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The many trees of the Smokies, especially spruce and firs, may help soften damage from increased rain due to climate change. SMT file photo
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
Climate change is already having visible effects in the world – but no one is quite sure how it will affect the Smokies yet.
“We’re still not really sure what it’s going to get: wetter or drier in the Southern Appalachian area,” said Robert Young, who mostly studies climate change on the coast and teaches coastal geology at Western Carolina University. “This area has not seen the same trends of warming as some areas, but that doesn’t mean climate change isn’t impacting the area.”
He said some of the impact might come in the form of more intense rain events, even if precipitation overall decreases. He cited the flooding that devastated Haywood County in August 2021 and said other such events could happen more frequently going forward.
“That could cause property damage and take lives,” he said. “It’s something we definitely need to prepare for.”
Young said there have been “some trends of warming” in the area, but nothing that indicated that climate change’s worst effects were here yet.
“Ask any old folks, they’ll tell you things are blooming sooner,” he said.
Paul Super, research coordinator for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, echoed those concerns.
“My wife keeps telling me to look into my crystal ball, but I keep saying ‘you haven’t given me one,’” he said. “We’re likely to see greater rain, more intense rain, interspersed with intense drought.”
He said the Smokies might be a little less vulnerable to climate change than other places due to the presence of trees and soil that can absorb moisture.
Research has shown that, with high moisture levels in the soil, temperatures won’t warm as quickly in the mountains, Super said.
“This soil moisture can come from rain, snow melt and cloud moisture that many evergreen trees are very good at pulling out of the air to drop in a drip line around the tips of their roots,” he said by email. “On a foggy day up at Clingmans Dome, you can often see a circle of wetness around our spruce and fir trees, which is roughly where their roots extend to.”
Spruce and fir trees pull much of their water from the clouds and fog, Super said. The inimitable “smoke” in the Smokies comes from trees pulling water from the soil through their roots, releasing it through leaves with chemicals from within.
“If spruce and fir cannot survive in the high elevations, much of this transpired water will be lost to these mountains, potentially creating a spiral of drying and warming,” Super said.
He is level-headed about the possibility of danger, though.
“We don’t have glaciers or polar bears,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of trouble before it gets to us.”
Young said there could be changes coming in smaller ways that affect the park directly.
“There are changes in all kinds of species,” he said. “The armadillo is moving north. Folks are seeing them here when they weren’t here before. It’s an interesting problem for the folks in the park – do they treat them as an invasive species or as the natural expansion because of climate change and don’t do anything about it? It’s still complicated. We’re not exactly sure how climate change will impact our neck of the woods.”