Changing Climate, Changing Fire: Understanding Ecosystem-Specific Fire–Climate Dynamics in Arizona and New Mexico journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

🌿Competition alters plant species’ fitness responses to a soil texture/fertility gradient in an edaphically variable California annual grassland, contributing to mismatched variation in fitness & occurrence along this gradient🧪🌎

NAU researchers launch groundbreaking tool to track and improve wildfire treatments

Our department (Berkeley PMB) is hiring an asst. prof. in Plant Resilience to Climate Change! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05049

Distinguished scientist (and LTER stalwart) Alan Knapp talks about his long career in research and the evolution of science. source.colostate.edu/the-art-of-r...

Just out: A new geodatabase of fuel treatments across federal lands—published in Scientific Data. Whether you’re mapping change or assessing risk, TWIG shows when and where treatments happened. Grateful to be part of a team! Paper - www.nature.com/articles/s41... TWIG - reshapewildfire.org/twig

Three of nine regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs) across the country will shut down by October if OMB continues to withhold funds to renew their 5-year cooperative agreements - which includes funds already appropriated to the CASCs by Congress for Fiscal Year 2025.

Our "Joshua tree is CAM" paper is finally out: nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Data collection started back in 2021, when we saw weird results in some RNAseq that made me stop and wonder if Joshua trees, long thought to be C3, were actually...CAM!

My new paper is out! 🧪🦠 Seven years later: native AMF inoculation improves grassland restoration successional stage, floristic quality index, and diversity, while suppressing weeds: academic.oup.com/femsle/artic... Why microbes matter in restoration 🧵

Water use efficiency (iWUE) is related with water availability. Our recent @natcomms.nature.com paper shows that this relationship has been strengthened over the past decades. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“Average North American Monsoon onset is delayed in years with anomalously high spring soil moisture in the Colorado Plateau”

What seed should I sow for ecological #restoration? Our new review paper seeks to bridge the latest science with practical guidance to improve outcomes that recover degraded lands and damaged #ecosystems. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @restorationecology.bsky.social

The University of Arizona is hiring a tenure-track Assistant/Associate Professor in Physical Geography! Research specialities could include wildfire, climate and water resources, and/or natural hazards, amongst others. Please apply and join us! arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Mitigating vegetation fragmentation in drylands requires promoting plant–soil facilitation, especially under high grazing pressure. For more see our new paper in #GEB 🌐 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Another great outcomes from the #biodesert survey led by Yanchuang Zhao!

Fine work that both extends our knowledge of the past and has implications for today. Ndee (Western Apache) land management did a remarkable job controlling forest fires, even in drought-heavy eras like ours. It defies belief to think today's fire-torn SW has nothing to learn from those guys.

Happy to share a new lab @newphyt.bsky.social paper, Fangyue Zhang et al., "Temporal repackaging of rainfall magnifies negative impacts of vapor pressure deficit on semiarid ecosystem productivity" @uarizona.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/KYZDXV...

✨ Paper spotlight ✨ Microbial drivers of root plasticity doi.org/10.1111/nph.... (🧵 1/6) Plant roots have evolved mechanisms to adjust their development within the highly heterogeneous soil matrix, integrating local environmental conditions into their endogenous developmental programs.

Happy to share an excellent study on the self-organized spatial patterns of biocrusts. Biocrusts make a difference. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

FOUR TT positions in ecosystem ecology at Odum School of Ecology, 2 aquatic 2 terrestrial, over next 2 years! visit www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/439... for more info.

When we tell people that #biocrust can be a dominant form of ground cover in drylands, it can be hard to picture. Here's a perfect example from Canyonlands National Park in Utah showing how extensive biocrust cover can be!

Hi, Bluesky! I am an Assistant Professor at Colorado State University. based in #FortCollins, CO studying #drylands and #restoration with a focus on #plantecology, #biocrusts, #functionaltraits, and #rangelandecology. I'm excited to connect about science here!

Attending AGU25? We have a “hot” session for u! Consider submitting to our session focused on thermal plant ecology. Share widely! 🌡️☀️🍃🌲🌳

Our new study demonstrates low-cost single-scan terrestrial LiDAR is a powerful tool for fuel characterization and evaluation of wildfire risk across ecosystems www.publish.csiro.au/WF/WF24221#f...

Assessing limits of sustainable seed harvest in wild plant populations. How many seeds can we harvest in a wild population without causing damage? A massive modeling effort, with @robsalgo.bsky.social @bossdorf.bsky.social @plantevoeco.bsky.social conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Our new paper is out to day in Nature Ecology and Evolution! It is called: Thresholds of functional trait diversity driven by land use intensification ⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41... #FunctionalTraits 🌐 ➕📏 @inrae-france.bsky.social @urep.bsky.social @cnrsecologie.bsky.social @bexplo.bsky.social

The USGS ecosystems research program doesn't just study wildlife. Its researchers work on rangelands and forests, fisheries and aquaculture, and critically, wildfire. Trump's proposed budget eliminates this program entirely, allocating $0 for 2026. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/c...

