Nick Smith

🔥Out today in @nature.com Communications, Olivia Haas, Colin Prentice & Sandy Harrison explore how conflicting fire signals might evolve over the coming century & why focusing on burned area alone risks missing critical changes in wildfire behaviour. Blog Monday 🔗
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New publication on stomatal decoupling led by Zhaoguo Wang. I first noticed decoupling in temperature response curves in 2016 (tinyurl.com/k6dnhn94) and have been intrigued since. This study focuses on decoupling under experimental warming, showing interesting patterns
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ecologists! Plz share! **ESA abstracts due Feb 19th this year - meeting is last week in July in Salt Lake City** This is a change from our normal first week in August bc this is rescheduled from COVID cancelled 2020 meeting. We're hard at work to prepare a great meeting for you.

How plants balance water transport and photosynthesis across the globe - Lemontree New research shows how eco-evolutionary optimality explains global variation in sapwood–leaf area ratios, linking plant hydraulics, climate and photosynthesis.

Following on from yesterday, here's our latest blog on the paper by @huiyingxu.bsky.social & Wang Han et al.,👇
research.reading.ac.uk/lemontree/sa...
Go check it out!

New paper alert🔔My last PhD chapter is published📣
Our new study explains how the ratio of sapwood to leaf area🌿varies with hydraulic traits and climate on a global scale. Our theoretical model can capture almost 60% of trait variation.
Stay tuned! Blog is on the way

📢New paper published today in @newphyt.bsky.social
We develop an EEO framework to explain global variation in the sapwood-to-leaf area ratio, linking plant hydraulics, photosynthesis and climate.
Blog coming soon.🔗
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@huiyingxu.bsky.social

The sensitivities of the theoretical model to climate and hydraulic traits.

Global variation in the ratio of sapwood to leaf area explained by optimality principles

Xu et al. @huiyingxu.bsky.social @lemontree-uofr.bsky.social

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/QQQWKU...

Application Process Image Woman behind a podium presenting. Jessie Golding, BBCS postdoc, presenting at ICCB 2025. Apply to become a Lovejoy Fellow by submitting your resume, cover letter, and contact information for three references through the University of Arizona Talent Portal (link upcoming) by the first review date of January 30, 2026. Your cover letter should: Identify 1-2 Lovejoy BBCS faculty you would be interested in working with and explain the primary research directions you would want to pursue in collaboration with this faculty member. You are strongly encouraged to reach out to faculty before submitting your application. Describe your experience with or interest in inter- or transdisciplinary research. Explain how this experience will positively impact your career trajectory.

New postdoctoral fellowship opportunity! Please pass along. Excited to announce the launch of the Tom Lovejoy Fellowship Program at the University of Arizona for innovative research to protect species, sustain ecosystems, and promote a thriving planet lovejoycenter.arizona.edu/lovejoy-fell... 🧪🌐🌾

A promotional image for the event, featuring an artistic representation of code with text superimposed to describe the event. Click through for full information and to register.

Ever felt like your data is too big or complex to model easily?

🎚️Level up your R skills with *Intro to Sparse Modeling in R*! Expand your knowledge of analyzing datasets with many covariates & overcome some traditional statistical challenges.

Feb. 4 at 3:00 PM ET!
https://ow.ly/bj7O50XU6M1

PhD Position: Tree Physiological Responses to Atmospheric Drought We invite applications for a fully funded four-year PhD position at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, with a planned start date in June 2026. The selected candidate wil...

🌳PhD Opportunity in plant ecophysiology🌡️ Join EPFL (Switzerland) for fully-funded 4yr PhD on tree responses to air drought and heat. Climate chamber + long-term experiments to uncover physiological thresholds under climate change. www.epfl.ch/labs/perl/pe...

YouTube video by Texas Tech Climate Center Inside COP30: Science, solutions, and the Texas Tech perspective

Last month we held an event called "Inside #COP30: Science, solutions, and the Texas Tech perspective"

If you are interested, the recording is up on YouTube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtn_...

The deadline for DOE's SULI (Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship) summer 2026 program is in TWO DAYS: science.osti.gov/wdts/suli/Ke... Are you an undergraduate interested in STEM? Apply!

GitHub - bpbond/srdb: Global soil respiration database Global soil respiration database. Contribute to bpbond/srdb development by creating an account on GitHub.

End-of-year data update to the SRBD (global soil respiration database) github.com/bpbond/srdb

It’s the gold standard of US climate research. Contrarians could write the next one. Researchers who have downplayed the threat of global warming have been asked to author the next National Climate Assessment.

