🔥🌱 From the #AJB Special Issue: “Understanding novel #fire regimes using plant trait‐based approaches" 🌱🔥 #Sequoia and Sequoiadendron: Two paleoendemic megatrees with markedly different adaptive responses to recent high-severity fires By Jon Keeley & @jgpausas.bsky.social doi.org/10.1002/ajb2...

Published today: our new paper showing a 44-year trend of increasing global wildfire disasters (fatalities and economic losses) due to climate change-induced extreme weather. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

National Academies of Science panel finds that: The EPA was right in 2009 (when it found that climate change driven by society’s emissions of greenhouse gases are endangering human health & lives), and that everything we've learned since has only made it more right. arstechnica.com/science/2025...

New Science Advances paper on the feedback loop between loss of snow feeding more wildfire, and wildfire resulting in earlier snowmelt. As to latter, in snow obs, under average conditions, snow melts earlier during 1st-yr postfire in 99%(!) of western snow zones. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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

This is an archived government report that found that “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists.” It existed yesterday and is gone today.

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...

Our op-ed in the Santa Fe New Mexican today highlights the potential losses from closure of the nine US Forest Service Regional Offices, namely local leadership knowledge and capacity, experienced people, and priceless documentary records: www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/my_v...

According to supplemental figure 4 of this paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...), here's the 1748 pattern (top-right panel). 🔥🧪🌍

Well, this is a stimulating review! Some nice kudos, and a few critiques that are partly accurate, I’d say. I especially like the comparison with “psychedelic wanderings” of hippies! And I agree, it is a “modest intervention” in scholarly history of the Southwest.

One more thing: The fire severity data used to conduct this study can be downloaded here. This is a gridded dataset of satellite-derived fire severity and pre-fire NDVI for all fires in the western US that burned from 1985 to 2022. 🔥🌍🧪 #OpenScience

On The Climate Brink, I write about the DOE report and our response.

Tree-ring fire records from 649 pine trees in central and eastern Arizona show that fires occurred more often in the territory of the Western Apache, or Ndee, than in other regions between 1600–1870, suggesting a culturally controlled fire regime. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New Mexico Magazine recommends THE JEMEZ MOUNTAINS by @firescar.bsky.social!

Thread. Yet another avatar for Dragon Bravo - burning an isolated mesa in the Canyon, this time The Dragon itself (one of the Canyon's most apt placenames).

The massive Grand Canyon fire is burning out of control

A open-access paper on how wildfire season starts earlier in California thanks to the higher temperatures that fossil fuel burning have caused, and I wasn't able to find one of the authors on here. Kind of the first in a while. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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.

1/New Open Access paper in PNAS with an outstanding team of collaborators: Tree rings reveal persistent Western Apache (Ndee) fire stewardship and niche construction in the American Southwest. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New paper out on the dangers of using patterns across spatial climate gradients to predict what will happen with changing climate. That includes species distribution modeling. Space-for-time substitution can be misleading in sign, not just the magnitude of effects. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Every time I open LinkedIn, someone from a science agency shares an unplanned (forced) early retirement or RIF. Lately it’s NASA & EPA. In spring, NOAA. I think people have no idea how deep this loss really is. I don’t know what rebuilding federal science looks like, but it won’t be simple or quick.

The Turkeyfeather Fire in the Gila Wilderness, NM has burned as a low-severity fire over about 24,000 acres (so far). This is a continuation of a fire regime that existed for millennia before the 20th century. This 🧵reviews the fire history of the Gila, as my colleagues and I have studied it. 1/18

Did you know that since 1750, land-use change is responsible for about *one-third* of total CO2 emissions released to the atmosphere? About 255 billion tons of carbon, or nearly *a trillion tons of CO2e*, have been emitted. That's basically the ghosts of *2 billion hectares of forests* in the sky.

Grand Canyon wildfire: Historic lodge destroyed, official says | CNN share.google/qhzQNsEk1csc...

🌳 🔥 🌎 Our new paper: The extreme fire-prone #weather underpinning some of the worst #wildfire episodes this century has become more than twice as likely due to #climate change—a trend now evident across much of the world's tropical and mid-latitude #forests. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What's up with Justice Jackson? She started making her mark and speaking out early, and some of her dissents are so pointed Kagan and Sotomayor don’t even join them. The far right is out for her, and even Republican justices are getting snarky. So what's up? Here’s my take 🧵

Nice podcast interview of me on a radio program called “Write on Four Corners” on recently published books about the region. This is a fairly thorough review of my book “The Jemez Mountains.” Hot springs, hippies, forest fires, and a sense of place! (30 minutes). play.prx.org/listen?uf=ht...

