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Pete Homyak

@petehomyak.bsky.social
449 followers 981 following 35 posts

Ecosystem biogeochemistry | Associate Professor at UC Riverside | 2017 Ford postdoc fellow | bilingüe 🇨🇴🇺🇲| he/him | Views are my own

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Reposted by Pete Homyak
yperezrojas.bsky.social @yperezrojas.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Hi @bsky.app scientific community. I'm an environmental scientist with a background in soil science (Go soil physics!). Excited to connect & stay up to date with fellow scientists, environmental professionals, and amazing science. Let's connect! #soilscience #environmental #science
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
These findings establish topography-mediated hydrology as a primary control of forest soil N dynamics and gaseous N emissions, reducing uncertainty in forecasts of hillslope-scale N losses under a changing climate.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
The spring freeze–thaw period accounted for 15%–26% of NO and 24%–58% of N2O annual emissions, with the highest emissions measured consistently at lower topographic positions.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
We then used these relationships among soil moisture, temperature, and N availability to develop models for predicting hillslope-scale NO + N2O losses.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Temperature regulated N emissions in drier upper positions, giving way to soil moisture regulating microbial pathways and emissions in wetter downslope positions.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
We measured over 2 years of high-resolution in situ NO and N2O fluxes to show that soil moisture gradients governed spatial and temporal patterns of soil N emissions. These gradients produced tradeoffs in process controls:
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
New exciting work 🧪by Kai Huang and team: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Topography‐Mediated Soil Moisture Controls Forest Hillslope‐Scale NO and N2O Emissions
Conceptual diagram illustrating soil NO and N2O emissions along a temperate forest hillslope. Left panel: Automated soil gas chambers were deployed along a forest hillslope to measure high-resolution...
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
In new work by Elizah Stephens, she looks at soil N emissions after wildfires. Wildfire increased soil NO emissions. N2O emissions did not differ significantly; however, only burned soils produced N2O fluxes that were statistical outliers up to ∼165 × higher. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Wildfire alters nitrogen cycling to increase soil emissions of nitric oxide (NO) and the heterogeneity of nitrous oxide (N2O) in California chaparral
Wildfires drive ecosystem nitrogen (N) loss globally through combustion of plant biomass and by depositing N-rich ash onto soils to stimulate emission…
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Reposted by Pete Homyak
Dr. Jennifer Pett-Ridge @jeffinerca.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
You wanna know if deeply rooted grasses put more carbon in the ground? "Sometimes you've gotta rent a van and drive around the country..." So said @ericslessarev.bsky.social & team in this wonderful study. 12 sites in central/eastern USA... dx.doi.org/10.1029/2025...
dx.doi.org
Assessing the Effect of a Deep‐Rooted Grass on Belowground Carbon Storage in Cultivated Land: Insights From a Multi‐Site US Study
Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum, L.) stored significantly more carbon in root biomass than shallow-rooted crops at 12 sites across the USA Switchgrass had no detectable effect on soil organic carbo...
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Reposted by Pete Homyak
Alberto Canarini @albertocanarini.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
📢 Call for Expression of Interest – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship (MSCA PF) We are looking for a candidate to develop a proposal on: Nitrogen cycling in arid and/or drought-affected ecosystems, with a focus on soil microbial processes (including fungi).
lnkd.in
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
📢 Call for Expression of Interest – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship (MSCA PF)
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
It was wonderful to be there and thank you so much for hosting me! Looking forward to future interactions
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Reposted by Pete Homyak
Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 17/12/2025
“NCAR has played a greater role in advancing weather prediction & atmospheric modeling than perhaps any other single entity in the world,” says @weatherwest.bsky.social Dismantling NCAR would be “like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.” KH
nbcnews.com
Trump administration plans to break up largest federal climate research center
Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the National Science Foundation "will be breaking up" the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.
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Reposted by Pete Homyak
Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 17/12/2025
AGU has a Congressional email and call script up on NCAR:
agu.quorum.us
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.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
#AGU25 B22F. Geoclimatic Drivers of Nitric Oxide (NO), Nitrous Oxide (N2O), and Nitrogen (N2) Emissions: Microscale to Global-Scale Controls I Oral Day/Time: Tuesday, 16 December 2025: 10:30 - 12:00, NOLA CC, New Orleans Theater A @agubiogeosciences.bsky.social
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Press release of the manuscript found here: news.ucr.edu/articles/202...
