As wildfire seasons lengthen, ecologist Olivia Sanderfoot is pioneering ‘smoke ecology’ to understand how toxic haze impacts bird populations and how we can help them survive.
On a flower-dusted hillside in Amherst. Massachusetts. the morning air is alive with the rhythmic songs of the Eastern Wood-Pewee. goldfinch. and downy woodpecker. For Olivia Sanderfoot. a global change ecologist at Cornell University. these moments are more than just fieldwork; they are a necessary connection to a natural world that is increasingly under siege.
This past summer, however, the idyll was interrupted. A thick, toxic shroud of smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted hundreds of miles, settling over the landscape. It is a scene becoming hauntingly familiar: fire seasons are starting earlier. lingering later. and burning vast swaths of land. sending plumes of particulates far beyond the reach of the flames themselves.
Sanderfoot is now spearheading an emerging field she calls “smoke ecology.” Her goal is to move beyond anecdotes—like sightings of famished birds in backyards or sudden silences in the forest—to understand exactly how this “toxic soup” disrupts wildlife. The stakes are biological: birds are uniquely vulnerable because of their respiratory systems. Unlike human lungs. which move air in and out. a bird’s system uses air sacs as bellows to push oxygen continuously. This efficiency allows them to take up twice as much oxygen as humans. but it also forces them to process twice as much of whatever pollutants are suspended in the atmosphere.
To map the impact. Sanderfoot is collaborating with a multidisciplinary team. including atmospheric chemist Tracey Holloway of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. who leads NASA’s Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Team. Understanding the threat requires tracking wind patterns. chemical transformations in the air. and satellite data to see what birds are actually inhaling. Meanwhile. UCLA ecologist Morgan Tingley notes the difficulty of the task: unlike a fire with defined borders. smoke is erratic. highly variable. and notoriously difficult to predict.
Because scientists cannot intentionally subject animals to smoke, they rely on a vast network of observers already in the field. Pam Sowizral. bird project coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln. Massachusetts. has spent two decades monitoring nesting boxes. Even when the air grew acrid, her work continued. Such data. fed into initiatives like Cornell’s NestWatch. provides a baseline for bird behavior before. during. and after smoke events.
Preliminary findings suggest three distinct survival strategies: birds may hunker down. flee the area. or shift their behavior by reducing vocalization or foraging less frequently. Researchers have also observed that repeated exposure appears to impair a bird’s overall body condition. often resulting in lower body weight.
For Sanderfoot, the motivation is deeply personal. She first witnessed the phenomenon in 2018 while living in Seattle, where acrid haze turned the sky a sickly yellow. By 2020, it returned. In early 2025, she and her family were forced to flee fires in Los Angeles. Now based in Ithaca, she sees the pattern continuing as smoke from remote infernos drifts across the country.
Her priority now is identifying “smoke refugia”—safer zones where birds might find shelter. water. or food during the worst of these events. She hopes that by better understanding how these creatures cope with a warming. smokier world. we might also find ways to protect ourselves and each other as the horizon continues to darken.
wildfire smoke smoke ecology Olivia Sanderfoot Cornell University bird conservation climate change wildlife health