Went for a good walk above Sequoia Lake today. The NPS has some prescribed fire operations going on in the area, and they’ve posted a pretty interesting burn history map at the Big Stump parking lot.

Im not holding my breath that this will make a lick of difference but it’s nice to see some dems speaking up on USFS Research. www.merkley.senate.gov/merkley-murr... Merkley, Murray, Heinrich, Klobuchar Demand Immediate Halt to Forest Service Reorganization, Funding Cuts - Merkley

“They're missing the whole point in that we're seeing more fires, a longer fire season, more intense fires, more severe fires, because the climate is changing due to human activities,” said fire expert Mike Flannigan. “It's a serious omission, and that's being very polite.”

it is absolutely wild how @washingtonpost.com and @nytimes.com are failing to cover the NSF and NASA destruction this week I know it's not the reporters' fault, either. their editors don't want them covering boring stories like the DOGEing of our scientists

Updated figure from Jain et al. showing global extreme fire weather trends since 1979. Metrics are global 95th percentile of annual Fire Weather Index (FWI), Initial Spread Index (ISI) and the Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD). The trend is clear - we are seeing more extreme fire weather due to warming.

"Heat waves are getting more dangerous with climate change — and we may still be underestimating them" | Nice piece by @afreedma.bsky.social for @cnn.com that references our recent @pnas.org article: edition.cnn.com/2025/06/23/c...

Nice review in ABQ Journal. www.abqjournal.com/lifestyle/ar...

'“If this turns out to be a major fire year, it’s going to be a shit show,” said Dr Hugh Safford, a fire ecologist at the University of California, Davis, who spent more than two decades working for the US Forest Service (USFS) before retiring in 2021.' www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Public lands make America great!! Call your elected officials!!

Large sections of Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, Mount Lemmon and Madera Canyon, and parts of Mount Graham, would be eligible for selling off as part of proposed Senate legislation that

From Utah: “The U.S. Forest Service budget under the Trump Administration proposes to eliminate science and research programs that study conservation, fire prevention, and how to make public lands more resilient to climate change and drought” www.abc4.com/news/top-sto...

"Study finds planetary waves linked to wild summer weather have tripled since 1950" | Great piece by @borenbears.bsky.social for @apnews.com on our new @pnas.org article (w/ thoughtful comments from @jfrancisclimate.bsky.social): vancouver.citynews.ca/2025/06/16/s...

"Decreasing frequency of low and moderate fire weather days [due to climate change] may be contributing to large wildfire occurrence in the northern Sierra Nevada." 🌍https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168192325003089

Forgot to tag the emoji things 🌍🌐🧪

If you're waiting on a reply, a peer review, or other effort from me--please be patient. I urgently left to document a developing forest die-off event more intense than any I've seen. No obvious biotic agents, dead & dying include multiple Pinus & Juniperus, many Quercus, & shrubs. #WhatKillsTrees

“The irony is that Trump is attacking the institutions and foundation of US science that literally made America great.”

If you’re wondering if US climate researchers are freaking out, yeah they’re freaking out.

Just released. My Nature piece: "Never before has the USA seen such an anti-intellectual, anti-science assault... History tells us that there are times when the dangers of inaction become sufficiently threatening to individuals or the planet that scientists... rdcu.be/eo3Hb

Climate change is fueling devastating wildfires burning across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta through intensified heat, drought and atmospheric conditions. 🧵⬇️ www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

It’s good to see me, isn’t it? 💜✨ Yes, yes, the rumors are true — we are OFFICIALLY launching here on Bluesky! In case you forgot, we’re a place to buy books online where every purchase supports local bookstores, not billionaires. Thanks for being here 🙌🏽

Stunning image of wildfire smoke from the Manitoba fires across eastern North America over a three day period. GOES Imagery from the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University and NOAA

How bad will it be? Catastrophic. Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come. But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget. Speak up now before it is too late. (inflation adjusted $-s below)

Let's dive into this a bit. A short and very incomplete thread on US Forest Service research. 1/