news.ucr.edu
Heat and drought change what forests breathe out
After six years of UC Riverside-led research in a temperate Chinese forest, researchers have found that warming may be reducing nitrogen emissions, at least in places where rainfall is scarce.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Lower N emissions were mechanistically linked to lower microbial processing of N as soil moisture decreased under warming. This shows that warming-induced losses in soil moisture can offset expected temperature effects on soil N cycling as the planet warms.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
We show that opposite to projections based exclusively on temperature, soil N emissions were suppressed under warming, an observation shared across other warming experiments receiving < 1,000 mm/y precipitation—but not by those receiving > 1,000 mm/y where warming increased N emissions.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Exciting new 🧪 work by Kai Huang on #soil N emissions after warming a forest for 6 years @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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Reposted by Pete Homyak
Jason “Obstacle to Progress” Williams @jasonwilliamsny.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment. The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/
jasonjwilliamsny.github.io
An Open Letter to U.S. STEM Leadership on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program
An Open Letter to U.S. STEM Leadership on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program
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Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
The GRFP announcement from NSF cuts out an entire cohort of 2nd year students from consideration, without warning. This is so deeply unfair that it warrants a formal protest from the scientific community. If someone wants to work with me to craft an open letter and solicit signatures, LMK.
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Senator Bernie Sanders @sanders.senate.gov · 18/09/2025
We are witnessing a full blown war on science, public health & truth itself. Let me be clear: Vaccines have prevented more than 1.1 million deaths, 500 million cases of illness & 32 million hospitalizations. That's a lot of moms and dads who don't have to bury their children.
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Reposted by Pete Homyak
Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
GUYS. The comment period for this ends in THREE DAYS. PLEASE if you have even a little bit of time, submit a comment here: www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD... Let them know EVERYONE should be able to get COVID vaccines. They BACK DOWN when WE PUSH BACK. www.statnews.com/2025/05/20/f...
statnews.com
FDA will limit Covid vaccines to people over 65 or at high risk of serious illness, leaders say
The FDA announced it will limit access to Covid-19 vaccines going forward to people 65 and older and others at high risk of serious illness
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
The World Is Wooing U.S. Researchers Shunned by Trump www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/b...
nytimes.com
The World Is Wooing U.S. Researchers Shunned by Trump
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Jeremy Bassis @bassisjeremy.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Everyone needs to understand that dismantling NSF will have devastating long term consequences in our competitiveness and innovation in science, technology and beyond. 1/
science.org
Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund
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Johns Hopkins University @jhu.edu · 16/04/2025
Did you know? 99% of all new medications resulted from federally-funded university research through #NIH Learn more about #ResearchSavesLives: hub.jhu.edu/research-sav....
An image with a prescription pill bottle. Text on the image reads: 99% of all new medications resulted from federally-funded university research through NIH
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
And with @alexkrichels.bsky.social now on Bluesky!
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
with @drylandfire.bsky.social @m-j-spasojevic.bsky.social @globalchangebio.bsky.social @agu.org
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Inducing severe water limitation may push drylands across “aridity tipping points” beyond which AOB are not stimulated by excess soil N availability, but AOA contributions to NO emissions persist. This caused nitrate to accumulate in soils, leading to the emission of N2O upon rewetting.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
We found that both increasing and decreasing summer precipitation can favor AOB-derived NO emissions when soils wet up at the end of the summer, a period characterized by N loss across drylands.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
In new work by Sharon, we studied whether changes in #soil N in response to shifts in precipitation may favor tradeoffs between AOA and AOB nitrifiers and the emission of NO and #N2O 🧪 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Nitrogen Availability and Changes in Precipitation Alter Microbially Mediated NO and N2O Emissions From a Pinyon–Juniper Dryland
Climate change is altering precipitation regimes that control nitrogen (N) cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. In ecosystems exposed to frequent drought, N can accumulate in soils as they dry, stimula...
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Linsey Marr @linseymarr.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
I am crushed to learn that a brilliant researcher at CDC/NIOSH with decades of expertise and seminal papers on flu virus in respiratory particles and effectiveness of masks has been fired.
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Pete Homyak @petehomyak.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Exciting! And likely occurring in soils as well to help explain the rapid reduction of 15N-nitrate to N2O we observe in sunny California deserts. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Bacterial denitrification drives elevated N2O emissions in arid southern California drylands
Despite dry and hot summers, denitrifiers endure through months in deserts and produce large N2O emissions after rainfall.
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Reposted by Pete Homyak
Gemma Reguera 🌎 @microgem.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Very interesting finding: photochemical formation of N2O in freshwater and marine waters. The N cycle gets more complex. 🧐 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Sunlight drives the abiotic formation of nitrous oxide in fresh and marine waters
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas and the main stratospheric ozone-depleting agent, yet its sources are not well resolved. In this work, we experimentally show a N2O production pathway no...
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Reposted by Pete Homyak
It's ME(Jaime) @exceedhergrasp1.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Folks, very bad news for #LongCOVID. Deep breath. 29 awarded grants to do with COVID and Long COVID have been rescinded by NIH. 🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...
