Teamrat

New paper led by Jennifer Alvarez-Sagrero made possible by Jeff Mitchell’s two decades of persistence in sustaining a remarkable 20-yr trial finds: 136% greater aggregate stability, double the surface-soil C stocks, and 12% greater water retention. @aaberhe.com @ucanr.edu doi.org/10.5194/soil...

If you are like me irritated by how Chrome on MacOS refuses to be closed unless you hold ⌘+Q, here is Chrome → Settings → Appearance → turn off “Warn before quitting with ⌘Q” I bet they aren't doing it for me. I only use it for Google Scholar, which refuses to work with Private Relay.

This is both fascinating and extremely worrying interview about the threats of AI. Ajeya Cotra is an excellent communicator. youtu.be/X50zezLFWWI?...

Great piece from @sciencebails.bsky.social and others! Support your local society journal!

New entry on my list of Claude tics: "say the word." As in, "say the word and I'll do X." Every time.

A teacher had a student who kept falling asleep in class; turns out she had no bed at home. So the teacher ordered a bed, installed it in the girl's home--and then got her food. My report: Trump's policies inflict pain, but here are the counter stories of hope: www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/o...

Abstract deadline is TODAY for #AGU26. Working on climate action in higher ed? Campus living labs, fossil-free pathways, students driving real solutions? Present your work and ideas in SY009: Climate Action in Higher Education agu.confex.com/agu/agu26/pr...

Yulissa led this continental-scale look at how temporal averaging warps modeled soil respiration. @yperezrojas.bsky.social is new to Bluesky, give her a follow.

Yulissa's continental-scale dive into how temporal averaging warps modeled soil respiration was a delight to advise. @yperezrojas.bsky.social is new to Bluesky, give her a follow. #soil #soil-modeling #respiration

Teneille Nel’s presenting at EGU results from the collaborative work of Manisha Dolui @moreorloess.bsky.social @emsaurios.bsky.social @aaberhe.com and many others. Here is the paper fresh off the press: soil.copernicus.org/articles/12/...

New paper on destabilization of buried soil organic carbon under changing moisture regimes, based on incubation experiments with the Brady Soil, a prominent paleosol in the Great Plains loess sequence. Teneille Nel et al., soil.copernicus.org/articles/12/...

A US service member is missing and this is the first we've heard from the president. Need I say more

So. Does the world feel better now?

#TansleyReview: #Soil organic matter dynamics under changing #precipitation regimes @aaberhe.com et al. 👇 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #LatestIssue @teamrat.bsky.social

This study shows the important connections between landscape evolution and soil organic carbon storage. It's the work of a great research team including Manisha Dolui, Teneille Nel, @aaberhe.com, @teamrat.bsky.social, @emsaurios.bsky.social, and many others.

Happy to share another paper from the loess tablelands of the Great Plains, on organic C in buried soils and how it becomes susceptible to decomposition. We sampled the Brady Soil along transects of decreasing depth of burial and increasing erosional exposure. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

(🧵 6/6) This review synthesizes current research on how climate change-induced alterations in precipitation patterns, both directly and indirectly, affect the amount, composition, and persistence of soil organic matter.

(🧵 5/6) Their collective expertise spans soil organic matter dynamics, nutrient cycling, soil chemistry, soil ecology, soil mechanics, and vadose zone hydrology.

🌱 The authors behind the paper 🌱 (🧵 4/6) The authors of this Tansley review consist of soil biogeochemists and an environmental soil physicist affiliated with universities across the United States and South Korea.

(🧵 2/6) The amount, intensity, and frequency of precipitation have been changing around the world due to climate change. Changing precipitation can impact interactions among plants, microbes, fauna, and soil minerals, altering soil organic matter dynamics.

✨ Paper spotlight ✨ (🧵 1/6) Soil organic matter dynamics under changing precipitation regimes nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @teamrat.bsky.social @aaberhe.com

#TansleyReview SOM under changing precipitation regimes Min et al. @teamrat.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #plantscience

"We spoke with nine C-level U.S. airline executives and senior officials across six U.S. carriers for this story. They expressed varying degrees of skepticism, but none felt the cuts were without some level of political interference."

Grew up under a dictatorship, they attacked expertise first. This is alarmingly familiar. Trust in expertise is the foundation of modern civilization. Even as a researcher, I rely on expert knowledge I could never master in a lifetime. Rejecting that isn’t freedom, it’s how societies collapse!

“Despots want science that has practical results,” said Paul R. Josephson, an emeritus professor of history at Colby College and author of a book on totalitarian science. “They’re afraid that basic knowledge will expose their false claims.”

The Soil Physics Kirkham Medal was given to Bill Jury at the Kirkham Conference in Fukushima. He had an illustrious career at UC Riverside before retiring as Distinguished Professor Emeritus. #soil #soilphysics #kirkhamconference #sssa

It’s official, JB Milliken will be the 22nd President of the University of California system. It was a privilege to represent UC faculty interests in this search. … he currently serves as Chancellor of the UT System, previously led the CUNY system, U of NE and was v. Pres of UNC

Gardner (1991) argued that “if basic soil science did not exist, there is ample evidence that we need to invent it.” While practical applications are valuable outcomes of soil science research, they should emerge from a deep understanding of soil systems rather than define the discipline's scope.

📢 New pub: Defining #soil science: Balancing fundamental research and societal needs, in Soil Science Society of America Journal doi.org/10.1002/saj2... @teamrat.bsky.social & I argue, soil science, though crucial for solving environmental challanges, should not be defined solely by its applications

Pope Francis’s first papal visit was to Lampedusa, where thousands have perished. There he criticized the “globalization of indifference”. He said we “have forgotten how to cry” for migrants and “take care of each other,” in his homily. It seems the indifference is worsening everywhere.

the so-called war over California’s water is a dangerous, flawed trope that reduces certain water uses to right or wrong, and turns the Delta into a place with no local stakes. Faced with threats of drought, climate change and water scarcity, we should not reduce this place to a warring of... sides.

"Thousands of highly cited scientists have at least one retraction" "Oransky says the results throw into question the practice of ranking scientists on the basis of citations at all."

A foggy and rainy Yosemite. #yosemite

Heron on a bridge.

Geese at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge.

A blue heron basking under the morning sun at @ucmerced.bsky.social

Today, as President Jimmy Carter is honored, we reflect on his 2010 visit to UC Merced, where he received the Spendlove Prize and celebrated the Central Valley’s diversity as a strength of our nation. 🔗ucm.edu/lhgqp1

“… Research Program at the UCLA, surveys first-year college students every year. The percentage who named being “very well off financially” as an important goal doubled from 1967 to 2019. Those who wanted to develop a “meaningful philosophy of life” decreased by nearly half.