Zach Behrens

PCW doesn’t just install Wi-Fi – we also set up PurpleAir monitors on our network in North Philadelphia! We’ve installed monitors across Norris Square & Fairhill at community orgs and residential homes. Thanks to the EPA Region 3 Sensor Loan Program for supplying us with 10 PurpleAir monitors!

I’ve visited dark sky areas before moving to one, but there’s nothing like living under it. The act of just looking up while walking from your car to the front door is wondrous.

bsky.app/profile/zach...

Green and purple with a steak of pink northern lights over a beach.

It’s nice there, too. From the nephew

Vibrant red northern lights under a dark sky full of stars over a small building and trailer.

Reporting in from Taos, N.M.

BLACK SUN: Amorphous Flocks of #Starlings Swell Above the Danish Marshlands - amazing #murmuration #photography by Søren Solkær

Link for more photos: www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/11/sore...

Landkeeping With rising temperatures, longer summers, drought, and more wildfires occurring in the United States and Canada, there is growing interest in the impact and efficacy of Indigenous fire and cultural bu...

I’m pleased to share that a book I’ve coedited, *Landkeeping: Restoring Indigenous Fire Stewardship and Ecological Partnerships* is now available for preorder everywhere books are sold—including at the OSU Press website, where the promo code S26 will extend a 20% discount and free shipping to you.

Our new research highlights the extent that aspen stands may act as a firebreak, slowing or stopping fire. Applications for land management and implications for fire-driven conifer-to-aspen forest conversion. Thanks @grumpyunclesean.bsky.social for the summary below. doi.org/10.1002/eap....

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

Winter isn't over yet, New Mexico! Snow moves into the state Friday night through Saturday. 1-4" likely across eastern NM, over 6" north of I-40, and up to 18" in the northern mountains. A mix of rain/snow possible in ABQ early Saturday morning. #NMwx

"The system" is a thing we create to organise ourselves. We should rule it, not the other way round. Systems can be changed, because they are human inventions. All of us can make our corner of "the system" better, more empathetic, greener. Progress comes by valuing the humans above the system.

This is the kind of dystopian post-collapse content I come to Bluesky for.

'Living the tradition': As spring cleaning arrives, acequia mayordomo passes torch to grandson With spring comes the cleaning of the ancestral acequias, and for one commission, the generational passing of leadership.

Juan Diego Romero, 28, has been elected to take the reins from his 90-year-old grandfather overseeing the web of acequias in La Cienega south of Santa Fe. He's been helping maintain the ancestral ditches since he was 3 years old.
sfnm.co/423HZ8T

Every time someone my age says something about “a brainrot trend on TikTok…” I’m compelled to remind Gen X that we were obsessed with Gregorian chant for a year in the 90s. Like we *went to the mall* & *bought CDs of it*. We blasted it in our cars driving to our high schools. This was normal to us🥸

The book “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones next to a bowl of soup.

What’s better than picking up @sgj.bsky.social’s “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” on release day and cracking it open with a bowl of Three Sisters Soup?

*Via Della Spada

By Firenze street artist Clet. Spotted at Villa Della Spotta and Piazza Degli Ottaviani in Nov. 2024.

NOTEBOOK FEATURE: Fire and water: How cultural burns boost streamflows By Robin Meadows On a mild November day in California’s Sacramento Valley, Diana Almendariz ignites a clump of dry grass in a grove of cottonwoods. Landin Noland, wearing a thick, protective shirt wit...

“Every time you burn grasses, you’re creating water because you have less plants to draw it down. The more you burn, the more water you’ll have.”
…

“Fire and water go hand in hand.”

"the high cost of free parking" is a book that legit rewired my brain. RIP to a great scholar

Hrmm, it does like a good time for A Place of Greater Safety

What We Do In Disasters Grappling with what showing up looks like.

After 10 days on the Eaton Fire as a PIO earlier this month, I've been thinking a lot about how disasters will require us to show up in unexpected ways, and often in ways that don't feel especially glorious. I wrote a bit about this idea here: amandamonthei.substack.com/p/what-we-do...

Realignment of federal environmental policies to recognize fire’s role - Fire Ecology Background Enactment of the Clean Air Act (CAA), Endangered Species Act (ESA), and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), three of the primary federal environmental laws, all coincided with the hei...

Great new article describing how federal environmental laws are inhibiting rather than enabling agencies and practitioners from using prescribed and cultural fire to restore forest health and combat the #wildfire crisis.🧪🌏🔥

Estimating the amount of water required to extinguish wildfires under different conditions and in various fuel types In wildland fires where water is used as the primary extinguishing agent, one of the issues of wildfire suppression is estimating how much water is required to extinguish a certain section of the fire...

Hansen (2012) does the hard math looking at many variables, but here's the basic summary: an intense brushfire with average 8ft flames requires ~264,000 gallons/acre to extinguish. The top flow from a fire hydrant is 1,500 g/m. This is why we cut line.
www.publish.csiro.au/wf/WF11022

What is the process behind the color change once a petal is pollinated?

Social media during wildfires is such a hellscape. I can only say that there are countless people working hard on this problem every day, with little support, through endless barriers, all in pursuit of a more fire resilient future. Days like today require hope, and those folks are where I get mine.

A finger of the Eaton Fire made it to her street (Morada Place), per current fire perimeter maps.

Is there a path to responsible disruption? I hope it's not too late for the kind of clearing of the brush that controlled burns bring.

Her analogy is a bit on the nose for me, but @pahlkadot.bsky.social is right. Waste, fraud and abuse procedures are well intentioned but they can run amok.

Wow-one of the most interesting comments I've gotten for #SciComm:
"Schimel’s book, “Writing Science” and BIOL 735 have served as invaluable resources. They have transformed writing from a vague, iterative, hope-for-the-best process into an algorithmic approach to creating easily digestible works."

Golden yellow Aspen leaves with a smattering of dusted snow cover the ground.

A dirt road in a forest. Clouds hang low on the hills

Early to a morning meeting on a dirt road above Taos