Science has learned that grant termination letters went out last night to principal investigators of 29 awards made by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), including nine grants that were part of a program hoping to deliver antiviral drugs to prevent future pandemics. Other terminated grants involved research to develop improved COVID-19 vaccines and to address Long Covid, the mysterious lingering aftermath of some SARS-CoV-2 infections. “The research is being treated like we already have all the answers we will need in the future and that the current vaccines work well enough and don’t need improvement, which we know is not true,” says an investigator involved with one of the NIAID grants who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. “Some of the studies being canceled were attempting to make a pancoronavirus vaccine, which would hopefully be available the next time a novel coronavirus jumps species into humans.”
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Prof. Bob Howarth @profbobhowarth.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Just heard that Trump is putting an end to atmospheric monitoring site NY67 that is run out of my lab. This is one of the oldest NADP sites in the US, continually measuring acid rain and other pollutants since 1977. Closing it down is tragic.
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AGU (American Geophysical Union) @agu.org · 10/03/2025
We strongly denounce the Trump Administration’s latest round of NASA firings and office closures, which will undermine the agency’s ability to carry out its missions to advance scientific knowledge and benefit humanity.
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.”
thebetter.news
Finland ends homelessness and provides shelter for all in need - scoop.me
In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Why? The country applies the "Housing First" concept agains homelessness.
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AGU (American Geophysical Union) @agu.org · 05/03/2025
AGU has joined a lawsuit challenging the firing of probationary employees at federal agencies. These actions weaken science, harm public health & the environment, and threaten national security. 🧵 #StandWithScience
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Dr. Jennifer Glass (she/her) @methanojen.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Our next DEI committee event for @agubiogeosciences.bsky.social is in two weeks. ‘Community empowerment: Thriving together despite the unknowns’) to continue building and strengthening our community. Register here: tinyurl.com/biogeothriving2
tinyurl.com
Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Community empowerment: Thriving together despite the unknowns. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.
The past few weeks have presented a lot of unknowns for the scientific community. For many of us, recent changes in policies have threated job security, research programs, and caused elevated stress. ...
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Gretchen Goldman, PhD @gretchentg.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
In a remarkable show of unity, today 48 scientific societies representing almost 100,000 members call on Congress to protect the future of science. Our elected officials must act now so we have a hope of avoiding long-term damage to the US science enterprise. www.ucsusa.org/about/news/s...
ucsusa.org
48 Scientific Societies Representing Almost 100,000 Scientists Ask Congress to Protect the Future of Science
48 scientific societies representing almost 100,000 scientists signed on to a letter asking Congress to protect the future of science
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NPR @npr.org · 02/03/2025
An NPR review of new data added to DOGE's "wall of receipts" finds the group quietly changed previous errors, added new ones and still has little verified savings to show for its work.
npr.org
DOGE's savings page fixed old mistakes — and added new ones
An NPR review of new data added to DOGE's "wall of receipts" finds the group quietly changed previous errors, added new ones and still has little verified savings to show for its work.
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AGU (American Geophysical Union) @agu.org · 28/02/2025
AGU urges the Trump administration to immediately renew U.S. federal commitment to climate science. The U.S. must restore critical climate science leadership for a secure, prosperous future for the country and the world. Read AGU’s statement here: news.agu.org/press-releas...
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
The mass firing of both new hires and recently promoted senior staff within #NOAA, including mission-critical and life-saving roles at the National Weather Service (#NWS), is profoundly alarming. 1/11
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
I have written a short statement responding to mass firings today of #NOAA / National Weather Service (#NWS) staff (which were concentrated among recent hires as well as highly experienced staff who had recently been promoted). Please see below screenshot & below for full text.
Statement begins:
The mass firing of both new hires and recently promoted senior staff within NOAA, including mission-critical and life-saving roles at the National Weather Service (NWS), is profoundly alarming. It appears that NOAA staff fired today include meteorologists, data and computer scientists responsible for maintaining and upgrading weather predictive models, and technicians responsible for maintaining the nation’s weather instrumentation network (among many others).

Housed within NOAA, the U.S. NWS is a truly world-class meteorological predictive service, perhaps singularly so. Its cost of operation is only ~$3-4/yr per taxpayer—equivalent to a single cup of coffee—and yields a truly remarkable return on investment (at least 10 to 1, and perhaps 100 to 1, depending on methods of estimation). NOAA and the NWS collectively offer tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each year in net economic benefit through a combination of averted losses and efficiencies gained....
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Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Per Dr Atul Gawande, ex USAID: “All malaria supplies protecting 53 million people, mostly children, including bed nets, diagnostics, preventive drugs, and treatments – terminated.” There are no words that sufficiently describe this level of cruelty and sadism.
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Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 28/02/2025
Here is link to my slides from the canceled presentation 😞
slideshare.net
Our changing climate in the Northeast United States
Our changing climate in the Northeast United States - Download as a PDF or view online for free
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Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 27/02/2025
Last Tuesday, I was set to give a talk on 'climate change in the Northeast' at a retirement home but had to cancel due to hourly job threats. After nearly two weeks of overwhelming uncertainty, today it happened. I was fired from my dream of working at NOAA. I'm so sorry to everyone also affected.
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