Hydrology Paper of the Day @dukesjeff.bsky.social on plant hydraulics in Earth System Models: challenges with capturing complexity and spatial variability; water stresses and transpiration in the context of drought and species-specific ecology; the challenges of scaling; and testing new models.

“These things came [to California] clearly from another region, another country — and that means all of our waterways are at risk,” Ransom said, calling the mussels a “serious emerging threat” to farms, water supplies, and recreation. www.mercurynews.com/2025/11/06/e...

Just published this new paper, with a bunch of fantastic colleagues, with many suggestions for "Improving the representation of plant water stress and water use in Earth System Models." Access is free online. We have some great figures, thanks to Victor Leshyk. 🧪🌐🌳🌎

I had missed this article earlier. An example of what we're losing, in terms of science that could make a difference for people in this time of climate crisis. Just one relatively small research group at one university (my own #NorthernArizonaUniversity). Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...

The latest DroughtNet paper is out in Science today! Using coordinated experiments across six continents and 74 sites, the International Drought Experiment found differences between the effects of extreme droughts and more typical droughts... (1/3) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are really excited to announce… that our next big DroughtNet paper will be published… next week. And that’s about all we can say for now! 😁 🧪🌐🌎🌍🌏 🚫💧☘️🌾🗓️

Plant Science Research Weekly -- Senescence to nutrient cycling: Top-down effects of climate change (New Phytol.) @dukesjeff.bsky.social (Summary by Xavier Ozowara) buff.ly/oOvMxnX #PlantaePSRW

New paper led by T. Eren Bilir in AGU Advances—proud to be a coauthor: Satellite-Constrained Reanalysis of the Global Land Carbon Sink. doi.org/10.1029/2025...

Threats from invasive species are on the rise in the US as federal job cuts lead to a black market boom ... for ants www.marketplace.org/episode/2025...

In the Scars of L.A.’s Wildfires, Ecological Lessons Bloom www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/m...

New paper from the (long-finished) Boston Area Climate Experiment shows how water stress during plant growth affects the chemistry of leaves, with later consequences for decomposition rates. Led by Vidya Suseela's lab at Clemson. 🧪 #drought nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Trump administration takes aim at satellite that measures carbon dioxide and crops This would be such a huge waste. Glad to see my @carnegiescience.bsky.social colleague @annamichalak.bsky.social quoted. www.npr.org/2025/08/04/n...

For gardeners in the Northeast US, here's an article about a new resource on native plants: www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/25/s...

Interested in how plant intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE) responds to rising CO2? Our new paper shows that CO2-enhanced iWUE is mainly driven by reduced canopy conductance, while stimulation of ecosystem photosynthesis is less detectable given current data length. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great NYT article today about how not to make problems with invasive species even worse, featuring @evecologist.bsky.social and @jmheberling.bsky.social 🌐🧪🌱 Free link: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/r...

This program has supported so many exceptional scientists over the years. It's been a great investment in US science.

What makes some non-native plants so successful? Using a massive US-based dataset, Blumenthal et al show non-natives have "fast" traits, which should help them compete in resource-rich contexts. But being new to the system provides additional advantages. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Really good article by @voosen.me about how the scientific community can provide actionable information to stakeholders. This is really the cutting edge of climate science. Local predictions of climate change are hazy. But cities need answers fast | www.science.org/content/arti...

How do dominant plants' functional traits affect biomass responses to global change? New paper by Mingyan Hu et al uses the large Manipulation Experiments Synthesis Initiative (MESI) database to find out. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Taking action on climate change is like pushing a boulder, @katharinehayhoe.com told @chrfield.bsky.social today @stanfordwoods.bsky.social, with govt policy as the undulating path beneath. The terrain has gotten a lot steeper lately (up AND down), but she’s optimistic we’re still making progress.

Could this be the biggest climate story of the year? For the first time on record, China's emissions are falling due to clean energy growth, not slow power demand Full analysis + outlook by Lauri Myllyvirta: www.carbonbrief.org/... 1/7

Recently, all the AAAS Science & Tech Policy Fellows at EPA were terminated from our positions with little notice and for no clear reason. This effectively ended a partnership that had been going since 1980 and which had brought hundreds of scientists to the EPA as fellows, many of whom stayed. 1/7

🚨🚨 Deranged letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon to Harvard’s president, cutting off federal funding for any new grants. Worth reading in full. It is NUTS.

