Seeing this everywhere. While the sight of bluebells and the morning cacaphony of blackbirds brings me joy, this is just the latest confirmation of unprecedented, terrifying global warming. Early bluebells in spring; heat waves and drought in the summer.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Our new media tip sheet is out! Explore fresh research from our journals on:
🐦a new metric for migratory birds
🦊mid-sized carnivore scavenging
🐻❄️polar bear adaption
🌲European forestry for birds
🦫& beavers reshaping the Arctic
Read it here: https://ow.ly/O5eU50YAEwh
Beaver swimming in a tundra lake in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region
Very nice to see our new paper feature in the March research news from the @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social:
Eager beavers busy moving north 🦫 🌿 ⬆️
Read the highlight and link to the paper to learn more:
esa.org/blog/2026/03...
Yes, we feature in that documentary as it is about beavers in both Alaska and northern Canada! It's linked at the end of this thread 🦫🌿❄️
Drone surveys of sites in collaboration with the Imaryuk Monitors. Featuring: George Harrison, Kevin Arey, Georgia Melodie Hole, Max Kotokak Sr. Photo by Max Kotokak Sr.
Presenting to members of the Tuktoyaktuk Hunters & Trappers Committee, Joint Secretariat & Imaryuk Monitoring Program.
Also key was co-production of knowledge & engagement with impacted Inuit communities.
We thank the FJMC, Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk HTCs, & local community for the privilege of being guests & undertaking research on Inuvialuit lands.
CBC documentary on the wider project: gem.cbc.ca/the-nature-o...
View of the hydrological impact of beaver-built dams, holding back water to induce surface water level changes.
View of a beaver swimming in the tundra in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.
Beaver lodge constructed from tundra shrub material.
Together these records show beaver activity since around 2008, with satellite data detecting surface water change near dams.
Take-home: Combining shrub rings and satellite data can help track Arctic beaver range changes and hydrological impacts.
🔗Read the paper: doi.org/10.1002/ecs2...
(a-c) Examples of three forms of beaver-browsed shrub stems. (d, e) willow stem cross-sectional stained thin section. (d) Section at browse scar with 7 growth rings; (e) section at root collar where a further 9 growth rings have formed post-beaver browsing. (f) Alder section highlighting scale of ring-width variation and need for thin section for accurate Shrub ring width (SRW) measurements and cross dating.
(a) Oblique aerial photo of a beaver impacted site, with dams and lodge in foreground (b) Dates of abrupt surface water expansion detected for each Landsat pixel, derived using modified normalized difference water index (MNDWI) time-series input into the BEAST algorithm. Pixels shown have a probability of change occurrence exceeding 50%. (c) Bayesian Estimator for Abrupt Change, Seasonal Change and Trend (BEAST) decomposition results based on a single pixel time series within the site. Black dots are the annually aggregated MNDWI observations between 1984 and 2024. Two detected change points with >50% probability are shown as blue bars.
To track past beaver presence, we combined shrub dendrochronology with satellite time-series analysis.
Cross-dated browsing scars in willow and alder shrubs recorded when they were active at a site, while satellite time-series revealed the dam-driven surface water changes.
A beaver-browsed willow shrub.
Overview of beaver-impacted site, with dams and lodge, and lake margins exhibiting evidence of past water-level change.
New paper out! Arctic tundra shrubs keep records of beaver colonisation ❄️🦫🌿✏️
Our new study in Ecosphere used shrub growth rings & satellite imagery to reconstruct past beaver colonisation at the northern edge of their range in Arctic Canada.
🔗 doi.org/10.1002/ecs2...
@esajournals.bsky.social
Cover page of UK Government document titled "Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security: A national security assessment." Features the HM Government crest and an abstract design of overlapping coloured circles in pink, orange, green, blue and muted tones. Marked "UK OFFICIAL".
The UK Government just released its national security assessment on #biodiversity loss: an actual intelligence assessment using the same frameworks as military threat analysis. The conclusion? #Nature is a foundation of national security and every critical #ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse. 🧵
Group photo of PasttoFuture project members at the General Assembly in Utrecht, November 2025.
Team Globorotalia - winners of the meeting scavenger hunt
Utrecht view
View of the Domtoren, Utrecht
Enjoyed reconnecting with the many members of @horizoneu.bsky.social project #P2F (Past to Future: Towards Fully Paleo-Informed Future #Climate Projections) in Utrecht last week...including winning the scavenger hunt and getting the secret word - Globorotalia! #foraminifera
#paleoclimate #H2020
Max Kotokak Sr. presenting at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK, alongside Helen Wheeler, Georgia Melodie Hole, Joseph Culp, Ben DeVries, Callum Pearce and Kevin Arey. The CINUK Annual Science Meeting, November 2023.
