New data paper out: Ammonia doesn't often make the headlines – but it’s one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss and air pollution in Europe, harming ecosystems and our health. > 90% of it in Europe comes from one source: agricultural fertiliser and manure 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Air pollution from oil and gas kills over 90,000 people in the US every year and makes hundreds of thousands more sick, disproportionately affecting Black and brown communities. But Republicans want to drill baby drill and kill more people because they're racist af.

Gutting scientific research at EPA means less protection for our air, water, and health. The consequences of this decision will be felt for generations. Deeply concerning. Unreal! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/c...

Signs posted at National Park Service sites seen as threats to ‘whitewash’ dark side of Colorado history https://trib.al/MqahPC8

The Clean Air Act is VERY successful. Rolling back #EPA rules & regs is a mistake and will cost lives. The #ParisAgreement is not enough to solve the #climate emergency & also saves lives. Simon Rosanka & I take a stab at quantifying how many. Republicans attack their own best legacy 🤷🏻‍♀️

at a time when destroying the planet for profit is normal, we should all be radical

A victory for the federal scientific workforce! We could not stand by while this irreparable harm continues at NSF, NOAA and all our scientific agencies. TODAY the judge granted our request to temporarily HALT the mass firings at federal agencies under Trump’s Executive Order.

My new piece in @rollingstone.com : “Our democracy is made up of reciprocal ties between and among all of us, and AmeriCorps strengthens these ties. We will all feel the loss of AmeriCorps...and our democracy will pay the price.” www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Within the chaos I’m excited for our new publication in Oecologia. With funding being cut to a lot of air pollution monitoring it is going to be important to take advantage of biomonitors like lichen. Here we used nitrogen content and isotopes to infer deposition patterns and sources in the PNW.

I’m sad about all the expertise that the public is losing through this round of DRP. So much knowledge and service disappearing without the replacement. But I’m excited for the creative solutions that will be necessary to move forward. Will it be taxing. Yes. Will we fight for you. Also yes.

My colleague Rohit Bhattacharya and I wrote an op-ed in our campus paper to call attention to the impact on federal cuts to science and academia and encourage our students to keep paying attention: williamsrecord.com/469399/opini...

What a lovely read. I felt lke it was ode to paying attention, an ode to passion, a love letter to spring, a fascinating look at the interconnectedness of life, and a warning of it all falling apart. It also got me more excited for spring in the front range. Bring on the Pasque flowers.

Hot off the presses, our new paper looking at eight different air quality models and their impact on ecosystem risk assessments. We used critical load exceedances to compare areas of model alignment and guide our analysis of which model parameters were leading to variability.

Such a loss.

I love seeing more attention being paid to air pollutants and their impacts. As long as funding doesn’t get cut with the new budget, the National Atmospheric Deposition Program should be launching a national monitoring network for PFAS at the end of the year.

Our new published paper developed convex hulls for 198 herbaceous species critical loads to expand their application to parks and forests. This uses the soil pH, temp, precip, and deposition data to highlight additional areas where our CL models can be applied.

Things are so chaotic and stomach-churning in our world right now. I find a lot of solace out in nature. I want to share a tiny slice of that with you. My book, #Phenology is available today! You can purchase it for 30% off *today only* with code MITP30 through penguinrandomhouse.com

Check out this great @westword.com article on my friend Lucy’s art show opening tonight that engaged youth in asking questions of what a world beyond fossil fuels looks like and highlights the air quality issues the Denver currently faces.

It's great seeing love for the NADP! And it's important to know that their funding is at risk with potential cuts to government programs so this won't be possible with "new" pollutants like PFAS, ammonia, and mercury...

Statement by Yosemite NPS workers: “These losses, while deeply personal and impactful, may also be invisible to visitors and members of the public — we are shining a spotlight on them by putting a distress flag on El Capitan in view of Firefall. Think of it as your public lands on strike.”

Lovely article by @annehelen.bsky.social helping elucidate what is lost through the current purge of funding for services across the US. The attack on science, art, and service has been heartbreaking and I have been grieving the loss of the unseen connective tissue of society.

Six fired federal employees told me and @alexviveros.bsky.social about their science-related jobs — and what the public could lose without them. We talked to people from NIH, FDA, FAA, NPS, the Forest Service, and Fish & Wildlife for @sciencenews.bsky.social. www.sciencenews.org/article/fire...

It's kind of frustrating to start every conversation about a future project with "if our division exists later this year..." or "if there is any funding for science...".

Still absolutely gutted to start the week after losing multiple coworkers and collaborators to last Fridays purge, but keeping the work moving towards protecting our air quality is giving me life.

I love seeing more work looking at the how climate is altering the recovery path that we were on from reducing air pollution deposition; especially at the watershed level.

