Bob Shriver

Our new MS on post-fire seeding is out!

It turns out post-fire seeding at higher rates than typically used, and over multiple years gives a much greater chance of seeing success in dryland areas.

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

New paper on post-fire seeding led by Martin Genova! Martin was co-advised by @dendromecon27.bsky.social and I.

Linking Climate and Demography to Predict Population Dynamics and Persistence Under Global Change Predicting how climate change will affect the population dynamics and ultimately persistence of plant and animal populations is a grand challenge in biodiversity science and global change biology. Co...

Fun collab w an awesome group of ecologists, led by Jenn Williams and Tom Miller! Linking Climate and Demography to Predict PopulationDynamics and Persistence Under Global Change dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele....

Actual good news! A past MS student of mine and @bkshriver.bsky.social had his first, first-authored paper accepted in Restoration Ecology today! It is about post-fire reseeding in the Great Basin. I will post a synopsis when it publishes.

Congrats Martin (not on BlueSky)!

Writeup about Daniel and I's new project looking at traits and demography in western forests!

Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams

I am giving a CalFire webinar tomorrow, Nov 25, at 3pm PDT on our work on Eastern Sierra post-fire forest regeneration, tree-shrub relationships, and cheatgrass invasion in the region (cue hissing noise). Register here!

events.gcc.teams.microsoft.com/event/d08db5...

Join the Laughlin lab and our new NSF funded project! Awesome opportunity to visit forests across the western US and examine the functional basis of demographic responses to drought and wildfire.

Flashy, decoupled, or declining? Single theories fail to explain the diversity of drought mortality signals in tree rings Growth patterns recorded in tree rings may predict drought ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. Past studies of drought-killed trees have produced conflicting evidence. Some show killed trees were highly respons...

1st pub from Phd student Alicia Formanack synthesizing tree ring widths in drought-killed trees to show that, nope, there are no universal patterns. We present a framework combining previously described syndromes: flashy, decoupled, or declining?🌏🌐
doi.org/10.1111/nph....
@newphyt.bsky.social

Density‐dependent growth and dispersal can accurately forecast near‐term range shifts in a dominant dryland tree species We found that the inclusion of external drivers such as climate conditions or topography generally did not improve forecast accuracy and that at multidecadal time scales, intrinsic population process....

New paper led by PhD student Elise Pletcher! Forecasts from simple, density-dependent population models are highly transferable to new sites. Adding env. covariates does little to improve prediction in-sample and worsens forecasts out-of-sample. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Voices: Research on dust in Utah has never been more important. Trump’s proposed cuts put our economy and public health at risk. “The loss of this science doesn’t just mean fewer data points,” writes Kristina Young. “It means fewer tools to protect water supplies, fewer insights to guide wildfire mitigation and fewer answers wh...

Excellent piece by @kristinayoung.bsky.social on the critical threat facing the USGS's Southwest Biological Science Center. We must rally and fight this senseless attack on science!!

Integration of plant–soil feedbacks with resilience theory for climate change The resilience of ecosystems to climate disruption requires internal feedbacks that support the stability of ecosystem structure and function. Such feedbacks may include sustained interactions between...

A bit late but excited to see our new TREE paper out on integrating PSFs with resilience theory!
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

A map of tree crowns in southwestern Panama, showing satellite imagery of a tropical landscape

A scientist surveying trees in a pastoral landscape with a GPS unit

🚨 New paper, led by Cristina Barber. We used high-resolution aerial imagery to study tree mortality in a tropical landscape. Large, isolated trees were most likely to die--alarming finding! @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The monkey flowers are good there this year. We were just there last week surveying the buckwheat populations.

Yale School of the Environment is hiring an open-rank professor in temperate forest resilience! Come be my colleague!!!!!

environment.yale.edu/jobs/faculty...

Human intervention or natural dynamics? Rethinking theories on woodland expansion | University of Nevada, Reno New research challenges long-standing beliefs about rising tree densities in the West’s dry woodlands

A nice summary from Nevada Today of our recent paper on Pinyon-Juniper woodland dynamics in @pnas.org. Check it out!
www.unr.edu/nevada-today...

Geographic projections of population viability predicted by the female-dominant and two-sex models. Maps show past, current, and future range shifts based on the predicted probabilities of self-sustaining populations. The last panel shows the difference in geographic projections of population viability between the female-dominant model and the two-sex model for each season.

Dioecious plants have separate male and female individuals, and temperature sensitivity may vary between sexes. A study of a dioecious grass species, Texas Bluegrass, shows that poleward shifts will be shaped by male heat intolerance. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

We mention this in the paper, but our analysis can really only speak to what allowed for increasing density in stands that predate 1800, but not what allowed for expansion into new areas. But increases in density after 1850 in these stands are largely predictable given pre-1850 demographic rates.

Hydrology Paper of the Day @bkshriver.bsky.social on why woody plants are apparently more prevalent in dryland areas: long-term increases in tree population are responsible for more young trees, and low rates of tree establishment over the past 400 years in the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau.

Post Doctoral Fellow - Plant Ecology - HigherEdJobs Jobs in higher education. Faculty and administrative positions at colleges and universities. Updated daily. Free to job seekers.

I'm hiring a postdoc! Themes: long-term data, plant reproduction, mast seeding, synthesis, macosystems biology. Also, reproducible tesearch. Target submission deadline: 22 June (for priority review). 1-2 year position, $60K/year. 🌲 🌲 🌲
www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta...

There is still time to apply for this position! If you have some spatial modelling skills and interest in wildfire, please consider applying.

Thanks, Trevor!

Finally, and importantly, we show the pattern we observe in PJ woodlands does not apply everywhere. Using a dataset from a ponderosa pine ecosystem in AZ, we show that unlike PJ there is clear evidence of increasing establishment rates associated with fire exclusion in this system.

Our results have broader implications for how we interpret forest and woodland histories. Stand age data are the net result of multiple processes: establishment rates, survival rates, and total population size. Interpreting stand histories from these datasets requires accounting for these processes.

We use age structure data from PJ populations across the western US. All of these populations are dominated by young trees. But using simple population models, we show that observed increases in tree establishment are highly predictable using pre-1800 tree establishment rates.

Why has woody plant density been increasing in dryland ecosystems? In a new paper in @pnas.org we show that increasing tree density in pinyon-juniper woodlands could largely be a result of long-term population growth, rather than recent anthropogenic effects. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We begin reviewing applications next week!

Hi Folks! Myself and the Barberan Lab at U of A are still looking for a PhD student to work on an NSF funded project exploring effects of fire and invasion on soil microbes. We are looking for someone to start in Fall! SOON! Email me if you are interested! PLS Repost!

@EsaSeeds

Dir, New Mexico Reforestation Center - NMSU satellite location, New Mexico, United States Position Title: Dir, New Mexico Reforestation Center Employee Classification: Dir,Research Division,III College/Division: Agricultural,Consumer & Env Sci Col Department: 301800-MORA RESEARCH CENTE...

The New Mexico Reforestation Center is hiring a director. We are looking for a dynamic leader that can develop and execute a plan to establish NMRC as a leader in science-based reforestation. Please help advertise the position and reach out if you have questions.

careers.nmsu.edu/jobs/dir-new...