Feared this was coming. It will suck to lose the job I have loved for 19 years. If this goes through, it will gut the science capacity that helps us understand and conserve fish, wildlife, and our natural world. Expecting the RIF notices to go out end of this coming week.

“This multi-scale assessment of previously anomalous heat and drought events on succulent desert plants shows landscape-wide impacts that could fundamentally reshape populations of these keystone species and the communities that depend on them”

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.

Elimination of science and management support for public lands is imminent www.govexec.com/workforce/20...

Out now by Liu et al in Nature Communications: 'Multiple targeted grassland restoration interventions enhance ecosystem service multifunctionality' www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“This budget is a recipe for ending the US' leadership in science. It would do generational damage by forcing labs to shut down, with a corresponding loss of highly trained individuals and one-of-a-kind research materials.”

Why has woody plant density been increasing in dryland ecosystems? In a new paper in @pnas.org we show that increasing tree density in pinyon-juniper woodlands could largely be a result of long-term population growth, rather than recent anthropogenic effects. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

“The loss of this science doesn’t just mean fewer data points,” writes Kristina Young. “It means fewer tools to protect water supplies, fewer insights to guide wildfire mitigation and fewer answers when local communities ask how to adapt to change.”

What happens if you measure traits and coordinates for every plant individual in a grassland? De Benedictis et al. found non-random trait patterns at scales of few centimetres, and large intraspecific variability. Check here: vegsciblog.org/2025/04/23/i... @iavs5.bsky.social @jvegsci.bsky.social

I feel fortunate to have worked with many great scientists at Desert Lab maintaining some of the longest running plant datasets in the world

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-...

Fun time writing for @theconversation.com ! Please share! Controlled burns reduce wildfire risk, but they require trained staff and funding − this could be a rough year theconversation.com/controlled-b...

Registration now open for the Society for Ecological Restoration, southwest chapter annual meeting in Las Cruces, NM Nov 13 - 15. We are also accepting abstracts! Register to join the most fun (and useful!) meeting all year: event.fourwaves.com/sersouthwest...

Want to understand grasslands? Look at the bigger picture Great writeup of @chriscatano.bsky.social's recent paper showing how arrival rates of individuals and species alter community assembly locally, influencing diversity patterns over time and across scales natsci.msu.edu/news/2025-05...

The American Meteorological Society has issued this dire warning of "disastrous consequences" for America's ability to predict lethal weather: "The administration's 2026 budget... would close all of NOAA’s weather, climate, and ocean Laboratories." www.ametsoc.org/ams/about-am...

🚨 MS POSITION 🚨  🌎🧪🌾🌿🌱🍁🪴🐄 #GenerationRestoration The Martyn Lab seeks applications to the Rangeland Science Master’s program @ Oregon State University to explore drivers of rangeland restoration the PNW & Great Basin. Tuition & stipend included. 🧵

April issue: Perspective led by Mari Moora describing how plant reliance on their mycorrhizal symbionts varies across ecological scales 🧪🌎 Web link: go.nature.com/4h1Rpre Readcube: rdcu.be/eh0uC

Our new research shows that forest recovery from tree mortality has slowed in recent decades. This reduction is primarily associated with rising temperatures and increased water scarcity. Recovery of forest canopy water content lags behind that of vegetation greenness www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The USGS Ecosystems Mission Area is now on the chopping block. EMA delivers critical data, information, and decision support tools that benefit the management of public lands in service of the American people. www.science.org/content/arti...

📣We're recruiting! 📣 Katie Suding and I are looking for a postdoc interested in modelling grassland fire and fuels to contribute to an ongoing project on evaluating how grassland management and variation in fuels can impact wildfire risk around Boulder, CO. See the link below for more information.

Hi Folks! Myself and the Barberan Lab at U of A are still looking for a PhD student to work on an NSF funded project exploring effects of fire and invasion on soil microbes. We are looking for someone to start in Fall! SOON! Email me if you are interested! PLS Repost! @EsaSeeds

🌱 New paper in @funecology.bsky.social examines how roots drive the growth of juvenile grasses in response to manipulated soil moisture doi.org/10.1111/1365... Led by SAM AHLER (INSTAAR+EBIO), the team's results improve understanding of grass population dynamics & help guide grassland restoration

Our 2024 Annual Report is here! Below, excerpts from the report including a Letter from our Director, @theresacrimmins.bsky.social, and highlights of #phenology accomplishments made possible by our partners and observers! Read the full 2024 Annual Report at usanpn.org/files/npn/re...