Community researcher Camellia Gray, community researcher and wildlife monitor Myles Dillon, Georgia Melodie Hole on the road in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region visiting beaver-impacted sites
Drone surveys of sites in collaboration with the Imaryuk Monitors. Featuring: George Harrison, Kevin Arey, Georgia Melodie Hole, Max Kotokak Sr. Photo by Max Kotokak Sr.
Max Kotokak Sr. punting in Cambridge with BARIN UK PI Helen Wheeler, Callum Pearce and Georgia Melodie Hole.
The show also does a great job of highlighting the importance of coproduction of knowledge and engagement with impacted Inuit communities, including when Max Kotokak Sr and Kevin Arey came to the UK to present the Imaryuk Monitoring Programme and its links with the BARIN beaver project.
Huge paper for the Arctic Ocean published today in @science.org - a new 30,000 year history of Arctic Ocean sea-ice cover reconstructed from the accumulation of cosmic dust-derived helium-3! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... (1/n)
That's great, thank you! I should have a paper coming out soon on my part of the work too 🤞🏼🤞🏼
Stills from Beavers from Above, with Georgia Melodie Hole, Sarika Cullis-Suzuki, Max Kotokak Sr and Kevin Arey
To learn a bit more about beavers in the Arctic tundra, and my work on the @ukri.org CINUK project, check out the 'Beavers from Above' episode of CBC's The Nature of Things! 🦫
gem.cbc.ca/the-nature-o...
Premiering tonight on CBC TV at 8 p.m., 8:30NT
@geolsoc.bsky.social @geoscientistmag.bsky.social
#geoscience #climate #climatechange #bookreview #scicomm #sciencecommunication
My review of ‘The Story of Earth’s Climate in 25 Discoveries’ by Donald Prothero has been published in The Geological Society's Geoscientist magazine. The book is a sweeping exploration of Earth’s 4.5Ga climatic journey and its role in shaping life.
Learn more: geoscientist.online/sections/boo...
🚨Calling all U.K. Arctic terrestrial scientists.
"UK Arctic terrestrial science strengths and priorities workshop"
to discuss and then produce a prospectus outlining the UK’s “Strengths & Priorities” in Arctic terrestrial research.
Info and registration link here 👇
drive.google.com/file/d/1HV0c...
Great to see the result of the workshop at @noc.ac.uk earlier this year on the contribution of Arctic Ocean science to the International Polar Year 2032/33.
The many uses of #driftwood: the first large-scale mapping of Arctic coastlines. #AWI Press release for Carl‘s paper using AI to map driftwood abundance along the North American arctic coast with Planet satellite imagery. www.awi.de/en/about-us/...
Interesting! Will this approach be expanded to other Arctic regions?
Important to know for sea ice reconstructions!
Arctic driftwood transport and deposition is determined by sea ice and surface current dynamics; making it a robust proxy for Holocene sea ice reconstructions.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
I was today years old when I learned that Picasso overlapped in time with both Charles Darwin and Eminem. True fact.
Myself presenting a poster on 'Sea ice reconstruction and mapping for low and high CO2 climates'. This work is part of the EU Horizon project P2F, that aims to make optimal use of past climatic information to better understand Earth's response to forcings.
Polar beers event at the UK Arctic Science Conference, with a talk on creative science communication by Dr Amy MacFarlane.
Wylam Brewery, host venue, Newcastle.
The UK Arctic Science Conference.
Always fun to join another UK Arctic Science Conference, this time at @northumbriauni.bsky.social, presenting initial stages of palaeo sea ice reconstruction, synthesis and mapping, within the @horizoneu.bsky.social project Past2Future - towards fully palaeo-informed climate projections.
Look forward to reading this!
Thank you all for attending BOGS 2025! We are a great community, and we look forward to many future successful meetings.
Thank you so much! 🙏🏼
😍🌾🏞️
I spent the last two summers sampling alder and willow shrubs in the tundra, so I do miss those landscapes!
Screenshot for the NSIDC Sea Ice Index, which says "This data set was recently downgraded to a “Basic” Level of Service. Learn more about what this means for users here" and "The Department of Defense (DoD) will stop processing and delivering the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) data no later than 30 June 2025. The SSMIS data are used as input for this NSIDC-produced data set, which will therefore stop processing no later than 30 June 2025. Please contact NSIDC User Services if you have questions."
The poor "Sea Ice Index" nsidc.org/data/seaice_... 😢
See thread for more on this tragic data loss: bsky.app/profile/zack...
Participants of the workshop on the contribution of UK Arctic Ocean science to the International Polar Year 32/33, hosted at the National Oceanography Centre. Photo credit: NOC.
Last week I was at @noc.ac.uk for the first time since 2012(!) for a workshop on the contribution of Arctic Ocean science to the International Polar Year 2032/33. A great opportunity to help shape priorities for future research with a cross-section of polar ocean experts.