Job opening: Science Lead in Trees & Forestry Division at DEFRA in the UK. 🌲🌳 www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

We currently are looking for a postdoctoral research associate (3 years with possibility to extend) with experience in community ecology, and ideally a good match with our group profile; biodiversity, land use change and urban ecology.

Please share for max reach

www.lss.ls.tum.de/fileadmin/w0...

Took a while to get around to it but damn, The Pitt is really good.

Where is Randy when you need him?

I am not sure what to do with this information.

Anyone else having issues with the New Phyt ScholarOne page?

What are we even doing anymore?

When people say that the economy being good feels completely disconnected from their lives, this is what they mean. Okay, shoes are AI now, and they get $50 million for that. Reading that sentence doesn't feel like getting bonked on the head with a bowling pin at all.

Second day in a row with record high temperatures in Richmond, Virginia. Hate it.

We are at the point in class where me not being a community ecologist is starting to show 🤣

"Roy's Largest Root" has gotta be the most ridiculous name for a stats test.

Y'all kept count on these over the years?

Cubs look impressive for a team with no pitching left.

House Mountain fire partially contained but could grow, firefighters warn The fire is 25 acres and its site is "the most rugged and steep" part of the mountain in Knox County.

We were literally hiking here just a few days ago: www.knoxnews.com/story/weathe...

My silly counterpoints...
Cursive is pointless, wearing shorts is fine, butterscotch is an abomination, tattoos are great and you should get as many as possible, and retail jobs are pretty awful and people have wild expectations. That said, just generally be nice/kind and it works out.

The quote tweets on this are wild. I am not sure I agree with even 2% of them.

Solid and accurate reporting on our current situation.

Burned landscape: The shrublands (left) burned at high intensity but became low intensity (surface fire) when reaching the beech forest (right) due to its lower flammability.

Burned landscape: The shrublands (front) burned at high intensity but the fire became low-intensity (surface fire) when reaching the beech forest (back).

Fagus sylvatica (beech) forest that burned in a low-intensity surface fire, but probably with high-severity effects (the trunk of many beech trees is likely to die; we will be sure in a few weeks)

Another novel disturbance: fire affecting beech (Fagus sylvatica) forests. It burned at low intensity (surface fire), but it is likely to have high-severity effects.

Barniedo fire 8/2025, Riaño, León, Spain
🧪🌍🔥🌳🍁🪴🌱 wildfire

Wildfire alters nitrogen cycling to increase soil emissions of nitric oxide (NO) and the heterogeneity of nitrous oxide (N2O) in California chaparral Wildfires drive ecosystem nitrogen (N) loss globally through combustion of plant biomass and by depositing N-rich ash onto soils to stimulate emission…

In new work by Elizah Stephens, she looks at soil N emissions after wildfires.

Wildfire increased soil NO emissions. N2O emissions did not differ significantly; however, only burned soils produced N2O fluxes that were statistical outliers up to ∼165 × higher.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Tree growth after a major hurricane reflects predisturbance vigor rather than canopy damage | PNAS Tree crown damage from disturbance events strongly influences forest demography, yet its effect on stem growth remains poorly quantified, with both...

What drives tree growth after a hurricane? 🌀🌳

Hot off the press in @pnas.org today!

We tracked 1,082 trees in Puerto Rico and found that pre-disturbance growth outperformed crown biomass loss and competitive release as a predictor of post-storm growth.

The paper: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Buzzfeed-ifcation? Is that a thing?

The rent is $1 per year paid to Michigan Tech University.

Something closer to home currently, but I have been worried about that immensely as well. Really just a lot of anxiety and concern all around lately 🤣

I am skeptical this will be both-sides-ism but I am going to choose to be hopeful.

Weird when you know a decision that will profoundly and irreversibly change the course of your life either positively or negatively has been made and you just have to kind of chill and wait for it like it is another normal day. Anyway, making some Cubanos to needle away the time.

You can get them anywhere like Home Depot or Kroger, but I do recommend the Blue Ridge Farmers Co-op on Harris. Awesome people there.

Yes, when I think billionaires, I think humble contrition.

Pipeline for integrating lidar data with structured demographic models for ecological inference. (a) Forest populations are surveyed at appropriate time intervals with a lidar scanner to produce high-resolution 3D point clouds. Point clouds are processed into canopy height models (CHMs) and digital terrain models (DTMs). (b) Individual tree segmentation is performed using a CHM-based algorithm (e.g. Dalponte & Coomes, 2016). (c) Relevant environmental variables are derived. For example, TWI is an indicator of soil moisture accumulation (Kopecký et al., 2021) and is calculated from the DTM. Local competition is inferred from the canopy density surrounding each tree, using the CHM. (d) Trees are matched across time points using a crown-matching algorithm (Battison et al., 2024; Olsoy et al., 2024), before measuring changes in size and classifying mortalities. (e) Continuous traits (e.g. height and crown area) are evaluated for their ability to predict survival and growth across the life cycle. (f) Selected traits and environmental parameters are used to model the vital rates using regressions. (g) The integral projection model (IPM) is constructed based on the selected vital rate models and key life history traits (e.g. mean life expectancy, longevity, generation time) are calculated. (h) Finally, IPM outputs are analysed to test ecological hypotheses.

The first paper from my PhD is now out in the world 🌲📖 Modelling forest dynamics using IPMs and repeat lidar doi.org/10.1002/rse2...

Also, the lighthouse 🤣