Erin Hotchkiss

JFC--they are telling us to turn over one of our most important tasks as researchers to AI. This is appalling. I also imagine someone is making money here......

Precip is expected to go up in a hotter world. But what about when warming is driven by changes to land ET rather than from CO2? New paper from @bgbucho.bsky.social, with F.H. Lambert, @czarakas.bsky.social, @mlague.bsky.social, @ckoven.bsky.social, I. Fung, D. Bonan, & me. doi.org/10.1175/JCLI...

Forms of Water xkcd.com/3315/

I just want to name that people overcame this. Even against a stacked deck, the good fight is worth it. Win or lose, it's worth it. And sometimes the good guys win.

Eric Lipton. below, has led an effort over the past two years to document the destruction of environmental protections under Trump II. It has gone for the most part unnoticed compared to, well, many other things, probably because it’s happening far from the Oval Office. But it’s very important.

Happy to share this new paper in JGR-B! We showed how mapping wetlands and using probabilistic maps improved soil carbon mapping. It's a great step towards better representation of wetland soil carbon hotspots within the landscape.

USGS river gages dropping like flies as this insane #flood wave moves downstream on the #sanjuanriver. The gages "at Four Corners" and "near Bluff" are yet to receive the wave.

COMMENTARY: Citing their sacred ties to Virginia's waterways, the Chickahominy Indian Tribe urges state officials to reject a stormwater permit for Richmond International Airport that allows PFAS pollution to continue without enforceable limits. virginiamercury.com/2026/10/23/v...

JUST POSTED: Today at The NYT we are publishing a major investigation into how President Trump used his executive powers to expose millions of Americans to greater cancer risks. A six month-long investigation built on more than 10,000 pages of FOIA records. Read it www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

Biodiversity enhances pond functioning. New paper based on endless sampling of 206 European ponds, including 30 in the UK by our @uclgeography.bsky.social team. If we stop polluting ponds & look after biodiversity we safeguard ecosystem processes & they release less methane: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Contrasting CH4 flux responses to distinct drought regimes and nitrogen enrichment in a temperate steppe Lan Du, et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/GSPTF2... #PlantScience

In a little-noticed webpage update, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced a plan to decommission its online web archive at the end of the year, a move that would wipe tens of thousands of publicly available environmental resources from the web.

Just as a private equity firm buys out a corporation and strips it for parts, a consultant class is raiding the Democratic Party and getting “generationally wealthy” along the way New from me and @adambonica.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2163...

Exciting news!! I'm chairing the search in my department @lsubiosci.bsky.social for an **Endowed Chair in Lichenology**! The candidate should be tenured (or equivalent), and have a documented track record in excellent in collections-based lichen research. lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/LSU/jo...

A new meta-analysis of 66 stream studies reveals that biological structure and ecosystem functioning respond differently to #restoration. One key insight is that without proper reference states, we can't tell if interventions are hitting true process-based targets for stream ecosystem functions.

Evening of doodling

Please share! Our department has two tenure-track job ads up today. Here is the #SciEd job, a collaboration with the STEM Ed Center. Fantastic facilities, perfect-sized institution, easy living. Come work here! bsu.wd12.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job... @nabtbio.bsky.social @narst.bsky.social

🐟 Declines in the diversity of fish represented in British domestic recipes over the past 100 year🐟️ This study reveals how ecological and market changes become normalised in everyday consumption 🔎 buff.ly/dU1efsu

India is plunged into political crisis after 130 million names were struck off voter rolls during a massive revision. n.pr/4z10QAO

In my most curmudgeonly moments, I don’t see why presenting the prose output of a machine built on mass theft as your own scholarly work should be evaluated less harshly than old school plagiarism. Traditional plagiarists at least had to identify and evaluate the works they were going to copy.

NASA has stopped updating us on temperature anomalies and how they fit within the long-term trend -- can't imagine why -- but you can still access NASA's temperature data on their website: data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/ September 2026: 🥵

When ice sheets melt, unique freshwater habitats vanish. With all 17 epishelf lakes along Canada’s Ellesmere Island now gone, scientists warn that rapid Arctic warming is dismantling the planet's fridge and threatening the Arctic's most climate-resilient ice ecosystems. Ruth Kamnitzer reports.