President Trump's "skinny" budget request absolutely eviscerates scientific research funding. The @aaas.org estimates the request would constitute an 82.5% reduction in research spending (and that's just the agencies named in the request).

Upset about federal funding cuts in the US? Want some ideas of what to do? I wrote a long-ish blog post about it here ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com summarizing things I learned meeting with Senate & House aides this week with the @aibsbiology.bsky.social Congressional Visits Day event.

We need US voters to understand that Trump's crew is essentially vandalizing the scientific infrastructure that generations of taxpayers bought and invested in. Thank you, communicators, for trying to reach the public on this.

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“This will hamstring international climate cooperation at the worst possible time,” said one official, referring to the upcoming global climate talks called COP30. (ceding strategic advantage to China. Of course policy changes will do that too.) www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

For those interested in the history of ecology: a nice Earth Day piece on the scientific legacy of the Desert Laboratory in Tuscon and the role that Carnegie Science played in supporting early ecological research. 🧪🌐🌍🌎🌏🌵 carnegiescience.edu/news/desert-...

Happy 🌎🌍🌏 #EarthDay, friends! Here are some snapshots I took while doing fieldwork last week in Indiana. A couple of understory wildflowers in the forest, and some footprints in the mud next to the weather station we were fixing. (Do you know whose footprints these are?)

Glad to see the MRCC is back up! Funding restored by NOAA/Dept of Commerce. But ridiculous that funding for regional climate centers was removed in the first place.

It feels like things are hitting a tipping point. Key debrief items: - The Harvard letter - FDA food safety inspection - Financial devastation of NIH, NOAA, USGS - DOGE hits NSF - grant terminations - Doublespeak & disinfo And more This was Week 13 buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

🚨Report your NSF grant terminations! 🚨 We are starting to collect information on NSF grant terminations to create a shared resource as we have for NIH. The more information we collect, the more we can organize, advocate, and fight back! Please share widely! airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

Update ww2.aip.org/fyi/judge-bl...

Most rail services in the US still use polluting diesel locomotives. Recently, our commuter rail system in San Francisco, @caltrain.com, was electrified. Good news: we found DRAMATIC air quality improvements once the electric trains replaced the diesels. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Energy Department cuts university overhead rates to 15% on research grants www.science.org/content/arti...

Critical yet often overlooked is that NOAA's Oceanic and Atmospheric Research maintains vital long-term monitoring programs like the CO₂ Keeling Curve that, while essential, often struggle for funding from agencies like NSF that prioritize hypothesis-driven research over sustained observation.

NEW: The Trump administration swiftly cancelled dozens of international student visas Friday at Stanford and University of California campuses, including UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego. One UC San Diego student was taken into custody at the border for deportation: www.latimes.com/california/s...

Great thread about California wildfire history

Just one day left for US climate research and practitioners to apply to our call for experts for the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report!

From today's Stanford Daily, the student newspaper. stanforddaily.com/2025/03/31/e...

US Federal employees do so many important and fantastic things, it’s pretty much impossible to track them all. Did you know they safeguard the genetic treasures of agriculture ? www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/o...

It’s been a devastating 24 hours with 3 NIH grants terminated…all focused on the health and wellbeing of trans or intersex youth. If folks have any ideas of foundations that may be interested in supporting the completion of these projects so years of work aren’t wasted, please let me know. 🙏

Shutting down coal-fired power has already prevented 70k US deaths in the US, points out @benjealous.bsky.social of @sierraclub.org, speaking at @stanforddoerr.bsky.social. Toxins from coal burning and other bad practices kill w/o regard to skin color or income. Environmentalism welcomes everyone.

This conversation is worth a listen for anyone interested in the politics of taxation, deficit and debt in the US. Or anyone who likes Scottish accents. Or just about anyone, frankly. (I also enjoyed the next segment of the show, interview on US food regulation with @hbottemiller.bsky.social.)

Merci, French scholars!

Honk for science! Science provides so many benefits for people and nature, for our health and economy. Great to see this enthusiasm at #StandUpForScience2025 in Palo Alto today.

My latest: The mass firings at NOAA can feel abstract. Here's what was lost at one research center -- the birthplace of climate modeling. Fired staff became U.S. citizens to pursue these dream jobs, only to have their dreams upended.