Living Maps: From Cosmos to Community

Most of us are quite familiar with this view of our home planet from space.

But our ability to see Earth from this perspective is something quite new in the history of humanity.

In the past 50 years, we’ve launched hundreds of satellites, which have enabled us to extend our perceptions and study ourselves like never before.

As a result, we've gained a deeper appreciation of the many ideal conditions and interacting forces that support life on our home planet.

And it seems the more we study this place, the more we realize how extraordinary it actually is.

In the next few minutes, we're going to explore maps of scientific data that allow us to visualize normally invisible interactions that that make life on earth possible.

For instance, the Earth’s magnetic field is usually only visible as the aurora borealis. But here we can see that it actually extends far into space, blown back by the solar winds of the sun.

It wasn’t until scientists began studying this with satellites that they realized that the magnetosphere protects the gases of our atmosphere from rapidly being blown away into space.

Similarly, we now know that the Earth’s tilt and rotation are why varying amounts of sunlight are received at different latitudes throughout the year.

This creates the conditions for different seasons that enable the annual cycles of life on many parts of our planet.

And as we pull back even further, we can see that Earth’s distance from the sun is just right so that that water on its surface doesn’t permanently evaporate or freeze.

Since liquid water is necessary to support life as we know it, we are in what is sometimes called the Habitable Zone, or even the Goldilocks Zone, since the temperature here is neither to hot nor too cold.

And fortunately for us, Earth is the only one of all the planets in our solar system within this zone.

There’s actually a quite a bit water in the solar system, it’s just that most of it is locked up in belts of frozen asteroids and comets, seen here in the asteroid belt.

We believe that the water on Earth originally came from these icy rocks crashing into our planet billions of years ago.

Today, Earth’s surface is dominated by water, with oceans covering about two-thirds of it’s surface.

The oceans help to absorb large amounts of solar energy and redistribute heat and water vapor around the globe.

Yet the amount of fresh water available for consumption is limited.

To help us imagine this, we can visualize this sphere that represents the total volume of water on planet Earth.

But only a fraction of this is fresh water, represented by this second sphere, and the majority of this is locked up in ice, seen here as a white sphere.

Many human societies rely on ground water, since the surface water from lakes, swamps, and rivers make up only a tiny fraction of the global water supply.

It’s the availability of fresh water that primarily determines the livability of different regions around the world.

The varying green, brown, and white areas help us to see where vegetation, deserts, and ice cover the land.

This also gives us insights into the habitability of different places.

And of course, human civilizations have long been established in places where water is easily accessible.

For instance, when we look at this map of lights at night, we can see how the largest settlements in northern Africa are along the banks of the Nile river.

But this also demonstrates how humanity is using so much electricity that our presence on Earth can now be actually be seen from space.

And the ways in which we’re generating all of this power is changing our planet’s atmosphere.

This thin layer of gases - seen here as a blue line around the planet - is roughly equivalent to width of an apple skin to an apple. It’s held in place by gravity and, as we have seen, protected by the magnetosphere.

Over the past 10,000 years, the composition of these atmospheric gases has been been relatively stable, maintaining temperatures in many parts of the world that have enabled the rapid growth of human civilization.

Yet as we’ve burned more and more fossil fuels in the past century, we’ve been rapidly injecting heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

As sunlight reaches the Earth, some of it bounces back into space, but some of its heat is trapped by these so-called greenhouse gases.

A certain amount of these is very useful, since they help to sustain stable temperatures.

However, the introduction of too many greenhouses gases has begun to trap more and more heat and alter the climate.

And this, along with our use of land and other natural resources, is having an impact on many of the plants, animals, and other organisms that make up the Earth’s biosphere.

These changes are altering the habitable zones of the planet, forcing plant and animal migrations that are rapidly altering environments around the globe.

It’s more important than ever that we understand these relationships and the role of human activity and decision making in shaping the planet’s ecosystems so we can adapt to these new realities.

When we look at our own Southern Appalachian Bioregion, we find a unique combination of water, air, land, and biodiversity that naturally makes our region quite special.

And we’re fortunate to have a long tradition of human settlements that have forged a close relationship with this ancient mountain region.

Studying the history of these settlements can help us gain a greater understanding of where we are, and inform innovative approaches for increasing the health and resilience of both natural and human-built environments.

