Clay Trauernicht Browse All Authors Top 3 quotes by Clay Trauernicht On tropical islands, fires have a unique set of impacts, first and foremost, fires were very rare prior to human arrival on any Pacific island. The vegetation, the native ecosystems, really evolved in the absence of frequent fires. And so when you do get these fires, they tend to kind of wreak havoc. Clay Trauernicht Once a fire occurs, what you’re doing is removing vegetation, and we often get heavy rainfall events. All of that exposed soil gets carried downstream and we have these direct impacts of erosion, sedimentation on our marine ecosystems. So it really hammers our coral reefs as well. Clay Trauernicht It’s within our control, potentially, to reduce the impacts that we’re seeing with fires, both in terms of forest loss as well as the impacts on coral reefs. Clay Trauernicht