We're hiring a bird or mammal biologist (TT faculty position). Experience with collections is a huge plus. I'm not on the search committee, but happy to answer any questions. Come join us in Los Angeles! careers.pageuppeople.com/873/nr/en-us...

"But according to the latest data compiled by Grant Witness, the NSF awarded 6,238 grants in fiscal 2026 and around 8,650 in fiscal 2025, compared with an average of 11,387 grants awarded annually between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2024."

"The effort, which has not been previously reported, focuses on states and jurisdictions where tightly contested races will determine control of Congress for the remainder of Trump’s presidency."

Duke Biology has two faculty positions we're searching for: 1) Assistant Professor in Cellular and Molecular Systems 2) Assistant Professor of the Practice with a focus on Ecology. See here the following link for more details and how to apply: biology.duke.edu/about-us/jobs

Conservation groups and government agencies are using “starter homes” made of wood and brush to encourage beavers to build dams. These dams slow water, create habitat and help ecosystems become more resilient to climate change, which experts say is crucial as the West becomes drier. @apnews.com

What happens when a forest loses its birdsong? Following clues hidden in the sounds birds make while asleep, Argentinian physicist Gabriel Mindlin uncovers a hidden extinction – not of species, but of memory – and sets out to revive vanished melodies before they disappear forever.

Excited to share this new paper I co-wrote with @jackiewebb.bsky.social. In it, we ask the question: can freshwaters sometimes be sinks for atmospheric methane? agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Full time job opportunity for a scientific illustrator to work with us at the U-Michigan museum of zoology and herbarium! careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Artificial intelligence is capitalism’s final destination -- Arundhati Roy www.equator.org/articles/aru... 🧵

It's 2026. The website you used to print turn by turn directions for road trips after high school has become woke and an ally in the right against the surveillance economy

My favourite bit of reporting for this story was finding out ISS astronauts were growing little gardens in their quarters in secret—and only this summer have NASA explicitly permitted them to do this. Astronauts are, in many ways, just regular, hopeful humans. 🌱

Applications for SFS Endowment Awards are now open! 🏆 Fund students and early-career members to conduct research and attend the #2027SFS Annual Meeting in Omaha, NE, May 23-27. 📋 Awards are based on research merit and range from $1,200 to $1,999 per award. 📆 Applications close Nov 1 (1/3)

Final article out from my MS thesis! Landward progression and expansion of mangroves drives changes in energy exchange and evapotranspiration. link.springer.com/article/10.1... Flux tower site US-EvM with red mangroves (#1 Oct 2022, #2 May 2026).

📣 One more week to submit Special Session and Workshop Proposals for the #2027SFS Annual Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska (May 23-27). 📆 Deadline October 19th 🧭 We especially welcome Special Sessions and Workshops related to the meeting theme “Navigating Braided Waters: Past, Present, Future” (1/3)

Wildfires across the West have renewed concerns over the fate of water quality in the aftermath. Fire retardants used to slow the spread of a blaze add to the worries.

“While the deal will not benefit American consumers, it has immense consequences for others. For Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the deal is a potential lifesaver. For war-ravaged Ukraine, it is the most outrageous and heartless Trump betrayal to date.”—David Frum 🎁 www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

Good thread. The hep B Vax study in Guinea-Bissau exploits people in poverty, lacks equipoise, wastes resources that could go toward meeting needs to address an already answered question, and dooms babies to incredibly high risk of life-long suffering.

Postdoc available to work with us at UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center on our Clear Lake restoration project - applications due by 20 October! recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07923

If you read the Walmart's patents, it's pretty wild. For example US11687872B2, granted in 2023: "The price for other items the customer purchases may be varied based on what items are already in the cart, e.g. if a customer has tuna fish, they may be offered a different price for mayonnaise."

Knoxville still puts on a good show! Thankful for an old group of friends that has stayed in touch & keeps making fun new memories together.

“The opposite of hope isn’t despair. It’s inaction”. Great stuff from @helenpilcher.bsky.social #conservation #kakapo www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

One or more human beings are responsible for the code they wrote, and those are the people who should be held accountable. These programs are not acting “on their own”