All longtime Blazers fans know CJ can get buckets at any time. In that series he had 41 in a gm 3 win and 37 in gm 7!

Have you been to Horse Rock Ridge Natural area? This is the time of year that Julia and I would go there to see the shooting stars flowering all over the glades.

Washington Post article on STEM cuts at federal agencies. NSF tops it at -42%!

“Between January 2025 and February 2026, STEM and health employees at science-focused agencies saw nearly 15,000 jobs cut. The rate outpaced cuts among other federal workers.”

OPM data - Figure from Wash Post article 19 April. (Where US science has been hit hardest.)

NSF at -42%!

Anyway, part of my career origin story.

My first introduction to forestry and part of my career origin story.

As a teen my family owned a 40 acre woodlot in southern WI enrolled in MFL; the DNR forester came and marked trees. Afterward we found a few big black walnuts cut w/ no paint. The forester said it wasn't worth it to press charges but that he would make sure the word got out about that logger.

Photo of my desk with a boundary waters canoe area forest service sign next to the Minnesota state flag and a framed photo of my parents.

Since they’re abusing the Congressional Review Act to get around the filibuster, I am reserving some of my time so I can make closing remarks in the morning before the final vote. Maybe they’ll listen to reason after a night’s sleep.

Stay tuned.

Save the Boundary Waters.

Team Ankylosaurus!

Live: Smith holding Senate floor to oppose measure opening mining near the Boundary Waters If passed, the legislation would head to President Donald Trump’s desk for a signature.

The Senate’s final vote on repealing the ban on mining near the Boundary Waters has been scheduled for Thursday morning. Sen. Tina Smith is expected to continue speaking then.

Me holding the bottom of my broken seat that catastophically failed when I sat down.

Yesterday after I entreated students to fill out instructor evaluation surveys I sat down in the front of the class for a student presentation and my chair broke off completely.

Yes, I went awkwardly sprawling and there was much laughter.

Not sure if my unintentional comedy will earn higher marks.

Ecosystem modeling postdoc The Earth Systems Ecology Lab ( www.hurteaulab.org ) at the University of New Mexico is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher with a strong background in ecosystem modeling or spatial data analysis to....

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...

My story on the 57 forest service research stations that are going to be closed is up now

The lack of knowledge is deeply embarrassing. You can see it in the faces of the people behind her.
The research facility in Houghton is paid for and costs taxpayers $1 per year in rent to Michigan Tech University.

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

If you blink on drive up the hill to Tech’s SDC and hockey arena, you’d miss the USFS research station.

Of course, we’d all miss its research and extension output focused on the hemiboreal and northern forests of the Great Lakes.

Where it fell from is a second floor open air porch along that whole side of the house, so no insulation possible unless we closed it in and heated it.

A home with an exposed basement with two doors with a pile of ice and snow in front. The background shows snow piled up around some stacked firewood and lumber and some cedar trees.

It finally felt like spring today and then ~1000 pounds of ice and snow fell off the roof and dented the steel basement door on the right. The work clearing snow and ice is now well into its 5th month here.

Guess it's 'bout time for us old folks to get out of the way...

Term paper season; one of my best students is trying to kill me.

"These patterns directly support the hydraulic limitation hypothesis, an older concept from tree physiology literature that proposes that declining leaf water potential ultimately constrains maximum tree height (Ryan et al., 2006)."

I wrote about the end of
the U.S. Forest Service and the arrogance of trying to kill something like a forest: defector.com/the-trump-ad...

NSF LTER program “archived”.

LTER=“Long Term Ecological Research”.

This program has been incredibly successful, incredibly frugal for what they accomplish, and…of course…targeted by evil know-nothings.

My heart is breaking.

U.S. Forest Service unveils extensive closures of research facilities Cost-cutting move is expected to cause resignations and turmoil

What will happen to the 82 USFS experimental forests around the country? Many sites have decades-long experiments that are tracking how forests are changed by timber harvesting practices and climate change. As I say here, “you can't just pick up an experimental forest site and move it to SLC.”

Dryland dominance in the slowdown of global vegetation carbon uptake - Nature Geoscience Machine learning upscaling analyses of global FLUXNET carbon and water flux measurements indicate that dryland vegetation productivity showed a negligible increase between 1982–2000 and 2001–2022, whe...

Our new paper in Nature Geoscience reveals a substantial slowdown in the rate of increase in gross primary production (GPP) in drylands, due to water constraints, but a sustained increase in humid regions in response to rising temperature and CO2. Led by Fei Li. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I want to comment on a really ugly thing the FS Office of the Chief did today.

Around 3:20 PM eastern; a snap e-mail announced our Forest Service reorganization.

A snap meeting from 3:45 to 4 was presented— Chief’s first ever All Employee call.

A link detailed certain USFS facilities to close.

Exciting research environment in a great team and a lovely working space

Love that area where I grew up. Dad was born in Beaver Dam. He was a founding member of the Ducks Unlimited Chapter for that region in part because of all linear marshes between drumlins that provided habitat but have largely been drained w/ tile pipe and ditched to gain tillable land.

Unrelated, but I still have your bound collection of readings for undergrads on Env Ethics from UWSP in the late '90s.

Assistant Professor: Forest Genetics and Genomics The Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society invites applications for a full-time (1.00 FTE), 9-month, tenure-track, Assistant Professor: Forest Genetics and Genomics position.We seek a scholar-edu...

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...

Anyone can join on Zoom using the qr code if you just want to listen in.

PhD Defense announcement for Victor Humanes Fuente entitled "What can white pine tree rings tell us about the environmental history of the Lake Superior region?" which is overlayed on top of an illustration of a wood cross-section he sampled from a lake. The lower panel shows a picture of Victor in a wetsuit and holding an oar while balancing on top of floating logs lodged in a green wetland area with white pine trees in the background. The detailed text states "Learn about Victor Humanes Fuente’s doctoral research investigating the capacity of Eastern white pines to store environmental information in their tree rings. He will highlight how lake-effect climate has influenced spatial patterns in tree physiology, how fire and humans have historically modulated 800 years of pine establishment patterns in the Central Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and how Lake Superior water temperatures have changed over the past 500 years, as reconstructed from tree rings."

My first PhD student, Victor Humanes Fuente, will defend his PhD next week Wednesday on the following topics:

1) L Superior lake-effect isoscapes

2) Connecting 800 yrs of pine establishment to fire and indigenous migrations along the shore of L Superior

3) A >500 yr L Superior temp reconstruction