Tomorrow is the day! I'm looking forward to meeting some new people and reconnecting with the regulars to talk about forestry and build community. Hope to see you there.

It is dry and warm across most of the Colorado River basin so far this winter, which is not great www.kktv.com/2026/01/17/c...

New year, same Forest and Friends monthly meet up on the eastside (Bellevue WA)! If you are in the neighborhood next Thursday come on by and join us as we kick off 2026 together. 🌲🔥 luma.com/hrt8kynx

Permafrost (frozen ground) is the backbone of northern ecosystems. Watch this field video for a visual demonstration of what happens when we lose that permafrost to thaw.

Rainfall rates up to 1.5 inches per hour forecast in Southern California on Wednesday. Rainfall of that intensity has a nearly 100% chance of triggering a debris flow within and downstream of the Eaton and Palisades burn areas. www.sfchronicle.com/weather/arti...

On climate change and lighthouses: "today’s business leaders aren’t lobbying to illuminate risks and aren’t building lighthouses... those who appreciate the new risks are either trying to benefit privately... or are trying to keep risks hidden." probablefutures.org/perspective/...

🚨job alert🚨 I'm looking to hire at least one PhD student for next year, looking at decarbonization-oriented technology deployment within an ethical frame of resource allocation and justice outcomes. Full ad attached! Pref for CEEES admissions; deadline is 1 January.

🌲🔥 GIS Question Did anyone archive the USGS LiDAR data from the US West before the shutdown? It looks like rockyweb.usgs.gov/catalog is down, I can see sciencebase.gov/catalog still responding, but the redirect for the laz file runs back to rockyweb.

I'm about to head into the field for the rest of the week, but it is time to rally again to Forest and Friends. Next Thursday, the 30th, we're meeting again to talk startups, forestry, climate, and what we can do to preserve the forested lands we cherish. Come on out and join us, if you can!

I'm about to head into the field for the rest of the week, but it is time to rally again to Forest and Friends. Next Thursday, the 30th, we're meeting again to talk startups, forestry, climate, and what we can do to preserve the forested lands we cherish. Come on out and join us, if you can!

Excellent piece by Greg Weaver @fresnoland.bsky.social reporting the problems that led to the loss of Teakettle. We need to future-proof our land management agencies so that internal bureaucratic process and structure does not continue to cause inaction. fresnoland.org/2025/10/14/g...

“collaborators were awarded over $5M to launch a prescribed fire across 3,300 acres…it would have been a key demonstration to show that planned fires can burn safely at a large scale…The groups were scheduled to start building fire breaks in September…But then the Garnet Fire ignited Aug. 24…”

Coming up on Thursday! We'll have a couple new folks this month, including one of the co-founders at Aarden.ai.

September 25th, 2025 Forest and Friends in Bellevue WA. Curious about trees and technology? So are we! Come on our and join us for a pint to talk forestry, startups, and what we can do to to create healthy landscapes and reduce wildfire severity and the smoke in our communities.

Q: How do we know robots are terrible at Forestry? A: There is one nearby planet, populated entirely by robots, and they don't have any trees left at all!

The Garnet Fire has burned through a place I have worked since 2002. A place I hold dear. We knew this wasn't a matter of if, but when. Unfortunately the leadership on the Sierra National Forest didn't have the same urgency that we did. My eulogy for Teakettle. www.hurteaulab.org/blog/a-eulog...

Just as everyone was getting ready for bed an unexpectedly non-zero amount of croaking emanated from downstairs. We do have a clearly posted notice: "No Wild Animals In The House" on the garage door. It appears to be not as efficacious as hoped.

Fire Scar Friday? 10 days ago at Blodgett, this is the backside of one you pass on the way in every time without thinking about it. But unless you walk around behind it you won't realize the character in this burn scar.

The view looking west from a rest stop between Ellensburg and Vantage Washington on Tuesday evening. Dry lightning fire starts were pushing a lot of smoke into the air causing some red-sky conditions for much of Eastern Washington. It has occasionally been flowing over into Western Washington too.

This is a good read. It features some of my own research as well as the expertise of two of Canada's top wildfire scientists, Dr. Ellen Whitman and Dr. @mikeflannigan.bsky.social.🔥

If you are in the Seattle Area on the Eastside tomorrow come join us for our monthly meet up about forests and startups at 5-7:30pm at Cascadia Pizza. A lot of local and national policy, and all the lightning bursts up and down the coast this week. Details in the link, hope to see you there!

Spent the day here, getting dusty and covered in soot doing a post-fire survey of a former research stand being introduced to fire. Blodgett is in full "burn the forest to save the forest" mode now, they are getting a lot of work done this year (not now in high fire season, natch).

Important new paper by Luke Collins and colleagues: "Extremely large fires shape fire severity patterns across the diverse forests of British Columbia [BC], Canada" Key findings: 1. Fires in BC have increased in size from 1986-2021 2. Bigger fires have larger patches of high-severity fire 🧪🌍🔥

POSTDOC OPPORTUNITY: Come work with us in the Harvey Lab at Univ. of Washington (depts.washington.edu/bjhlab/)! We're hiring a postdoc in Forest Disturbance and Landscape Ecology. Full details here: ap.washington.edu/ahr/position... Application review starts Aug 31

Here is a link that should not require subscription: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hey folks, tomorrow July 24th we're doing our monthly forestry and startups meet-up. I hope to see some new faces out for pizza and BEvERages to talk forests, climate, and as we get into the hot part of the year, wildfire. Details here: lu.ma/dn82mhs0 Photo of checking real-time LiDAR measurements

Ponderosa Pine at 8,000' in Arizona might be fire resilient at a basal area of 40-60 sq ft per acre. This stand is at 150-180 with very few trees marked for removal. Setting aside the treatment target for a minute, why mark the LTM instead of ITM? An affection for tracer paint? A love of Orange?

