Avery Hill

Fantastic piece from @schmidtdse.bsky.social post-doc @lucialayr.bsky.social on handling the emotional side of doing a PhD in climate or ecological modeling blogs.egu.eu/geolog/2025/...

Documenting biodiversity with digital data: comparing and contrasting the efficacy of specimen‐based and observation‐based approaches Digitized herbarium specimens and iNaturalist observations provide invaluable plant biodiversity data. Combining these two data sources could create a more holistic representation of local biodivers...

New paper in @newphyt.bsky.social using @gbif.org mediated data:

Documenting biodiversity with digital data: comparing and contrasting the efficacy of specimen‐based and observation‐based approaches 🇺🇸

#CiteTheDOI: ✅

#OpenAccess: ⭐️

https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70406

Great commentary from Evans et al. detailing some flaws in using space-for-time substitutions (SFTS) for climate change ecology. They provide a succinct piece with some ideas for moving forward.
I've used SFTS in the past and will definitely refer to this in the future.

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

YouTube video by Mark W. Schwartz The proposed new Federal ESA rule on "harm"

The Trump Admin has proposed a rule to rescind the definition of harm to include endangered species habitat. You have until May 19 to submit a comment to the Fed. Please do so.

youtu.be/jt5I7OuQrZQ?...

YouTube video by Innovations in Conservation Practice Avery Hill on Econative

I had the privilege of being interviewed by @markschwartz.bsky.social for his video series on new conservation literature.
We discussed my paper on 'econativeness'––the idea that a species is native to a niche rather than a geographic location.

youtu.be/Y7cwfxEvok4

#conservation #ethics #ecology

75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving More than 1,600 readers answered our poll; many said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t considering it too
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

In the moment when so much feels like a struggle, her work is truly inspiring. It is a privilege and an honor

Large-scale investment in research needed to maintain U.S. agriculture Climate change and flagging investment in research and development has U.S. agriculture facing its first productivity slowdown in decades. A new study by researchers at Stanford, Cornell, and the Univ...

US #agriculture productivity is slowing down for the first time in decades due to #ClimateChange. FSE,
@cornelluniversity.bsky.social + @univofmaryland.bsky.social scholars found that $2.2-3.8B per year in extra research is needed to offset the climate-induced decline.
stanford.io/3DDTuMa

Boosting this podcast (about the largest academic strike in history) into the Science 🧪 & Ecology and Conservation 🌎 feeds because i think it’s never been more important for scientists to know how to effectively organize.

And here’s the paper: academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

Never fails to amaze me how any work in conservation that uses AI in any part of the pipeline, no matter how small, is advertised as "AI helps save the planet." The value there is real, but it's one tool. I'm still waiting to see the headline with 'duct tape and pvc helps save the planet'

Power lines sparked new fires in LA after the Eaton Fire began, radio traffic shows First responder communications show the power company in Altadena was slow to respond to Eaton firefighters — and that live power lines sparked new fires days after flames first broke out.

#LAwildfire update❗Lawsuits claim Edison's equipment sparked the deadly Eaton fire. @michaelwara.bsky.social says the company re-energized power lines despite damage -- violating protocol -- and was slow to shut off power during the crisis.

Read more @npr.org: n.pr/3Xd4iaL

Community scientists help fill gaps in studying and protecting social-ecological systems. A new study coauthored by @stanfordwoods.bsky.social @giuliodeleo.bsky.social + Nicole Ardoin highlights their role in knowledge generation, education, and conservation enforcement.
go.nature.com/4b3PCAE

Map of GBIF record density across California

Here's a shiny app I made that maps the density of observations and unique species for all GBIF records in California. Pretty exciting to see aggregate metrics from 31 million(!) records on-the-fly using duckdb.
Webapp: calacademy-community-science.shinyapps.io/california-g...

Ten quick tips to build a Model Life Cycle

The Data Life Cycle is a useful narrative device to understand how data flow within a project. But understanding how it fits with complex model pipelines has been awkward. So we wrote a thing! It's called the Model Life Cycle, and it's now out in PLOS Comp Biol: 🧪
journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Got an email 15 minutes ago from the director of the National Nature Assessment confirming that the inaugural report on the nature in the U.S. is now officially discontinued as per the EO "Unleashing American Energy."
It was a privilege to work alongside many incredible scientists, while it lasted.

Championing queer scientists of colour: ‘I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface on systemic exclusion’ Arachnologist Lauren Esposito develops community platforms to share LGBTQ+ voices and wants to shed light on the overlooked intersectional barriers affecting queer people of colour.

This is one of my awesome colleagues at the California Academy of Sciences! @arachnologynerd.bsky.social @calacademy.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

California’s Wildfires Show No Signs of Slowing Down As hurricane-force winds fan the most destructive wildfires in California history across bone-dry foothills, communities face the dual threat of natural forces and a warming world.

#Climatechange is exacerbating the #LAwildfires. Noah Diffenbaugh likens it to baseball: "climate change doesn't have to hit the home run to affect how many runs are scored. 'If it puts runners on base, then the impact of the homerun is increased.'"
Read more @wired.com: bit.ly/40otddn

Nativeness as Gradient?
Beyond the Native/Alien Binary...
Towards a More Complete Value Assessment of Species in a Rapidly Changing World 🌎🌍🌏
doi.org/10.1007/s108...

A new, gradient-based concept of native (where a species is more or less native to a place based on the environment) is compatible with the traditional understanding but also provides a clear, unifying re-framing of native to help us understand where species belong in a rapidly changing world.
(3/3)

It's an ethics paper about how the dichotomous understanding of "nativeness" traditionally used to describe species (e.g. a species is either native or non-native to a place) becomes confusing and less useful as the climate and environment change and species move locations in response.
(2/3)

Nativeness as Gradient: Towards a More Complete Value Assessment of Species in a Rapidly Changing World - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Conservation biologists recognize a duty to maintain as much value as possible in ecosystems that are threatened by recent anthropogenic impacts. Until recently the paradigm of contemporary conservati...

I have a new paper out in 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘌𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘌𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘴 called "Nativeness as gradient: Towards a more complete value assessment of species in a rapidly changing world"
(1/3)

doi.org/10.1007/s108...

#ecology #ethics #environmentalethics #biogeography #conservation #anthropocene

Science Is A Piece of Cake: Forest Ecology | KQED KQED's science-themed baking competition returns with prompts inspired by California forest ecosystems for bakers novice or advanced!

I'm going to be eating (and judging) forest-themed cake on KQED, December 18th.

You can also submit a cake! More information here www.kqed.org/event/4663

The California Academy of Sciences is hiring a curator of botany!
us242.dayforcehcm.com/CandidatePor...

#sciencejobs #botany #museum

Our community science team at the California Academy of Sciences is looking to hire someone to help strategize the growth of our community science programs in California. Please take a look and spread the word!

us242.dayforcehcm.com/CandidatePor...

#sciencejobs

Rapid biodiversity changes driven by climate change are in our future. My co-authors and I found in a new study that grassland plant communities in CA shift more quickly in response to hot and dry conditions in contrast to forested ecosystems.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hi all. I am a global change ecologist with some expertise in botany, SDM, fire ecology, and environmental ethics. I’ll use this account to talk about my research, interesting papers I find, and programming/modeling techniques I find useful.

#academia #ecology #climatechange #research #gis