This study offers strong evidence that a mechanism long established in small-scale analyses - namely, emergent aquatic insects fueling terrestrial predators - scales up to continental biodiversity patterns. Thus, protecting rivers is also a strategy for sustaining birds and their ecosystems.

The EPT association with aerial insectivorous birds remained robust after accounting for riparian covariates describing the extent of urban, agricultural and canopy cover that may influence the magnitude and availability of emergent insect prey to foraging birds.

Aerial insectivorous birds exhibit more than 3-fold higher prevalence at sites with high compared with low EPT (insect) richness. This linkage holds across river types describing hydrology, temperature & geomorphology, with the strongest gains occurring in rivers with low baseline bird prevalence.

We combined aquatic insect data from >140,000 river sites with over 83 million bird surveys from eBird. After accounting for spatiotemporal proximity & survey effort during the insect-emergence & bird-breeding period, the final dataset had 14,177 locations & over 2 million bird obs for 288 species.

Cross-ecosystem linkages between freshwater insects and riparian birds across the USA - Nature Ecology & Evolution Aquatic insects such as mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies are widely used for freshwater biomonitoring and could provide resource pulses to terrestrial insectivores. Here the authors show a positiv...

Continental-scale evidence that emergent aquatic insects sustain riparian birds, thus freshwater conservation offers considerable co-benefits to terrestrial ecosystems! A fun collaboration w/ postdoc @cschuerings.bsky.social

@uwsafs.bsky.social @uwenvironment.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Read your paper when it was published online early. Such a cool study! Congrats.

Noise-induced annoyance and sleep disturbance from military aircraft training While much is known about the public health impacts of civil aviation noise, only limited research has investigated the consequences of military aviation noise,

New research! Noise-induced annoyance & sleep disturbance from aircraft training at Naval Air Station Whidbey Is.
@uwenvironment.bsky.social @omfishient.bsky.social @sounddefenseall.bsky.social @quietcommunities.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1121/10.0...

Paper:
www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Classic!

Utter BS

Extreme weather is transforming the world’s rivers. We need new ways to protect them Rivers support billions of people but are among the least protected parts of nature. A major review shows what needs to be done as climate change accelerates.

A piece we wrote for The Conversation that associated with our recent paper "Extreme events and river biodiversity
under climate change" in Nature Reviews Biodiversity @jdtonkin.bsky.social @tdatry.bsky.social and others

Read-only link: rdcu.be/e4Dkv

doi.org/10.64628/AA....

Yep ... definitely not an outlier in my world either.

Fishing ban halts seven decades of biodiversity decline in the Yangtze River China’s rapid economic development has triggered an unparalleled freshwater biodiversity crisis since the 1950s. To restore fisheries resources, the Yangtze River Fishing Ban was implemented in 2021 t...

Fishing ban halts seven decades of biodiversity decline in the Yangtze River | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A collaboration with Yushun Chen, Seb Brosse, @sjcfishy.bsky.social and other! @uwenvironment.bsky.social @uwsafs.bsky.social

@uwenvironment.bsky.social @uwsafs.bsky.social @cig-uw.bsky.social

Super happy to have @ulaskimarta.bsky.social joining us at @uwsafs.bsky.social! Looking forward to working together!

Mismatches between invasive species policy, which relies on administrative borders, and scientific research conducted at ecological units complicate regulation, risk assessment, and biosecurity. Here we explore some solutions.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Welcome the editors for FieldNotes 2026! pt. 1

We're so excited to introduce the editors of our editorial team! Stay tuned for the remaining editors and other updates!

‪Another wonderful CESAB FOOD-WEBS working group meeting in Montpellier! Super productive and creative time together. Funding: @frbiodiv.bsky.social

Improving How We Track Progress For River Protection Rivers have relatively less protection than do land or oceans and we lack effective mechanisms for measuring protection. A new study offers an improved mechanism for tracking progress.

River need greater protection, but to date our methods for tracking protection status have been limited. In this post I describe a new method from @oldenfish.bsky.social @americanrivers.bsky.social and Conservation Science Partners - the Protected River Index

www.forbes.com/sites/jeffop...

So glad that you investigated this issue! PISS is crappy, and it needs to be called out.

🗣️ MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT: Over 80% of our nation’s 4.4M miles of rivers aren’t adequately protected!

Our brand new peer-reviewed research with Conservation Science Partners published in Nature Sustainability shows just how vulnerable our rivers are.

➡️ Learn more: www.americanrivers.org/npra-explore...

Expanding river-specific protections, such as new federal and state Wild and Scenic Rivers and Outstanding Resource Waters, would ensure effective, durable protection measures tailored to rivers.

Individual states can promote river protection through new or strengthened riparian buffer legislation, administrative rules, or agricultural/forestry best practices. Protecting rivers flowing through private lands, such as those offered by easements or land trust acquisitions/agreements, is key.

Federal public lands have an outsized role in protecting rivers nationwide, and multiple-use lands provide a major opportunity to scale protections; weakening or eliminating existing environmental policy mechanisms would undermine these safeguards.

Protection often does not coincide with other conservation objectives, where only a small fraction of watersheds with high biodiversity, habitat intactness and importance to drinking water supply are adequately protected.

Protection is overwhelmingly driven by land-based mechanisms, which are often spatially misaligned with hotspots of freshwater biodiversity and may inadequately safeguard rivers from upstream threats. Protection is also uneven across river types (intermittent rivers less protected) and geographies.

America’s rivers are alarmingly under protected. Just over one-tenth (12%) of rivers in the contiguous United States and less than one-fifth (19%) nationwide are currently protected at a level deemed viable, while two-thirds remain entirely unprotected under the mechanisms assessed in this study.

Image of river protection status in the United States

National assessment of river protection in the U.S.

Article: doi.org/10.1038/s418...
Policy Brief: doi.org/10.1038/s418...
Rivers Explorer: map.myriver.americanrivers.org

Collaboration b/t American Rivers, Conservation Science Partners, Univ WA @americanrivers.bsky.social

Thread 👇 | DM for PDF

A global estimator of C and N isotope baselines for fresh waters Baselines are the pebbles in the shoes of isotope ecologists. The extreme variability of the isotope composition of resources at the base of food webs governs the spatial differences of consumers'...

hot off the press! Led by the mighty Marie Perga, including many members of the Fooδ-webs team, and kindly funded by the Foundation for Research on Biodiversity/CESAB

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Unraveling multipredator impacts in salmon-bearing rivers using quantitative DNA metabarcoding. A wonderful collaboration with @jwinkfish.bsky.social.

@uwsafs.bsky.social @uwenvironment.bsky.social @uwfreshwater.bsky.social

👇
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

A huge congrats Tim!