canon, that we would be able to know and hold as much information

00:31:34.480 as we do about the plants of the world without the sort of borderlessness of science. And I

00:31:39.520 think that that's rooted in the sort of half truth of objectivity, that people from across

00:31:45.960 the globe could show up in a place that had never heard of what they were doing. What is this sort

00:31:53.100 of taxonomic system? What is this naming protocol that you're using and appear as officials, right?

00:32:01.340 Appear as authorities on what they're doing and go in higher labor from the local area to then

00:32:09.860 go deep into lands that were unfamiliar and find plants and give them names. And so how that's

00:32:18.320 objective to me is completely beyond, right? Because there are two or more contexts that had

00:32:28.520 to come together and interact for that sort of discovery to be made. And so that's just one

00:32:34.180 example of like the way that we have kind of glazed over that lack of objectivity and we take

00:32:42.420 for granted, at least in the present, that is what we rely on to get our permits, to get our plane

00:32:49.860 tickets, to get our visas, to set up shop and start digging. And there's something about that

00:32:56.640 that doesn't sit right with me. And if we are to make a world that is more equitable, if we are to

00:33:03.580 make a future where we survive and thrive in a sort of post-climate disaster scenario, it will

00:33:12.300 require this kind of truth reckoning too on all fronts. But I can only speak for what I do as a

00:33:19.680 profession, which is to ask for my colleagues and people who pay attention to science to join in

00:33:26.540 that reckoning and start to like actually live and work in a way that's based on truth. And I

00:33:33.180 apologize for that being the longest way to answer your question. I could have listened to a much

00:33:39.880 longer response. So thank you for that. And I'm so glad that our conversation will oscillate

00:33:47.740 between soil matter and the importance of decolonizing science and building the knowledge

00:33:52.300 commons and so much of the work that you've cultivated under critical ecology, specifically

00:33:58.740 your area of focus on carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial environments and soil at the

00:34:05.560 molecular level. So my question for you at this point is why is biogeochemistry and understanding

00:34:12.060 nutrient cycling particularly important amidst climate change? As the name suggests,

00:34:19.420 Because biogeochemistry is the study of the connections between the living things, both plants and animals and microorganisms in the world, the geology.

00:34:34.800 So the actual, what we call parent material, right, which is always the most beautiful thing to me, the parent material, the rocks that were here before the soil was formed and before plants evolved, we're talking about just the literal bedrock that is weathered away to contribute to the kind of biosphere and atmosphere.

00:35:02.620 and then chemistry. And so what we're really studying is the chemical exchange between all

00:35:10.620 of the living and non-living parts of the environment from the rocks I mentioned to the

00:35:16.020 water, to soil and to air. And so why it's really important to the climate, there's almost

00:35:23.580 too many ways to say, but I guess the one that I feel is most accessible is that everything that's

00:35:31.340 happening in our climate is related to chemical changes and energetic exchanges. And that's what

00:35:38.200 biogeochemists study, right? Like we want to understand the changes in exchanges in energy,

00:35:45.960 as well as the exchanges of matter. So carbon, nitrogen, and all of the other elements

00:35:52.220 from our bodies, from animals' bodies, from plants' bodies, and from microorganisms out

00:35:58.340 into the non-living world. And that's actually what forces and changes climate. Like our climate

00:36:04.640 is formed because of the plants that are distributed across this earth. And we can't

00:36:10.600 understand climate whatsoever without understanding how plants biologically operate. We can't

00:36:17.700 understand why climate is changing without understanding how carbon is either taken up

00:36:24.900 or decomposed in plants and how those plants are also dependent on things like the parent material,

00:36:33.220 right? So place is everything and chemistry is everything. And without putting all of those

00:36:38.680 together with the biology, we could not understand why our atmosphere is doing what it's doing and

00:36:44.880 will be doing what it's doing in the future.

00:36:54.900 It's a wild world

00:37:24.900 It's a wild world that we live in.

00:37:35.200 It's a very, very wide world.

00:37:45.540 I'd love to delve more into nitrogen and its impact in these cycles, particularly because

00:37:56.460 it feels like a topic that receives little to no attention outside of the scientific

00:38:01.080 circles, despite its severity.