I look forward to the legally required, transparent peer review process required by the US Global Change Research Act and the Information Quality Act. I always thought they would try to do a NCA with Judith Curry, five old men and a LLM.

Bob and I were among the hundreds of researchers that were supposed to conduct the 6th U.S. National Climate Assessment. Now it looks like they're gonna produce it with a few people and Grok? Communities need rigorous and accurate information about climate change. This will put communities at risk.

First AGU was successful!

#AMF #AGU25 #NewOrleans #PlantEcophys

Thanks to
@nickgregsmith.bsky.social
@texastechlib.bsky.social
@lemontree-uofr.bsky.social
@schmidtsciences.bsky.social

Friends, I am quite suddenly and with no warning teaching an upper level ecology class in three weeks. If anyone has any ecology lab materials they are willing to share with me, please reach out.

The Weather & Climate Livestream Join us starting May 28th, as meteorologists and climate scientists from across the US share their research and answer your questions.

For those at #agu25 #saveNCAR

12:15pm - Group Photo/Video at the "science strong" wall across from the Plenary Hall at the entrance to the convention center

1:30-5:30pm - drop in interviews at PJs Coffee in front of Hall C - look for the person with the "We ❤️ NCAR" sign.

More info:

Tomorrow is the final day for LEMONTREE at #AGU25. We are ending up our week with a poster from @snehanjanac.bsky.social on Friday morning in the poster hall! It's been a great week.

Save NCAR from being dismantled today! The Trump Administration has vowed to dissolve the center that provides critical extreme weather and climate data for our nation.

I wrote to my representatives @hirono.senate.gov @schatz.bsky.social, and Ed Case to tell them to stop the dismantlement of NCAR. You can do the same with your representatives at this link.

The global hydrogen budget - Nature Trends in global H2 sources and sinks are analysed from 1990 to 2020, and a comprehensive budget for the decade 2010–2020 is presented.

📢Just out today: "The Global Hydrogen Budget" published in @nature.com . LEMONTREE contributions from Catherine Morfopoulos and David Sandoval www.nature.com/articles/s41...

NCAR’s Mesa Lab is literally a science castle dedicated to understanding our planet in an open and collaborative way, and leading the world in that effort. We cannot let this happen.

NCAR is an amazing place full of wonderful, brilliant, hardworking people. I am forever indebted to what they've done for me and the world.

Heart-wrenching to hear the news, particularly during AGU :(

NCAR is quite literally our global mothership.

Everyone who works in climate and weather has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources.

Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.

Unbelievable.

At #AGU25 this afternoon, I have a poster on a fun, new project:

"Global patterns of optimal photosynthetic strategies"

(B23R-1986; 14:15-17:45)

I could use some input from the community on this! Come chat with me about "why photosynthesis be like that"!

agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/me...

Day 2 of #AGU25 and another great line up today with 3 LEMONTREE talks and a poster. @jianingfang.bsky.social ang.bsky.social @nickgregsmith.bsky.social gsmith.bsky.social @ngocnb.bsky.social y.social @HanZhang-Hannah.bsky.social
research.reading.ac.uk/lemontree/le...

Hey #AGU25, check out our session "Vegetation Canopies: Physiology, Structure, Function" happening soon!

It starts in ~35 minutes at 14:15 in Room 260. We have a bunch of great talks lined up!

agu.confex.com/agu/agu25/me...

If you’re at #AGU25, come by our Town Hall tomorrow at 1PM in 243-244. After the National Climate Assessment was disbanded, a bunch of us got to work to advance climate assessment. We’re the editors of a new U.S. climate assessment collection, & need your help: eppro01.ativ.me/appinfo.php?... #AGU25

It's #AGU2025! Great line up today from the team with invited talk by @youngryel.bsky.social and sessions with @nickgregsmith.bsky.social and @trevorkeenan.bsky.social . Head over to the blog to get room details: research.reading.ac.uk/lemontree/le...

collinear: Automated Multicollinearity Management Provides a comprehensive and automated workflow for managing multicollinearity in data frames with numeric and/or categorical variables. The package integrates five robust methods into a single functi...

{collinear} 3.0 is now on CRAN (yay! 🥳)

This #rstats package automates multicollinearity management to improve model robustness and interpretability.

You can learn more at blasbenito.github.io/collinear/, but here's a summary of the most exciting new features: 🧵 1/5