Owen McKenna (He/Him)

Dr. Owen McKenna - North Dakota's Wetlands Research and Landscape Dr. Owen McKenna explores how climate & land use impact North Dakota's vital wetlands, crucial for wildlife & water quality. Ag debt on Harvest Public Media

I have always been told I have a face for radio!

Tune in to hear about government science!

news.prairiepublic.org/podcast/main...

doi.org/10.1016/j.ec...
How good is remote sensing getting at detecting surface water in small waterbodies? The answer is always.....it depends! So proud of the work of all the co-authors to get this truly interdisciplinary effort out. Cheers to useful science.

Down the Drain: A new series on wetlands by the Ag & Water Desk - Ag & Water Desk Our latest collaborative project, free to republish, explores recent legal and policy changes impacting wetlands, and the many ways people interact with these landscapes in the Mississippi River Basin...

Super interesting collaborative journalism agwaterdesk.org/2025/04/14/d...

Maps: Where Do Federal Employees Work in America? Before the Trump administration’s cuts, members of the civilian federal work force were in every state and in thousands of the nation’s cities and small towns.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Trump swings budget ax at USGS biology research Plan to eliminate $307 million ecosystem program could face obstacles in Congress

www.science.org/content/arti...

I'm supporting a large team grant writing process.
#Transdisciplinary 🧪

I'm also on a large team grant being supported by someone else

Big differences

I won't 'out' the bad stuff

Here are some things that work well if you want the best from the team: A #HigherEd 🧵

April fools, the last 71 days don't count! Right, right, right?!?!

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

Academic mentees thrive in big groups, but survive in small groups - Nature Human Behaviour Using longitudinal genealogical data on mentor–mentee relations and their publications, the authors find that mentees trained in larger groups tend to exhibit superior academic performance compared wi...

Lower survival rate among trainees in labs with highly productive mentors raises important concerns about what we value in academia. Many interesting things to stew over with this paper!

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

Trump Administration Aims to Eliminate E.P.A.’s Scientific Research Arm (Gift Article) More than 1,000 chemists, biologists and other scientists could be laid off under a plan to dismantle the Office of Research and Development.

Another devastating plan. EPA science is critical for keeping our air, water and environment safe. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/c...

Tax the rich

A screenshot from a court filing reads, in part: "Julio Noriega is 54 years old, was born in Chicago, and is a U.S. citizen. On January 31, 2025, he was walking near the corner of Cermak Road and Harlem Avenue in Berwyn, Illinois, handing out his resume to local businesses. As he walked out of a Jiffy Lube, he was approached by ICE officers who grabbed and handcuffed him and put him into a van, without an opportunity to explain his citizenship. The officers drove Julio and others around for more than an hour before bringing him to an ICE processing center, where he remained, still handcuffed, for several more hours. All the while, Julio had a wallet containing identification that ICE had confiscated. The officers never showed Julio a warrant, and they did not ask him any questions to ascertain whether he was a noncitizen or a flight risk. After about 10 hours, ICE officers reviewed the contents of Julio’s wallet, realized he was a U.S. citizen, and released him with no money and no paperwork."

A US-born citizen was walking near Chicago in January. ICE snatched him off the street, handcuffed him, threw into a van. His wallet, which contained his ID, was confiscated. He was detained for 10 hours before being released without a record of what occurred.

immigrantjustice.org/sites/defaul...

Federal scientists: You are not alone. ❤️ @csldf.org provides free, confidential legal advice to researchers facing legal intimidation, harassment, & other attempts to sideline your critical work. Please reach out for a 1:1 with one of our attorneys: csldf.org/contact

Tenth Annual HBCU Climate Change Conference: A Decade of Action and Impact. Our #HBCU Consortium is punching above its weight. We built community-university partnerships that work. Our goal is to add all of our schools to the network.
www.bullardcenter.org/hbcu-ccc #HBCUClimateChange #HBCUalum

This would be a bigger story in a less crazy world. Imagine what else is not making it to your eye balls

A painting of Queen Elizabeth I, in a fancy dress and royal robes. She’s leaning on one elbow and looking VERY tired. Over her shoulder is a skeleton, looking at her with bad intent. Caption over Elizabeth says “I’m anxious, overwhelmed, and have a terrible headache.” Caption over the skeleton says “Have you tried consuming nothing but coffee and horrifying news updates?”

Look here, you calcareous asshole, who asked you anyway?

Empty USGS desk at a conference trade show

Empty USGS desk at a conference trade show with a sign saying there is nobody at the desk

From a colleague: The unstaffed USGS booth at the world’s largest mining and exploration conference, the 2025 PDAC in Toronto.
⚒️🧪

Thanks to the National Weather Service and NOAA scientists everywhere

NSF downsizes summer research program for undergraduates Many participants are from groups underrepresented in science

Due to the Musk/Trump Administration’s draconian cuts, the National Science Foundation is significantly scaling back its program to provide college students with paid summer research internships. Many of my colleagues attribute their start in science to this program.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Opinion | Three Former E.P.A. Leaders: You’ll Miss It When It’s Gone When the next environmental catastrophe arrives, who will be there to deal with the emergency and its aftermath?

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/o...

Dark days ahead. Protect and amplify the humanity of those that will be impacted the most. Everything else can wait.

Word of the Day is ‘ingordigiousness’ (18th century): extreme greed at the expense of principles.

Your regular reminder that the US air & water pollution laws passed in the 60s & 70s -- and the elaborate federal bureaucracy created to administer them -- constitute one of the most successful gov't interventions in history. WILDLY successful. The envy of the world.

A friend who works for the US Department of the Interior (DOI) says that their government credit cards (PCards) have their purchasing limits set to $1, so they essentially can’t buy anything. Also, the DOI doubled down on the 5 bullets email and wants to make it a weekly occurrence. 🤬

FEDERAL RESEARCH LAB SCIENTIST IN 1965: After five years and seventy million dollars we have invented a new type of plastic that prevents communists from being able to climb ladders too fast
FEDERAL RESEARCH LAB SCIENTIST IN 2025: My cure for cancer was shelved because it might benefit Hispanics

Remember way back in the beginning of the 2020s when the U.S. federal government provided free breakfast and lunch to children at public schools across the entire country from sea to shining sea for like two whole years?

How has it only been ONE month

BREAKING: Federal Layoffs Target Indian Health Service, Threatening Healthcare Access Across Indian Country The Indian Health Service faces losing 2,500 employees in new federal layoffs, nearly triple initial estimates, warns the top executive of a national Native health organization. The cuts would further...

When you call your legislators, please include this as one of your talking points.

Once again the United States Government is violating their agreements with tribal nations. Shame on them. More in comments.

nativenewsonline.net/health/break...