While the state of NC stretches from the Atlantic Coast in the east to the Mountains in the west, we’re going to focus on the five local counties of Transylvania, Henderson, Buncombe, Haywood and Madison.

By zooming in and considering our region from a whole systems perspective, we can better understand the impacts of our local decision making on the broader region.

Since these counties are nestled in the heart of the Appalachian mountains, it’s necessary to consider our unique climate and geography when making decisions about the future of our communities.

For instance, this average maximum temperature map show how WNC is cooler than the surrounding darker red regions because of its elevation.

And this average precipitation map shows dramatic variations in rainfall throughout our region that create a number of microclimates .

Because of this, we have the greatest variability in climate in the entire southeast.

The mountain impact on rainfall is also shown by the Eastern Continental Divide.

Rain that falls on the eastern side of the mountains flows into streams that feed into rivers that flow into the Atlantic Ocean.

Rain that falls on the western side of the Divide flows into the Mississippi River, and on into the Gulf of Mexico.

The way that water flows from streams into rivers is a concept called watersheds. Many watersheds are named after the primary river located in the watershed. In this part of Western North Carolina, the main river is the French Broad River. Rainfall that falls in this watershed first flows north, then west, before eventually heading south.

And this also has an impact on the land cover.

The island of green on this map shows the ”forest” system of WNC. The yellow areas are mainly farmland and the red areas are the human built environments.

Western North Carolina is an island of green in a southeast dominated by major metropolitan areas.

To maintain our quality of life, our challenge is to achieve a healthy balance between these human-built and natural environments.

This unique terrain has also impacted the ways in which people have settled in our region.

While native communities lived here for many thousands of years, European settlers found that the natural way into the mountains was by migrating from north to south instead of east to west.

Around the time of the Revolutionary War, the land in Western North Carolina opened to greater settlement, with cheap and plentiful land and abundant natural resources being the draw.

But these settlements needed iron for their horseshoes and wagon wheels.

This had to be imported from elsewhere until they found iron deposits in Cranberry, NC.

But since there was no coal in the region, they had no way to heat the iron up to smelt it.

So they started clear-cutting entire mountainsides of timber to make charcoal.

But eventually, they ran out of close-by trees and had to bring in energy from elsewhere.

So Tweetsie Railroad was built to transport coal from Virginia and West Virginia to supply the Cranberry forge.

This is a prime examples of how short-term solutions are often not sustainable, and how our decisions must take into account the long-term consequences on the natural environment.

The locations of settlements and towns have long been dictated by the topography of the mountains.

For instance, the Buncombe Turnpike was established by farmers using the old Indian trail across the mountains that followed the French Broad river to move pigs and turkeys from Tennessee to South Carolina.

But the pigs, turkeys, and farmers could only walk so far in a day.

So entrepreneurs of the time set up inns with livestock pens about every 30 miles along the trail.

Our current towns of Hot Springs, Marshall, Mars Hill, and Weaverville (to name a few) are located at these old “transportation hubs.”

When the railroad eventually came to Western North Carolina, it also followed the river. Timber producers used the river as well to transport logs downstream.

But by putting all of this transportation close to a river, they soon encountered unintended consequences.

In 1916, two large hurricanes dumped 25 inches of rain into the local watershed.

Tremendous flooding occurred along the Swannanoa and French Broad Rivers, wiping out the local transportation infrastructure and businesses along the river.

Many of these were eventually rebuilt, but not to the same extent as found prior to the flood. Numerous subsequent floods have shown us that we can control our development decisions, but we can’t control Mother Nature.

These stories from our history demonstrate the unique challenges facing our region when considering issues of vulnerability and resilience.

So in light of the new realities facing us today, how are we writing our stories for the future?

Let’s zoom into the five counties around the Asheville area to see what makes our interconnected natural, tran

sportation, and housing systems work.

We live in the middle of a beautiful valley.

The green areas on this map indicates natural land cover.

Most of the continuous natural areas are located on the steep hillsides and mountaintops.

In contrast, most of the farmland, shown in yellow, and the developed acres, shown in red, are in the valleys, close to the rivers.

And this parcel density map shows how we’ve built our transportation system along the natural courses of the rivers.

Our houses and businesses started out along the major transportation corridors and branched out from the intersections.

