Happy to share that we have received funding from the Seaver Institute to tackle an increasingly urgent problem in #conservation and #climateaction: how do you synthesize mountains of research when decisions need to happen rapidly?

Bluesky has genuinely revived my love for science communication online. After watching the same posts go nowhere on Twitter, seeing them resonate here has been such a good reminder of why I do this. Thanks for being here 🖤

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild: Giant Ibis Dhole White-throated babbler Diademed sifaka Spoon-billed sandpiper

Funny to me that our paper on the mismatch between venture capital and climate impact is getting the most engagement on LinkedIn. Maybe because everything else on there is AI slop? iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

This is a fascinating study showing how misaligned venture capital can be when it comes to climate. Instead of chasing high-impact carbon solutions, it tends to chase fads. We need to do a better job aligning our money with a more substantial climate impact. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Incredibly proud of my former student, Rohan Gowda Thanh Quang. His new paper in 𝘌𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘙𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩: 𝘌𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘺 analyzed $128B in US climate investments & finds that 𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝘀𝘁-𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 - especially nature-based solutions. Results in 🧵: 1/9

Absolutely! So many friends have been struggling with housing affordability trying to rent in Southern California after the Eaton fire. They may be moving locally, but they are still climate refugees!

I wonder if this marks a broader shift from participation in content creation to passive content consumption, or if it simply reflects how online social behavior has moved off of legacy social media platforms (“public square”) into group chats (“private salons”)

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

this, to me, is art

#DataScience & #EnvironmentDS education community: curious about your ideas on a project-based learning module focused on addressing the climate/biodiversity/poverty triple challenge. One thought: have students read papers such as this recent publication by @jasonhickel.bsky.social & replicate it.

Excited that our work on nature-based climate solutions and #NLP is being shared on #TheAcademicMinute on @npr.org — thanks to everyone who made this opportunity possible. academicminute.org/charlotte-ch... Shout-out to my co-authors (on BSky): @jterbaugh.bsky.social @berobinson.bsky.social

Who is working on AI frameworks for evaluation, fairness, ethics etc in conservation biology or ecology? (“Safety” is an overloaded term…) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

if you are overwhelmed, I highly recommend: -making a list of things you don't care about being out of the loop -cutting down on alcohol -cleaning, organizing and decluttering your home instead of doomscrolling -making plans with friends -weekly therapy -charging your phone away from your bed

Attention is All You Have

I don’t disagree, but I wonder how we can preserve loose ties (joy of learning, social movement formation) as platforms continue to enshittify. Anecdotally, parts of science Twitter shifted to gated Slack/Discord groups after Musk took over. But they lost outside attention and idea sharing.

NEW PAPER ALERT! 🌿🤖 Our essay on how #AI and #NLP can transform conservation evidence synthesis just dropped in #ConservationBiology. We explore how machine learning can help scientists tackle the explosion of research across disciplines to better inform conservation policy. 🧵: 1/6

(Late to the party but ...) #BirdersOfBluesky: who were your First Birds Of the Year (FBOYs)? Yard/window FBOY: A dapper + tuxedoed Black Phoebe Binocular FBOY: A very confiding White-breasted Nuthatch Digiscoped FBOY: An unusually out-and-about Sora Wishing everyone a very birdy 🦜🦉 2025!

Congratulations to @xinruiong.bsky.social for leading this phenomenal study - points the way for some helpful steps forward for insect conservation efforts in Southeast Asia!

Kali - "Three is technically a starter pack but we're more of a power ✨ trio" 🐕 🐾 #academicdogs what #starterpack more like a #barkerpack #dogsofbluesky

Hey #AI & #NLP methods nerds--ever wondered how to sift through 2 million scientific studies on natural climate solutions (#ncs, #NbS)? 🌍✨ Here’s how we built a machine learning pipeline 🤖 🐍 to make sense of it all--with humans very much in the loop! 🧪 🌐 🧵 1/8

The world is betting on nature-based climate solutions (NCS): 💵 has doubled in 6 years & global commitments total 1.2 billion ha (4x India’s land area). Do these projects benefit people and biodiversity, not just carbon markets? We analyzed millions of papers with #ML. Here's what we found. 🧵 1/7

Cool example from @conspirator0.bsky.social of how to extract and process data from the Bluesky firehose. In this case, it was to identify bots through profile content and posting behavior. But this same approach can be used to answer myriad questions about how we interact with each other online.