Streets should always be for people, not just on three Saturdays in December for 3 hours at a time. But when streets are for people, I am in the street.

Happy Winter Solstice! I hope you all embrace the natural cycles of rest and recovery. For those in the southern hemisphere, live for us!

Cool research coming out of my alma mater. I always appreciated how many undergrads participated in research at @ucriverside.bsky.social!

Science Advent 17 | This came from another friend from my grad school who I am super excited is still in the nitrogen game. Looking at overlapping impacts of disturbances is going to be crucial for understanding our near future. Especially recovery after large fires.

Science Advent 16 | Falling behind with this daily posting thing, but a new paper is a great way to catch up. Not a named author again, but have been working with this group about applying a new analysis on tree responses to deposition and climate variables.

Cleaning up some @inaturalist.bsky.social data today and it appears that someone at @brandeisuniversity.bsky.social is using it for a class :-)

Science Advent 15 | This one is kind of cheating because it came out December 29th of last year, but was a fun exercise in working with our Office of Communication to develop a more public facing article about our science. It is always interesting to get feedback on what words are considered jargony

Science Advent 14 | A big ongoing project has been trying to develop a repository for managers to access the information they need to respond to air pollution issues in their area. We work closely with the USFS, EPA, and FWS so that when we have overlapping issues, we are using the same data.

Science Advent 13 | One of the magical parts of big conferences like AGU is being able to search for keywords like "NADP" and find researchers who are studying similiar systems. At the end of 2023, I met Deni at her poster and got excited about her work filling a gap in our deposition knowledge.

Science Advent 12 | This book chapter came from the skeleton of a manuscript from 2021. This chapter reviews monitoring strategies to measure N deposition using wet and dry deposition, (2) throughfall, stemflow, and bulk deposition, and (3) biomonitoring of lichens and mosses across the globe.

Started Jingmas last night. I’m excited to end the year on a flavor high.

Science Advent 11 | Speaking of ammonia deposition, this year our office, working with the state of CO, released a milestone report for the Rocky Mountain Initiative. This is a collaborative effort to try to reduce ammonia emissions in CO's front range that travel into Rocky Mountain NP.

Science Advent 10 | One of the biggest projects I worked on last year was supporting some distinguished colleagues in synthesizing sources, transformations, effects, and management of atmospheric reduced nitrogen. An unregulated pollutant, ammonia can be the dominant form of N deposition in the US.

Science Advent 9 | In line with the previous post, another analysis of the climate/deposition overlap agrees that changing climate will counteract recovery from reductions in acid deposition and will impact ecosystem services. One of the key factors assessed her was sawtimber.

Science Advent 8 | One of our big challenges in the air pollution space is differentiating responses from climate and environmental variation. This paper uses tree response models to evaluate how future reductions in N deposition within future climate scenarios change above ground biomass.

Science Advent 7 | One of my favorite parts of my job is getting to do analyses to help guide Clean Air Act regulations. I was excited to see that E&E News picked up on our public comment on the NOxSOxPM Secondary Standard and our disappointment in EPA’s proposed rule.

A must-read in my office! We're so grateful for your commitment to understanding nitrogen impacts on the Loch Vale ecosystem.

Science Advent 6 | Hot off the presses! This manuscript is a meta-analysis of using stable isotopes of N in biomonitors of nitrogen pollution. It highlights how isotopes in lichen tissue have shifted since the industrial revolution and have a strong anthropogenic signal.

Applications for summer Scientists in Parks internships are open now! Check out the website to access the application and for information on how to apply for remote and in-park jobs. www.scientistsinparks.org Apply by: Sunday, 19 January at 11:59 p.m. EST Let me know if you have any questions!

Science Advent 5 | This next paper highlights a big step in how we understand tree responses to N and S deposition by exploring regional differences in growth and survival responses along air pollution gradients.

Science Advent 4 | The first third of my year was spent given public presentations in one form of another. The one that stood out the most was a trip to Weber State University to give a seminar on National Park Service science to the Environmental Science Department.

A survey on why people want to study and work with plants: please participate and share <3 forms.gle/btg9GP1L3CTh...

Science Advent 3 | Under the next door is a project that I was tangentially involved with through my position on the NADP Executive team. This paper looked at the impact of the East Palestine train disaster on precipitation chemistry across the eastern US. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

I'm starting a Science Advent Calendar thread to highlight a project a day that I've been a part of this past year, and hopefully give y'all some stuff to read while eating cookies. 🧵

I loved this book when I read it last year. Such an interesting way to look at human history, and just fascinating to realize water's role in past (and future) wars. Most interesting to me was how long it took us to realize clean water was good for health!...wait have we learned that?