00:38:03.520 For example, back in March of 2019, the UN launched its Frontier Report, exploring the

00:38:11.820 five most significant issues on the environment, with nitrogen pollution being one. So can you

00:38:18.420 speak to the ramifications of nitrogen pollution on our air and water? And how did we get to this

00:38:25.100 point? And why might there be such public silence on this issue? So what is nitrogen and what is

00:38:31.660 nitrogen pollution? First, let's just define that. So nitrogen is an element, you know, it's in the

00:38:38.680 periodic table. It is a prime component of the proteins, the amino acids that we eat, that make

00:38:48.540 up our bodies, that make up plant tissues. It is a core element in most energetic processes in

00:38:56.120 biology. And the reason that nitrogen is actually kind of critical for influencing climate is

00:39:04.180 twofold. So first it's that the nitrogen cycle is mediated by microbes, right? So all of the other

00:39:13.120 elements, other important compounds like water that recycle through the earth in different forms

00:39:20.400 do so on mostly somewhat biological, but mostly physical. So based on things like temperature

00:39:29.160 and pressure and erosion. And so those are physical processes, right? But nitrogen cycling

00:39:35.800 requires transformations that only certain microbes can do to actually bring nitrogen

00:39:42.420 into a form that plants can take up and that we can actually use for consumption or energy

00:39:47.300 production. And so I think to answer one of your questions, the reason that we don't hear about

00:39:53.620 nitrogen as much as we do is because it's the way it moves through all parts of the earth

00:39:59.780 is sort of complicated and it is biological and requires you to kind of talk about things that

00:40:07.360 people can't see like microbes, right? So there's that sort of bottleneck of information of that's

00:40:14.140 kind of a heavy lift for a lot of people, even other scientists who don't think about nitrogen.

00:40:19.340 And the way that nitrogen pollution operates is also complicated. So the way that we get nitrogen pollution largely is through fossil fuel burning and introduction of nitrogen into the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning and also certain agricultural practices.

00:40:37.140 And so I won't go into the nitty gritty of all of that, but it is to say that we rely on forms of energy and forms of fertilizer that are nitrogen rich, but turn nitrogen into forms and put nitrogen into places where it is either not supposed to be sort of in the way that the ecosystem would naturally function,

00:41:01.380 but also puts nitrogen into kind of chemical forms that lead to problems like warming and

00:41:09.960 also problems like acidification of soils and eutrophication. So enrichment of basically

00:41:16.180 nutrients into surface waters in places like the Gulf of Mexico, for example.

00:41:22.620 So the nitrogen cycle is a heavy lift for lots of people because it has so many moving parts

00:41:28.760 and so many key players. And I feel like this is the reason why we, most people don't think

00:41:34.420 about nitrogen when they think about environmental degradation and climate change. But I really hope

00:41:40.000 that that changes. I have like an emotional, like love affair with nitrogen. Like it's a very

00:41:45.820 tender, dear thing to me, but it's also something that I feel like everyone needs to kind of at

00:41:52.960 least a little understand to be able to grapple with the complexity of what's happening in our

00:41:58.340 environment. And so I hope in some ways that I can try to make our understanding of nitrogen

00:42:05.720 as kind of accessible and commonplace as our understanding of carbon seems to be getting

00:42:11.520 and also water. So again, a long one for you. That was a good long one. Another issue we're

00:42:19.100 facing is the decline of nitrogen in forest soils. And scientists have been warning about

00:42:24.900 the widespread decline of nitrogen in forest soils and its impact on climate mitigation.

00:42:31.040 Of course, spending so much of my life in service to the forest, this is a topic that

00:42:36.700 I'm especially interested in discussing, and so perhaps we could also speak to some

00:42:41.780 of the issues forest soils are experiencing more broadly in relation to clear-cutting

00:42:47.480 or even selective logging.

00:42:49.020 For example, I've seen how once a forest is clear-cut, the soil is degraded from machine work, topsoil disruption, sun damage, and of course the list goes on.

00:43:00.420 So what does this mean for future generations of trees that are now being planted in poor soil conditions?

00:43:06.060 Can you share more with us about the process of soil regeneration, and can soil that once-nourished old-growth forest be regenerated in our lifetime after experiencing such destruction?

00:43:20.420 So the process or processes that lead to nitrogen losses from soil and ultimately lead to pollution of groundwater and surface water and also lead to the production of certain greenhouse gases that have nitrogen in them that lead to warming.

00:43:38.060 those disturbances are, I guess, they are, again, ways of taking nitrogen out of forms or places

00:43:46.880 in the environment where it should be and moving it into forms and places where it should not be.

