Sara Goeking

The influence of lateral flow on land surface fluxes in southeast Australia varies with model resolution Abstract. Land surface models (LSMs) used in climate models typically represent surface hydrology as one-dimensional vertical fluxes, neglecting the lateral movement of water within and between grids....

We just published a paper that shows including lateral flow of soil moisture matters for climate once you get down to km-scale modelling of the land surface. More and more of our work is at these scales so we need to start including processes like this. 🧪
hess.copernicus.org/articles/29/...

New paper alert (thread)!

"Whitebark pine [WBP] in the United States projected to experience an 80% reduction in climatically suitable area by the mid-21st century"

In this paper, we modeled WBP climatic suitability under reference period (1961-1990) and mid-21st century climate

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Anthropogenic warming drives earlier wildfire season onset in California Anthropogenic warming accelerates wildfire season onset in California.

Anthropogenic warming drives earlier wildfire season onset in California www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

If you burn down a forest, you don't miss out on lumber for just that season. You have to replant all the trees, nurture them, and wait for them to grow.

The science and research budget cuts happening now are wanton, senseless arson. Recovery, if it ever happens, will take generations.

Groundwater dominates snowmelt runoff and controls streamflow efficiency in the western United States - Communications Earth & Environment Snowmelt runoff in the western US is composed primarily of older groundwater, with precipitation taking 5.7 years on average to exit as streamflow, indicating that annual streamflow is a function of m...

New research finds that spring runoff consists of more "old" water than new snowmelt, whereas "new" snowmelt infiltrates to replace previously stored water. Forests likely depend on groundwater that has been stored for multiple years.

Funded by Natl Science Foundation
www.nature.com/articles/s43...

US weather forecasting is more crippled than previously thought as hurricane season nears | CNN Several current and former agency meteorologists and staff told CNN they are concerned warnings won’t be issued in time as hurricane season nears.

NEW: US weather forecasting is in worse shape than previously known, with 30 NWS forecast offices missing meteorologists-in-charge and about a dozen offices at risk of no longer serving their communities 24/7. www.cnn.com/2025/05/02/w...

Even when the political winds shift, science must keep moving forward.
That’s why @AGU and @ametsoc are stepping up with a first-of-its-kind special collection on climate change in the U.S.—across 29+ peer-reviewed journals. 🌍📚

Read all about it: buff.ly/6G05hQD

What is a forest?

Our review discusses different definitions of "forest" and implications for assessing status and trends such as deforestation, degradation, and encroachment.

US NFI definition is broader than the UN FAO or Resources Planning Act Assessments.
doi.org/10.1016/j.tf...
🍁

The ecological benefits of more room for rivers - Nature Water This Review synthesizes the ecological features and processes that arise when rivers are given room to move. Understanding these interactions will support more sustainable decisions that weigh river e...

Super excited to share our new paper out today in Nature Water led by Christina McCabe. @naturewaterjnl.bsky.social

“The ecological benefits of more room for rivers”

Find the paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Free to read version: rdcu.be/eeuBx

#rivers #floods #biodiversity #resilience

Commitment to Advance Excellence and Inclusion in the Earth and Space Sciences Scholarly Publications We affirm our commitment to publishing evidence-based Earth and space sciences that is free from political interference We will continue to foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive scientific c...

Commentary by editors-in-chief of AGU journals: A diverse, equitable, and inclusive scientific community improves the quality of science. Research without political pressure or interference increases public trust in science.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
🧪🧑‍🔬

Don’t wait out four hard years: speak truth to power The importance of diversity in science is an unshakeable reality that the scientific community must stand by.

"If science is to honour one of its core values — a commitment to the truth wherever it might lead — scientists must stand up for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in science."
-- Arthur Caplan

Don't wait out four hard years: speak truth to power NOW
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
🧪

E&E News: Forest Service braces for up to 7,000 layoffs “We are sheep headed to slaughter,” one employee said as the Trump administration eyes further staff reductions.

Trump admin looking at @forestservice.bsky.social budget cuts:

- $316 million cut from forest and rangeland research, which is most of its annual budget
- $40 million from urban & community forestry, virtually its entire budget

via @eenews.bsky.social

subscriber.politicopro.com/article/eene...

This is insane. In a time of climate and biodiversity crises, we need Forest Service Research more than ever.

AGU joins suit supporting fired federal employees The case brought by federal employee unions and nonprofit organizations asserts that OPM’s directive to fire probationary employees at the National Science Foundation and other agencies was illegal.

Sharing as a member of AGU's pubs committee:
AGU is joining a lawsuit in support of federal workers. They need stories/examples of how loss of federal jobs is affecting society. Please share this request with your colleagues & communities. Deadline is this week.💧🧪🌲
forms.monday.com/forms/f553b2...

