The idiocracy continues apace.

Nice summary of long distance insect migration in the Guardian today with fancy graphics www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Very interesting study shared by @jessica-meaney.bsky.social at her @uclaits.bsky.social talk today: bird species today vary by HOLC redlining zones a century, as @travislongcore.bsky.social @uclaioes.bsky.social and co-authors find: doi.org/10.1093/orni...

Artificial light at night, urban noise, psychoactive pollutants, agriculture, introduced species & a warming world are making it difficult to sleep. John Lesku & Anne Aulesebrook review how species are affected & suggest ways to minimise the impact #SensoryPerceptionInAChangingWorld bit.ly/469cNrT

Paper 15: Brett Seymoure et al take us to the Chihuahuan desert to test impacts of ALAN shielding types and their resulting impacts on insects. Obviously, all ALAN attracted insects, but shielding, particularly to prevent glare, showed reduced insect attraction. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Paper 13 is out: @travislongcore.bsky.social and colleagues present a detailed framework for ALAN risk assessment for species, using several real-world case studies as examples. Risks have not been taken into account enough in our bright world. Great work! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Environmental assessments need to account for spectrum and brightness of light affecting sensitive species. 🌙 We map impact zones using "moonlight equivalent" measures accounting for species visual sensitivity, then apply spectral tuning and shielding. 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 1/

I helped Travis with some moonlight calcs for this paper - our code figures out "how bright compared to moonlight is this light for each species". There is a ton of photometrics and spatial modeling here too: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A sympathetic response to Ryan Briggs on trust in social science. My argument: the deepest problem isn’t error, but epistemic incommensurability-when fields lose shared standards for weighing evidence, experience, and interpretation. Trust depends on commensuration. open.substack.com/pub/kylesaun...

📢 NEW SPECIAL ISSUE OUT! Excited to share a special issue I co-edited on bird–window collisions, a major yet overlooked source of bird mortality Bringing together 8 papers, this issue advances methods, evidence, and solutions to inform bird-friendly(er) built environments OA: tinyurl.com/yss5mvf2

A new UCLA–NRDC report shows massive pricing disparities in who pays what for water from the #ColoradoRiverBasin. Some California urban water agencies shell out over $2,500 per acre-foot of surface water, while some irrigation districts pay $0—for the exact same water. ucla.in/4pC6ODH @nrdc.org

NEW PAPER on impact of #lightpollution, led by Yuhan He who recently defended her PhD thesis. Historical Exposure to Artificial Light at Night Shapes Daphnia Responses: An Experiment Across an Urban–Rural Gradient - He - 2025 - Ecology and Evolution onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Grateful for received #funding from @koneensaatio.fi for our project on impact of light pollution on the flux of insects between aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Will be looking for a #postdoc and a #PhD for 4 years – take contact if interested. koneensaatio.fi/apurahat-ja-...

Join us for Policymaking Under Uncertainty: Zone 0 and Vegetation Management on Friday December 12, 2025 at 12 p.m. PT 👉 Register today: ucla.zoom.us/webinar/regi... @edithdeguzman.bsky.social | @travislongcore.bsky.social | Max Moritz | Alessandro Ossola | Nurit Katz

Read our suggestions for how to kickstart the important transformation of our urban environment to help shield residents from the worst effects of rising temperatures @uclaioes.bsky.social @law.ucla.edu @uclasustainablela.bsky.social @luskininnovation.bsky.social law.ucla.edu/news/reducin...

You don't say. Quality of news outlets shared is lower on conservative social platforms. Bluesky --> more liberal and higher quality news outlets shared. PNAS paper: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Since you nerds asked, news outlet quality rankings from this paper: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Looks like a well-conceived and very necessary initiative; count me in!

Media picked up our latest extreme heat work and writes better headlines than I do.. www.yahoo.com/news/article... #urbanecology #extremeheat #parks

In 2010-2013, conservation teams on #Chichijima - 1 of the main islands in the #Ogasawara chain - captured & removed 131 feral cats. The goal was to reduce predation pressure on an endangered pigeon. The results were immediate: adult pigeon numbers rose from 111 to 966 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

TIL the National Environmental Policy Act is the only thing preventing Donald Trump from dropping nuclear weapons all over the American West.

A look at the devastating power loss across Jamaica following the historic crossing of Hurricane Melissa, captured by NOAA-21.

The global biomass of mammals since 1850. On the bright side, a few more whales since the 1980s. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Healthy forests have native pollinators.

🔥 New Paper Alert 🔥 -- from the incomparable @ioes.ucla.edu Senior Practicum in Environmental Science with the paper led by new alums Sammy Fruman and Bethany Woo --> anonymized smartphone data show park use in extreme heat 1/ #heat #hazards #mobility #cities www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Remembering a #lightpollution researcher gone too soon.