00:43:53.480 And what do I mean by that? I guess I'll take your example of clear cutting. So when you lose

00:43:59.720 standing forest biomass, so above ground and below ground parts of a tree, when that is removed from

00:44:07.840 the landscape, there is sort of a repository for nutrients like nitrogen that is taken away,

00:44:15.420 right? The tree was taking up nitrogen out of the soil in order to build its leaves and do

00:44:21.680 photosynthesis and grow. Once that tree or that whole forest is no longer there, that nitrogen

00:44:27.120 is not as able to kind of cling to both the soil, and I'm using this sort of metaphorically, but

00:44:34.260 be held by the soil and so can be lost through water that is running over the soil and not being

00:44:41.780 taken up by the tree and not being held onto by a rich, organic, rich soil. And so all of that is

00:44:48.700 basically like your coffee filter sort of dripping and leaching that coffee out of the soil, but in

00:44:55.500 this case, into groundwater and into surface water, right? And so that's how we get this

00:45:00.760 depoperated, once rich forest soil through the loss of that live plant biomass. And on the other

00:45:09.660 hand, we also lose nitrogen from soils as gases. Going back to those microbes I mentioned, there

00:45:16.120 are certain types of microbes in soils that can transform that nitrogen compound that's in the

00:45:23.040 soil, held onto in the soil, transform it into a gas, and that gas is lost into the atmosphere.

00:45:29.260 and in some cases as a greenhouse gas that then contributes to warming even more.

00:45:34.920 So this is another way that we get sort of losses of nitrogen that are cyclical,

00:45:38.980 but they are often set off or started up by disturbances like you're mentioning.

00:45:45.120 And all that is to say is the existence of old growth forest is a matter of patience

00:45:52.900 and not necessarily a lack of disturbance because some forms of disturbance are natural

00:45:58.860 and in fact like necessary to the development of forest ecosystems and different types of forests

00:46:04.200 but the stages of development of a forest from bare kind of low nutrition soil all the way to

00:46:14.120 an old growth forest which is hopefully I'm saying the right thing but we're talking about

00:46:19.840 forests that are older than 100 or 200 years that have not been cut I don't think that we

00:46:27.680 will be able to see that exact process in our lifetimes. But I would also argue that might not

00:46:34.820 be a goal that we need to set for ourselves as far as getting back on the track of allowing

00:46:42.620 natural processes to function without anthropogenic disturbance. So maybe there is a

00:46:49.660 realistic and still ecologically sound goal to set which is perhaps to say can we restore forests

00:46:59.620 that we've lost to kind of a comparable level of plant diversity and microbial diversity in the

00:47:07.880 soil that that we see in in more preserved or under disturbed forests that feels like a stepping

00:47:16.620 stone that is approachable. And sometimes I feel like the use of even terms like old growth,

00:47:22.880 while old growth forests, when you go to them, you will have your breath taken away. Maybe that is a

00:47:28.580 goal that keeps us from making progress because it feels so grand and feels so huge. And I'm not

00:47:35.740 very good at big plans. I like little plans. Well, thank you for all of that. And as we wrap

00:47:43.080 up this interview, I'd like to return to soil and the new entry points that climate change

00:47:49.100 necessitates. Lately, I've been really struck by the notion of repair and what sort of mending is

00:47:56.100 required of us when we're living in a moment marked by planetary breakdown. So I wonder what

00:48:02.480 you've learned from the soil in terms of your own practice and being in this world, and what new

00:48:07.840 frameworks are you inspired by? You and I were talking about this in our earlier chat about

00:48:14.380 slowing down and pausing. Man, I will start to get emotional if I really open this can of worms,

00:48:24.480 but I have developed a certain unexpected patience with myself that really mirrors

00:48:32.200 the way that that soil operates that that mirrors the pace at which forests develop

00:48:41.640 and communities ecological communities change over time I have started to have compassion for

00:48:50.540 myself which I think is a a direct kind of borrowed approach from the natural environment

00:48:59.720 because I start to notice that things are how they are in every moment that we're in

00:49:06.820 and that's true for a forest in the particular moment in its in its growth and development

00:49:14.640 that it's in and it's true for me and it's true for us right like there's um there's a sort of

00:49:21.740 chaoticness that I feel in thinking about the past and analyzing the past and worrying about

00:49:29.500 the future and, and kind of handling all of my different, you know, personal and societal and

00:49:36.380 ecological anxieties all at once. And what I've realized is that I guess the kind of compassion

00:49:43.140 that I need to have for myself and need to have for other people can be observed in the way that

00:49:49.800 that soil is slow and forests are slow, that they are the way they are. And they're neither good

00:49:56.460 nor bad, right? Like a depauperate soil is bad only because we need it, right? Or it is needed.