The impacts of natural climate solutions: we analyzed millions of scientific studies for a comprehensive analysis of *what* evidence exists for NCS and impacts to people and nature. New work out in @naturesustain.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s418... #ncs #naturebasedsolutions 🧪 #NLP #ConservationAI

#NaturalClimateSolutions try to address global climate problems, but how do they impact local communities? We review what we know from >250 K articles in work with @harpactes.bsky.social, @jterbaugh.bsky.social, and many others (not yet here!) is just out in @naturesustain.bsky.social rdcu.be/d10Nh

In our research (out today in @naturesustain.bsky.social), we provide a comprehensive evidence map for the co-impacts from #NaturalClimateSolutions using large language models (in addition to other interesting models!) to synthesize information from >250 K articles. rdcu.be/d10Nh

Who else thinks Black Skimmer is like a tern x toucan? So nice to see them🪶 #birds #birdphotography

What we're seeing here is the debasement of scientific currency of papers and citations, in the same way that printing money drives inflation. So how are we supposed to account for the *quality* of evidence in papers or bodies of work when the *quantity* is overwhelming?

what jumped out at me about this headline is not the audacious climate goals, but rather how rarely we actually see Indonesia reported on in Western media outlets. It's only the 4th most populous country in the world! 🇮🇩

Going to show this to people to demonstrate the sheer innovation and creativity that stems from a social network with open data

IMHO, #AcademicDogs is the real starter "pack" #Dogsofbluesky

📡 📊 Method: Real-time environmental discourse monitoring via Bluesky's firehose Stream & filter live posts about climate, biodiversity & conservation directly in your terminal with websockets + jq. No auth required! 🧵 Command below...

The AI for Conservation community on BlueSky is growing quick! Here's a starter pack of folks working in this area - please share and nominate more folks (yourself or others) to be added. And if you are on the list but wish to be removed, please let me know! #AI4E 🧪 go.bsky.app/UNUCejU

Scraping feeds for research: Twitter: request API access, and while you're waiting, spend many weeks developing a custom ingestion pipeline for processing firehose and streaming to data lake 😮 Bluesky: one line in bash to connect to websocket, filter, and pipe to file 🙃

On Bluesky, you control your feed's algorithm. But I've noticed most of us just scroll through our immediate circle's posts. Question is: what motivates us to step outside our bubbles and discover new voices and ideas? Or are we all going to choose to be in an echo chamber?

A tale of two platforms: BlueSky user numbers have hit a new record high in recent days, while the number of people deleting their accounts on X/Twitter has rocketed 🚀

Thank you to the more than 400 (!!) people who offered to speak for this piece—Bluesky is now the top-charting free app, with daily traffic that has surpassed Threads! www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

invalid: handles on Bluesky 🦋 valid: my students thinking "natural log" has to do with trees 🌲

X/Twitter has become virtually irrelevant as a source of traffic for Mongabay News. LinkedIn, by contrast, has now become our most important social channel. Let's see how Bluesky develops! 🌈 Despite social media, audience growth has been robust: Monthly traffic in 2024 is up 99% compared to 2023.

There's a paper from 2023 that provides some insights: 🔬 Chang, Charlotte H. et al. Environmental users abandoned Twitter after Musk takeover. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 38, Issue 10, 893 - 895.

Fellow computational/environmental social scientists - note that you can see the entire Bluesky firehose in realtime! WHOA #data #nlp 🧪 firesky.tv

I made a Starter Pack of cool Bluesky peeps working at the intersection of AI and biodiversity conservation ✨ If this topic is relevant to your network, please share! Want to join the pack? Say hi below 🤖🌎 #AI #biodiversity #Conservation

Starter packs are genius, but I was surprised there wasn't a list of them for people to find. So I built it: blueskydirectory.com/starter-pack... The website monitors the packs being shared and adds the ones it finds to the database. Missed your stater pack? Message me and I'll get it added.

do we really call this a skeet?

Say's Phoebe looking very soft! 🦉

Bluesky is now the #2 social app in the US, Canada, and #3 in the UK 🦋 On bsky, ~30% of y'all are posters compared to the 1% main characters on other platforms. Turns out there's more chattiness & connection when you have algorithmic choice 🤭

🦋 New to BlueSky? 🧪 Interested in science? 👀 Wanna find posts by scientists in specific fields? 📃 Here’s a list of +220 science-related feeds and their associated hashtags. #AcademicSky #PhDSky

I made a starter pack of social scientists who study the environment/climate change. Let me know who else I should add! go.bsky.app/GNpJZBo

Lots of new people joining Bluesky in the clean energy and climate worlds over the last few days. I know there are starter packs, but also why don't people introduce themselves? Reply here to say hi!