Extreme Fire Spread Events Burn More Severely and Homogenize Postfire Landscapes in the Southwestern United States Extreme fire spread events rapidly burn large areas and are predicted to increase under a warmer and drier climate. Using satellite data, we analyzed the daily progression of over 600 wildfires in th...

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Our team just published a new paper in Global Change Biology 🧪🔥

The title succinctly describes the main take home message, but here's the deal:

We produced gridded, fine-scale (resolution = 30m) daily fire progression maps for 623 wildfires in the SW US using satellite fire data.

read on ...

Protect US racial affinity groups On its first day, the Trump administration released several executive orders terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, calling them “illegal,” “immoral,” and “discriminatory” (1, 2)...

"As political parties in the US and beyond seek to recodify white supremacist philosophies, STEM leadership must take urgent action to protect and support all members of our diverse scientific community" 👏👏👏 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Statement begins: The mass firing of both new hires and recently promoted senior staff within NOAA, including mission-critical and life-saving roles at the National Weather Service (NWS), is profoundly alarming. It appears that NOAA staff fired today include meteorologists, data and computer scientists responsible for maintaining and upgrading weather predictive models, and technicians responsible for maintaining the nation’s weather instrumentation network (among many others). Housed within NOAA, the U.S. NWS is a truly world-class meteorological predictive service, perhaps singularly so. Its cost of operation is only ~$3-4/yr per taxpayer—equivalent to a single cup of coffee—and yields a truly remarkable return on investment (at least 10 to 1, and perhaps 100 to 1, depending on methods of estimation). NOAA and the NWS collectively offer tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each year in net economic benefit through a combination of averted losses and efficiencies gained....

I have written a short statement responding to mass firings today of #NOAA / National Weather Service (#NWS) staff (which were concentrated among recent hires as well as highly experienced staff who had recently been promoted). Please see below screenshot & below for full text.

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...

I’m working hard to find glimmers (micromoments of joy, peace, and happiness) and I wanted to share one of today’s glimmers.

Here is a river otter sunning himself on the banks of the American River.

Is there a link between #ClimateChange & increasing risk/severity of #wildfire in California--including the still-unfolding disaster? Yes. Is climate change the only factor at play? No, of course not. So what's really going on? [Thread] #CAfire #CAwx #LAfires iopscience.iop.org/a...

When monitoring whitebark pine and limber pine, how accurate are species identifications of these similar species? This paper answers the question, suggests future data quality improvements, and got an Editor's Choice award from Forest Science. Uses Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data. 🌲 🍁🧪

Winners and Losers From Climate Change: An Analysis of Climate Thresholds for Tree Growth and Survival for Roughly 150 Species Across the Contiguous United States Here we assess the effects of temperature and precipitation on the growth and survival of about 150 US tree species. This helps inform the resilience of US forests to climate change, and identify vul...

Very interesting/useful analysis of climate effects on major tree species across CONUS, considers both survival and growth. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Tree rings reveal mixtures of aspen and spruce exhibit greater drought resilience in a planted field experiment https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112724007734

From mapping forest function and disturbances, exploring forest dynamics to mortality from drought, 2024 has seen several analyses we've been working on for years finally come out. Here's a quick summary of them, @julenastigarraga.bsky.social @n-acil.bsky.social @daijunliu.bsky.social

Curious how forest microclimate and soil microbes drive carbon cycling in a changing climate? 🌡️🌳🍄We're offering a 4-year PhD position at @mycopat.bsky.social, SLU-Uppsala. A cool new project in collaboration with @linegreis.bsky.social Apply now or help spread the word!

www.slu.se/en/about-slu...

Thank you for the kind words! I look forward to watching the whole session when it's available.

Enjoy the meeting! I find AGU so energizing and hope to get even a little bit of excitement remotely.

If anyone wonders what the terms "AI" or "ML" have meant historically in computer science, this image is a great summary. 👇

Missing from this image is more specific terms like "LLM". That's a smaller area inside of the "Deep Learning" bubble. And "GPT" is even smaller inside of "LLM".

**FORESTGEO STAFF SCIENTIST POSITION!** We are hiring a Research Ecologist to focus on Central and South American Forest Dynamics, to be based at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Smithsonian staff scientist positions are excellent, as is the ForestGEO team! Come be our colleague!

We have an open postdoc position in the Quantitative Ecosystem Dynamics lab at UC Berkeley: forms.gle/Nx1EHYiCv3yR...
in the areas of ecohydrology, land-atmosphere interactions, and global change ecology.

Please spread the word!