00:50:04.860 But in and of itself, you know, a soil that is degraded and doesn't have enough nitrogen to

00:50:10.420 support plants, it isn't bad in and of itself. It's just in process, right? That's how it works.

00:50:17.200 The nitrogen is going to come back to it. The carbon organic matter will rebuild. And so in

00:50:23.540 that snapshot, it actually just is what it is. And so when I lose it and I feel like I'm not

00:50:30.700 doing all the things that I need to be or should be or can be doing, I guess I have to think in

00:50:36.700 that way. And so to answer one of your questions about what frameworks and modes are really

00:50:41.960 inspiring to me, I guess the little dabbling in Buddhism that I have sort of begun to have

00:50:49.940 some curiosity about has helped me to make a merge between those two, the relationship between

00:50:55.720 the way that the earth operates and the scale and rates at which the earth operates and the scales

00:51:01.880 and rates at which we expect ourselves and society to operate. And to have compassion for both of

00:51:08.660 those things and to see them as not sort of so different just because of scale is part of what's

00:51:15.280 keeping me sane right now. It's part of what's keeping me in the fight for my people and for

00:51:22.440 the earth. Because if you take it all at once, it's too much. But if it is what it is and it's

00:51:28.560 in progress, maybe that's something we can work with. I feel how deeply connected you are to this

00:51:37.660 earth, to these issues, to your work, to your love, to the way that you show up in this life,

00:51:44.280 to your devotion. And I'm so happy you are who you are and that, that you are teaching others

00:51:51.620 and being a voice of reason and truth and courage and that you're holding so many intersections

00:52:00.480 really gracefully and clearly. And I'm sure it doesn't feel that way.

00:52:14.280 the time. Yes, I could imagine that being true for you because I think when you're in it and

00:52:21.960 you're a leader and you're really pushing, it's hard to step back and see in the ways that others

00:52:28.680 see you. I can say on my own personal level, I too feel similarly in that way. Just I don't feel

00:52:36.520 like I'm holding it together most of the time. And I feel like I'm falling apart and picking

00:52:43.600 myself back up together every hour, every sometimes 30 minutes during the day. It's crazy.

00:52:50.360 And I think, yeah, for those of us who are that engaged and integrated in what's happening,

00:52:57.740 it's a lot to handle. It's a lot just to know. It's a lot to be in the research. It's a lot to

00:53:03.620 be in the truth, but then also trying to figure out how to forge forward and

00:53:08.940 be a voice of truth on top of just dealing with our own personal capacity to even understand it

00:53:18.020 and then to be making the right moves and be in integrity and and try to see all the different

00:53:23.840 angles it's it's a lot it's a lot and i see you doing that so i'm so grateful for you i'm so

00:53:32.900 grateful for your, your being at this time. And I hope that you are able to nurture yourself and

00:53:39.480 others can nurture you as you hold so much in this world. Cause I, I think that we all have

00:53:45.580 our roles and your role is extremely important and it's, it's intense. So yeah.

00:53:53.760 Ayanna, thank you so much just for, yeah. Like what other space could I have said all those

00:53:59.620 things in i don't know so thank you for creating a little cosm for us to be in together and

00:54:06.840 we're being very gentle and open yeah and and making space so yeah thank you for that

00:54:13.600 thank you for listening to another episode of for the wild podcast i'm ayana young the music

00:54:28.860 you heard today was by Aisha Badru, Handmade Moments, and The Pit Yak Ayadu. I'd like to

00:54:37.260 take a moment and give a bow of gratitude to our production team, Aidan McRae, Andrew Storrs,

00:54:44.220 Carly Lou McElroy, Erica Ekrem, Erin Wise, Francesca Glassbell, Hannah Wilton, and Melanie Younger.

00:54:58.860 Thank you.

For The Wild - December 18, 2019

Dr. SUZANNE PIERRE on Reshaping a Siloed Science ⧸150

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