Had a great deployment near Flagstaff, the machine operator was pretty excited about what we've built. I'd love to talk about it with you in person next week when we get together at Forest and Friends! www.tiktok.com/@deatley_bri...

One more trip to the field and it'll be time to get together and talk forestry and startups again. If you are on the eastside in Seattle on Thursday July 24th come join us for a few pints and conversation. PNW Climate week will be ongoing, so come out and enjoy this great weather.

The Forest Service is looking to allow road building and in areas that have been off-limits for the past 45 years. One stated reason is to reduce fire hazards. Here’s a post and video about what people are leaving out of this conversation. the-lookout.org/2025/06/25/r...

Setting aside that I don't love the idea of "look for climate trends in 5 years of claims data by postcode" Here's northern California - you can spot wildfires by their 10,000+% loss ratios. For context, a 100% loss ratio means every $ coming in via premiums is going out to pay for claims/expenses.

Hey, spent the week off-grid in the Plumas. Saw some trees, tested some systems, introduced some of the team to where we work and why. A great week to spend in the woods, but tired now.

If you've only funded 10% of the sample plots required to evaluate a stand, does repeatability within your stratified cruise to within 20% really matter? The stratification itself is a judgement call that 3 people can decide 5 different ways. If the whole package is broken any precision is false.

I feel like I'm in bizarro world today, where sophisticated techniques applied to bad data are lauded as correct and useful while pedestrian techniques applied to historical observation are discredited as not being up to the task. All the math in the world can't help when asking the wrong question.

“Coconino County is one of the most at-risk areas in the entire country for wildfire, officials warned. And that’s creating a growing issue with homeowner’s insurance.” The northern Arizona county is facing risk that’s higher than 96% of the rest of the U.S. www.kjzz.org/fronteras-de...

HEY friends, a new post for you!! Microsoft finally dropped the 'moonshot' metaphor it's used for its climate goals since 2020. What the hell happened? And how it is still managing to skew its climate story using accounting tricks? Have a read!! -->> ketanjoshi.co/2025/05/31/t...

NEPA news today. Haven't looked in detail, but do have 2 basic issues with the very good environmental law from before I was born. The biggest NEPA challenge today, obviously, is staffing levels to execute reviews and studies in a timely way. NEPA has done good over 55 years, and still can today.

New paper out in fire ecology on the Lightning ignition efficiency in Canadian forests. Lightning's ability to ignite a fire varies greatly region-to-region and season-to-season across Canada. fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10....

How can we better understand the longevity of fuel treatments in western N American dry/freq-fire forests? Check out our new paper led by @donradcliffe.bsky.social, including beautiful illustrations by the amazing Bob Van Pelt @uw-sefs.bsky.social #HarveyLab www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Latest wildfire smoke forecast from weather.gc.ca/firework/fir... shows a significant Canadian smoke incursion into MN, WI, and MI on Fri, advancing into the E U.S. on Sat. The pink colors: AQI> 182 (Red, Unhealthy). Left image: 7 pm EDT Fri. Right: 7 pm Sat. The HRR Smoke model is similar.

Canada is already in it with big fires and evacs in the thousands. The country looks poised to have large fires on the landscape from now until the snows come. That means Canadian resources will be overextended and not available to help others. Also, probably leads to smoke drifting into the US.

Join me for a pizza and a beer to talk forestry and startups in the Seattle area (eastside) on May 22nd. We skipped last month as it collided with Climate Week commitments and a field test of our new hardware; we hope to be taking the covers off soon. lu.ma/ezw3br6c

Folks interested in the evolving insurance market situation in California should check out a recent post from my team. We show current data from the FAIR Plan, as of Q4 2024. The maps on our substack are interactive by zip code. cepp.substack.com/p/mapping-th... Credit to Nam Nguyen and Avery Bick

Small boulder the size of a large boulder on the Icefields Parkway in Banff National Park ⚒️

Join me for a pizza and a beer to talk forestry and startups in the Seattle area (eastside) on May 22nd. We skipped last month as it collided with Climate Week commitments and a field test of our new hardware; we hope to be taking the covers off soon. lu.ma/ezw3br6c

Does anyone have the aerial detection tree surveys collected by the U.S. Forest Service? All years data go to 404 warnings: www.fs.usda.gov/r05/natural-... #Wildfires #Wildlands #Forests #GIS #Data #Geospatial #Science

The Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association, Blodgett Forest Research Station, and fire practitioners from around the State are putting on a prescribed fire training for foresters in late October. Apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🔥🏔🌲 Interested in fire ecology & forests? Working in the Cascade Mountains? the Harvey Lab at UW-SEFS is hiring 6 full-time field assistants + 2 full-time field crew leads on projects exploring forest resilience to wildfire, reburns, & management. Application review begins May 2. Links below...

I've read the USDA memo on Timber trying to make sense of what it actually does (linked here). It builds on EO 14225 "Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production" from March 1st, which itself follows after the EO from the 1st term in 2018: 13855 "Promoting active management..."