A graph showing the average Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) over the continental United States each March since 1895 -- this year, 2026, is a clear outlier that's more severe than any other year on record
Worst US drought /since the 1950s/ - actually since 1895:
New Weather West post out this evening: "Unusually active April weather pattern to continue this week, and possibly beyond, as subtropical northeastern Pacific waters reach record warmth."
The scope of how dry it’s been in the Southeast is remarkable! Every area in the darker shade of brown is the driest stretch on record. It’s the vast majority of the SE and N #florida. 100% of the SE is in drought… 83% severe or worse… 1/
My big takeaway from reporting this story is that it's not JUST about the Forest Service.
The closure of these stations threatens to upend a delicate system of mutually beneficial collaboration and resource sharing, and the impacts will ripple out far beyond the Forest Service itself.
Weecology is hiring a postdoc to work with my long-term, large-scale Everglades wading bird project. We have data on nest effort at multiple spatial scales over 30+ years for multiple species. We also do fun stuff w/ drones. Sound interesting? See our ad! jabberwocky.weecology.org/2026/04/15/p...
I am hiring a new postdoc to work on an ecosystem modeling project with colleagues in hydrology, computer science, and the social sciences, including @mojisadegh.bsky.social
If you want to do impactful work to understand the forest-water relationship, apply:
www.hurteaulab.org/blog/ecosyst...
We are happy to release DuckLake v1.0, a production-ready lakehouse format specification. Its reference implementation, the ducklake DuckDB extension, is available as of today in DuckDB v1.5.2.
For more details, read the announcement blog post:
ducklake.select/2026/04/13/d...
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...
Holy smokes! An incredible start to the 'Wildfire Season' in the US this year - owing to an abnormally hot and snowless winter in some parts of the country.
Our April LTER Community Call will feature two active working groups: *Life After Death* looking at the legacy of dead foundation species and *consumer taxonomic and functional diversity and nutrient cycling*
Join us 04/08 at 9 am PT.
lternet.edu/events/2025-...
Signs of a high-end El Niño in the making are piling up fast. The picture includes an unusual set of tropical cyclones over the western Pacific. More here from me and @drjeffmasters.bsky.social: @climateconnections.bsky.social
yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/04/a-po...
Likely the worst El Niño in 140 years. Harvests will be bad even without a fertilizer crisis. GOP will head to elections with scorching food inflation. And they will blame Belgium for not opening Hormuz. And 35% of Americans will be very angry at Belgium.
As @triptychphrases.bsky.social showed, these summer temperatures on the California margin can have important implications for summer precipitation (extremes) in the south/west US iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
The National Weather Service is warning of a significant fire weather pattern that will begin developing this weekend and extend through next week.
The public is strongly advised to avoid all fire-related activities, as conditions will continue to be conducive to rapid fire growth:
Just spotted! - the rare and elusive tenure track position.
This one in forest conservation genetics in my department - Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State.
Help spread the word!
jobs.oregonstate.edu/postings/178...
Congratulations Jason!
To complement this @theguardian.com article, please see our new (very timely) paper on snow-wildfire dynamics 🔥
As the first reanalysis data become available, I think I can say with a fairly high degree of confidence that the March 2026 heatwave will go down as the most anomalously extreme heat event ever observed at any time of year in the southwestern U.S.
hmm, openshell looks pretty interesting: github.com/NVIDIA/OpenS...
basically just runs your agent in an OCI container (like we already do) but with networking etc locked down by default and controlled from an external instance.
Nice to see open innovation around hard controls instead of prompts
Map, from polarwx.com, of ECMWF model's forecast for 500mb heights later this week and their rank relative to the historical record for March over North America. A giant pink blob is visible over western North America, indicating an absurdly large area of record-breaking 500mb GPH.
The seasonal anomalousness, as well sheer spatial extent, of upcoming record-shattering Western U.S. heatwave is genuinely startling. This will be associated with, by far, the strongest ridge ever observed during (at least) any Nov-Mar month. #CAwx #AZwx #NMwx #NVwx #UTwx #COwx
The Morrill Fire in Nebraska has killed 1 and consumed 549,000 acres with 0% containment. This is more than 10% of the entire area burned by U.S. wildfires in 2025, and makes it one of the 20 largest fires in U.S. history. Sunday forecast is grim: High Wind Warning, 25-35 mph winds, gusting to 50.
Iran is facing a very severe drought. The nationwide 12-month running standardized precipitation index (SPI) is the lowest since at least 1950.
December 2025 through February 2026 was the 2nd warmest winter on record for the Contiguous U.S. according to Prism climate data. The widespread record to near record warmth in the west easily outweighed the cool temps in the east. 🔥🔥🔥
The high temperature in Fairbanks today was -21F. It's been 70 years since Fairbanks had a high temp in the -20Fs this late into the season. @alaskawx.bsky.social
Tremendous heat in South Texas today! 104° F - in February - makes this the Hottest temperature ever recorded in winter in the US!
thank you Team Zensical! so far so good on all of the sites i've switched over 🙂
🆓 🎉 It's Free Open Source Software Month! Learn open source skills for FREE!
From Linux fundamentals to Kubernetes, secure software, and emerging tech, check out Linux Foundation Education’s free learning library today: training.linuxfoundation.org/resources/
#OSS #CloudNative #Linux #Kubernetes
I'm super excited to share that this article was published today in Science! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
All made possible by the fantastic group of donors, volunteers and scientists at The American Chestnut Foundation (tacf.org), HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, and our collaborators.
We are hiring an Assistant or Associate Professor in Indigenous Environmental Governance and Management. Very excited for this position.
Please circulate widely among your networks:
www.sfu.ca/rem/about/em...
#academia #HigherEd #AcademicSky