We’re continuing to branch out and up each mountain valley, but we also need to consider how far we should go.

But to do this, it’s important to consider where people work and where they live, and how they get between the two.

Jobs are linked to the Economic System, which is tied to transportation in the Built System, and closely controlled by the Natural System.

So we’re asking how to best make all of these systems more resilient to future changes to keep our communities livable.

What might be best for Asheville might not be good for the surrounding rural communities, and vice versa.

We have a shared mountain range, shared watersheds, shared transportation. Our communities are inseparably linked by critical resources and services that go beyond government entities.

We need to look at our five counties as a single system in order to make some of the tough choices that we’re facing.

Choices affecting our future need to be made at a variety of scales in order to move from vulnerability to resilience.

So let’s look at some of the interconnections between our communities to consider how our past might inform our future.

Henderson County has a long history of being the gateway to the rest of the valley, and initially many of its homes and towns were built as places for people to come and escape the summer heat of the coastal states.

It also has been an agricultural center due to its rich soil, fairly flat land, and heavy precipitation.

But the fact is that it’s a gateway community is starting to put tremendous pressure on its cultural heritage, including apple farming and other farms in Mills River.

We see the same thing continuing today, as many people buy second homes in the Hendersonville area.

So the challenge is finding the right balance between new development and preserving agricultural land.

As we move to the southwest along the Brevard Fault Zone into Transylvania County, we see how the natural topography of the mountain controls the transportation corridor.

Transylvania County has the greatest average annual precipitation in the five-county area, and also the greatest percentage of conserved lands.

Brevard is the largest population center in Transylvania County and serves as a major tourist and cultural destination.

As we move from Transylvania County north into Haywood County, we cross a major set of mountains, including Mount Pisgah and Cold Mountain.

We cross the Blue Ridge Parkway and drop into a collection of small valleys and communities.

The communities here are much smaller, and fewer people live here. Each small valley or cove has its own ownership and character, but they are linked to the major towns of Waynesville and Canton located downstream.

Of course, major employers have a significant impact on communities and their decision making.

The paper mill in Canton is located at an important linkage between the river, the I-40 corridor, downtown Canton, and the small farm communities that surround Canton.

Moving north, out of Haywood and into Madison County, we can see how small towns have evolved but sometimes haven’t changed much.

Both Marshall and Hot Springs were main stops along the Buncombe Turnpike.

Will these communities retain their present character, or will the new realities or higher energy prices and climate variability have a greater impact on them?

Moving south along I-26, we pass over Weaverville and Woodfin into North Asheville.

The city of Asheville is a collection of neighborhoods, each with its own character and sets of driving forces.

For instance, West Asheville is a community with a clear community center located along Haywood Road, which has led to a higher population density than many of the surrounding rural communities.

Moving further south, we see that Arden is outside of the Asheville city limits.

Though it doesn’t have its own community center, but is located very close to the main growth areas for the five-county area.

It remains to be seen how rising costs of energy and other factors will affect this type of suburb community.

So as we look at our current choices, it’s important to consider where we’ll live and work in the future.

Will we choose denser settlement close to the main transportation and employment centers, or will we continue to convert the natural land and move further up into the mountains?

We can also look to the past to inform our future.

If we look at this map of land use in 1976, we see how developed areas in red followed the fertile, accessible, low-lying land with a concentration in the river valley.

The light green areas were conserved lands at the time.

This map of land use in 2006 shows that much of the flat land in the river valleys has now been “settled,” and we’re starting to use land that was never before considered habitable.

And development continues to concentrate on this valuable land.

Cheap energy has encouraged us to live further and further away from the community centers of the past.

But at the same time, this map also shows how in recent decades, significant amounts of land have been put into conservation.

The issue facing us now is finding ways to maintain our land and quality of life while providing housing and good jobs for the increasing number of people that want to live here.

And this map of projected land use in 2030 shows how build-out is expected to continue if we keep following current trends.

This will put more pressure on less accessible, less habitable spaces.

Which is why we need to be considering how to make more balanced choices.

People in our region value land, and have building relationship with it for generations to not only preserve their way of life and cherished natural resources, but also to ensure the health and beauty of the natural environment.

Because when it comes to making our communities more resilient, outside forces impact local decisions. When we consider our decisions from this whole systems perspective, it becomes apparent that no man, or community, is an island.