This a word cloud from the titles of ~1100 terminated NSF grants. It is hard not to see these grant terminations as an attack on the training of the future United States scientific workforce.

Undergraduate research Thursday: Today we began checking camera trap captures for the #Arboreal project. We have over 60k images from 8 cameras deployed late October. As we've seen before, trail cameras are notoriously finicky and few operated the entire time but we did find some flying squirrels.

We're hearing a decent amount of the environmental impact of AI data centers (electricity demand & water use) but I'm curious about the same impact of shifting our entertainment to streaming services (as we signed up for another service to get our Winter Olympics fix).

Let's cross check this with where people get their news. Of course we're going to have political bias in our opinions but not all news or "news" sources are created equal. We cannot make informed decisions when we readily accept alternate realities as fact.

Undergraduate research Tuesday: Checking #Arboreal cameras & swapping SD cards. We also had our inaugural meeting of the new Tree Climbing Club (name forthcoming) to work on our knots & hitches. And I had a meeting with new research collaborators, sounds like we'll be hiring an intern too! Good day!

January sunset. Plus a bonus bald eagle (not pictured, wouldn't fly close enough)

We finally got our first day of classes in for the semester. I don't have much on my Thursdays but had a good meeting with #Arboreal research collaborators and then my research students. We've got some fun ideas for the semester!

A trail camera time lapse video of our recent snow storm, noon Saturday to noon Tuesday in <30 sec. On campus, overlooking Gwynns Falls. youtu.be/fgDb3fqJeHE

"A forest is a complex, dynamic ecosystem in which a rich array of living things, from old-growth trees to microscopic fungi, interact and depend on one another for survival. So is the inside of a tree, it turns out." Free gift article from The New York Times www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/s...

Today's soundtrack started with protest songs of the 60s and 70s, then settled on Rage Against the Machine. How long? Not long Cause what you reap is what you sow

'A new faculty survey paints a bleak picture of the impact that generative AI tools are having on students & higher ed.; 90% of instructors believe that generative AI will diminish students’ critical-thinking skills & 78% said that there has been more cheating' www.chronicle.com/newsletter/t...

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Graduating seniors, check out Scientists in Parks.... Applications due by Feb 15th but don't procrastinate, positions close once they get 60 applications. conservation-legacy.breezy.hr

Spiralling global temperatures (1850-2025) The last 3 years really jump out, rather like 2015-6 did when we first produced this graphic back then. Now, 2015-6 looks rather cool... More on the spiral: doi.org/10.1175/BAMS...

As the climate data for 2025 continues to be released, it's time to update various data visualisations. First - the global climate stripes for 1850-2025. A third darkest red stripe is added. The last 11 years have been the warmest 11 years on record. A sequence that is unlikely to be broken soon.

From today's NYTimes Daily Briefing, due to increased demand (attributed mostly to data centers) + increased coal combustion. 👎🏻

Two years ago our church began looking into going #solar. Construction on our solar parking lot canopy began spring 2025 and then it took months of back and forth with our utility but the system is finally on and generating.

Sunday #Sunrise. Yesterday's lingering storm system didn't yield much sun but pretty nonetheless. And lots of birds flittering about. 45 min in 15 sec...

Distracting myself from the news and preparing for the new semester with a little tree climbing, including practicing different climbing systems. Still need lots of practice with the throwbag

2025 recap in books: 36 read 28 fiction, 8 non-fiction Authors (to the best that I can tell): 24 male, 12 female 31 white, 5 BIPOC 31 from USA, 5 not Effort to diversify still needs work. Most memorable book: Chesapeake by James Michener

On Christmas Eve 1968, in Lunar orbit, the Apollo 8 crew took this photo: “Earthrise." I'll never forget how inspiring the Apollo missions were to my brother and me as kids. They showed us what our country and humanity can accomplish when we work together toward a common goal.

Sunset on the winter solstice

Again the bipolar nature of student evals (same section): •... Prof Norris was not a good professor & provided a horrible class • Dr. Norris is a great professor ... does a really great job teaching ecology lab. Lab was very much fun & had in part to do with Dr. Norris's enthusiasm & intelligence

Yesterday was our department's student research symposium, one of my favorite events of the semester. It's always great to hear what our students have been working on all semester. We heard about wildlife behavior on campus, CAR-NK therapies​ for cancer, & native vs. non-native plant phenology. 1/2

The annual Operation Griswold is in the books. A lovely white pine is in the living room ready for decorating.

This week in #Norrestry (my Forest Ecology & Mgmt course): Students selected a study tree months ago & are now telling that tree's story. Today's stories focused on why trees grow the way they do, history they've witnessed, threats to the tree/forest, & the food web that trees contribute to

#Movember ended but the Mo lives on. For now. Here's me with my Dad last week. The Mo is in his honor as he continues his cancer struggle.