Justice Sotomayor, not mincing words, also says that today's decision will lead to the "creation of [] a second-class citizenship status" for Latinos, who now will have the burden to "carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely."

Have a look at what Marko and his team are putting together, taking submissions on: - Biological Effects of Light Pollution - Impacts on Human Health - Urbanization and Light Pollution - Effects on Astronomy and Night Sky Obs - Dark Sky Protection and Policy - Methods for Measuring and Monitoring

So much interesting new ecological #lightpollution research being published, and I have to highlight this new paper in particular. Shielded lights and lower CCT (warmer colors) reduce flight call disruption of migratory birds in a pretty massive study in NM www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A story of moonlight, eyesight, and life history strategies in electric fish—from our journal "Ecology" (with accompanying photos in our "Bulletin")⬇️

News: Trump’s FCC wants to widen the (already huge) loophole that companies like SpaceX use when they want to launch tens of thousands of satellites while dodging environmental review studies. I’m busy with book revisions, but would happily chat with interested journalist friends. Thoughts below.

NEW: Extraordinary footage has emerged of the huge tsunami that hit Russia’s remote Kamchatka peninsula after the 8.8 magnitude earthquake on July 30th. (🎥 Doni Nikz)

Reminder that fascinating studies about moonlight influences on species behavior are also de facto studies about #lightpollution and especially #skyglow See photos at esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... an article in Ecology at doi.org/10.1002/ecy....

🌆🌱 City lights stretch the seasons New research shows that artificial light at night (ALAN) has a stronger impact than temperature on extending plant growing seasons in cities – especially by delaying the end of the season. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s44... #SciComm 🧪 #LightPollution

Artificial light, together with urban heat, may be lengthening the growing season in urban environments by as much as three weeks compared to rural areas, according to an analysis published in Nature Cities. go.nature.com/4e7pQwO #urbanag 🧪

Important new research on the effects of #lightpollution on #urbanecology

Today is World Oceans Day 🌊Our new Nightscape cover story explores how light at night affects our seas & the creatures who live in them. I interviewed the scientists from Plymouth Marine Lab studying and mapping light pollution in our oceans. darksky.org/news/into-th... @darkskyintl.bsky.social

tl;dr — this EO co-opts the language of open science to implement a system of political control wherein presidential appointees are given broad latitude to designate any number of reasonable scientific activities and inferences as scientific misconduct, and to penalize those involved accordingly.

🌊🌈 Sea ice loss changes the colours of life underwater A new study shows that melting sea ice narrows the range of underwater light, shifting it toward blue. This reshapes the 'light niches' for marine algae – favouring different species and pigments. 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s414... 🧪 #SciComm

Bone chilling. A court ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia to stay in the United States. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that he was illegally removed. Trump is pretending he won the ruling 9-0. 1/ You may not think this case means anything to you. But let me tell you why it does.

Hot off the presses and so so thrilled. Thanks to @inaturalist.bsky.social + computer vision we found something beautifully simple: Red and orange flowers bloom later than all the other colors in the eastern United States. Paper here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kwzh3QW8S...

UCLA ecologist @travislongcore.bsky.social spoke with California Builder & Engineer about light pollution at the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing. His team observed a barn owl using a “dark spot” over the crossing — early evidence that the design will support habitat connectivity.

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

Here is your periodic reminder that we want your papers on the management of light pollution. Deadline June 1 but we'll take them any time! #DarkSky #lightpollution

Hey there #lightpollution folks, I'm teaming up with Chinese colleagues to guest edit a special issue of Journal of Urban Management on light pollution. This venue will get your work in front of international readers, and especially Chinese colleagues as engagement in #darksky issues increases.

Yes, this is a good use of funds -- not all of which are public. This connection is important to the whole Santa Monica Mountains so that the top predator (mountain lions) stay genetically viable. This has be extremely well researched and the case for the need is iron clad.

Can science survive politics? Not without a fight, according to Kim Stanley Robinson. At UCLA last Thursday, Robinson discussed the war on science, fallout of defunding research, and why surrendering to cynicism is the greatest risk of all. His full seminar is out now.

👇🎯 Everything since January 20 boils down, ultimately, to a total failure of everyone in the legislative branch to fulfill their damn oaths of office to country & Constitution.

There were howls of protest and denial from the GOP any time we pointed out that Republicans want to cut Social Security. Now the most powerful official in the White House goes on TV and calls it "the big one to eliminate."

Just a reminder: DOGE is unconstitutional and unlawful. Elon Musk’s role is unconstitutional and unlawful. The Constitution gives *Congress* the authority to create departments and agencies; it also requires Senate confirmation for agency-heads within the executive branch. 1/n

Big day for butterfly research. Many authors (led by @edwards-evoeco.bsky.social) and many more volunteers monitored across states to document rapid butterfly declines in USA. 🧪 Paper link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... NYT story gift link: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...