Intro biology (eco & evo) lab this week: exploring patterns of global NPP and C cycling. Atmospheric [CO2] was 331 ppm when I was born, then 360 when I was in college. It was 380 when my students were born. It's now 427 ppm. One of my students says "We're so cooked."

Sunday #sunrise in Baltimore County.

Nearly every panel I spoke on this year ended with the same question: "What gives you hope?" My friends, that question expired years ago. (If you need receipts, my book Saving Us is literally a 300-page answer.) The real question is: How are you PRACTICING hope? Because Greta is right ..

After two weeks of #COP30 negotiations, countries agreed to BEGIN DISCUSSIONS on fossil fuel phase out. And as the article says, "they achieved this incremental progress only in the teeth of implacable opposition from oil-producing countries." THIS is the problem with requiring unanimous decisions.

I always enjoy our School of the Sciences senior capstone poster session. It's a chance to hear what cool things our seniors did for their capstone internships or research experiences. This semester's ENV cohort is a great group, fortunately I get to hang our with most of them for 1 more semester.

This week in undergraduate research: we did our final red-backed salamander survey for the year. We generally found the same pattern with salamanders at just 2 of the 14 (now 15) transects but we did find 1 each at two other transects where we've had very limited captures in the past. 22 in total.

Grading lab reports all morning means 1) a 2nd pot of coffee, and 2) learning which students believe in punctuation (generally but the Oxford comma, in particular)

For our salamander project, we're trying to explain patterns of red-backed salamander presence across 14+ cover board transects across two properties. We've wondered about food web effects but haven't found a good diagram for this, so I asked one of our Env Sci majors to create one. This is awesome!

Today in undergraduate research, collecting our sticky tape arthropod traps from our 4 study trees. Traps were placed in three positions: 2m aboveground and on the stem and a branch in the canopy. It was a chilly, blustery morning in the trees. Now we see what's been crawling on the trees.

Final day of the Tree Climbing Academy. More climbing practice on different systems, lots of good conversations with trainers & other participants. What a good week to expand my skillset, gain confidence, & meet new friends. Many thanks to Casey Trees, Bartlett Tree Experts, & Montgomery Co Parks!

Day four of the Tree Climbing Academy. Got 80' up a nice tulip poplar a couple of times, trying different mechanical devices on SRS. Also had a good demo of rigging a limb removal.

Annual 'Got Woolly mammoths?' post. Here's a lovely Osage orange tree. It's suspected that the fruits were consumed and seeds spread by long extinct large mammal herbivores.

Day three of the Tree Climbing Academy. Got 70' up a big silver maple to learn some new techniques to move around the canopy using SRS on a canopy anchor with redirects to access different parts of the canopy. Picture from yesterday, using a hitch climber system to access canopy & branch walk.

Day one of arborist boot camp, or what they call a Tree Climbing Academy. Good stuff, hanging out in trees all week. Learning new techniques and able to share my experiences too.

Trail camera captures of a few animals using the natural log bridge over our campus stream (speed 4x, <30 sec) #TrailCam youtube.com/shorts/quXF1...

For Halloween, I dressed as a student, complete with sweats, crocs, and headphones, and some of my class dressed like me. This was great!

Our Marketing department came out to get some pictures of our #Arboreal project in action this week and we made the university's social media: www.instagram.com/p/DQXX8nbD63i/

Last week in undergraduate research: We checked on our clay model salamanders. It seems that many showed signs of some sort of predation after just one week, across most transects at both sites. We're collecting some photographic evidence too, have captured raccoons and others.

#Norrestry lab today (my Forest Eco & Mgmt course), we're assessing our campus landscape trees for our Tree Campus USA application. A previous class drafted the application focusing on the nearly 31 ha of campus forest. Coincidentally they're planting dozens more trees around our new construction.

Forest nutrients day in #Norrestry (my Forest Eco & Mgmt course), so of course notes are sketch-based

Just your typical Saturday with 2 hockey games in a different state (both wins). And a birthday and an anniversary. And a little time with a No Kings protest.

This week in undergraduate research: my student made and deployed clay model red-back salamanders and trail cameras to explore the potential role of predators in shaping the presence/absence patterns of the salamanders, hypothesizing that reduced predation is linked to dense shrub cover.

This week in #Norrestry class (my Forest Eco & Mgmt course), we visited our local Oregon Ridge Park to check out some of its forest and forest management. Like most regional forests, the forest is threatened by deer and invasive plants & pests. #forestry 1/2