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Quercus

@quercusbottoms.bsky.social
905 followers 4.6K following 54 posts

Ecologist, ISA Certified Arborist, Prescription Pruning and Tree Risk Assessment Qualified. Wildlife/native habitat consultant Native plant / plants-for-birds / host plant obsessive. Restoring ecological functionality to rural, MS Hill Country

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 22h
It turns out that the best way to avoid being killed by drivers is to be protected by infrastructure.
coloradosun.com
North America’s largest wildlife overpass is working. I-25 collisions near Castle Rock are down 91%.
In the 10 months since the wildlife crossing between Larkspur and Monument opened, there’s been just 2 reported collisions
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Cellular Tracking Technologies @celltracktech.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Our friend and colleague on many projects, including #ProjectSNOWstorm, Scott Weidensaul, provides insight into the linkage between healthy #bird population and a healthy planet. Read the full article 👇 news.mongabay.com/2026/04/how-... #BirdsRule #WildlifeConservation #Ornithology 🪶🦩🐦‍⬛
news.mongabay.com
How saving birds protects the planet: Interview with author Scott Weidensaul
Best-selling author Scott Weidensaul’s new book is a celebration of species recovery efforts led by scientists, conservationists, and Indigenous communities around the world, beginning with the succes...
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Cellular Tracking Technologies @celltracktech.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
A Northern Waterthrush tagged in Cape May, NJ left after sunset on Sep 11. Two weeks later it was over Colombia! Jamaica -> Colombia included ~800 km of open Caribbean. 3,082 km so far! @birdscanada.bsky.social @originalstu.bsky.social #MotusWTS #BirdMigration #ornithology @nature.org
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Bart⚓️ @bartgonnissen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The Facial Expressions of Tethys by artist Julius von Bismarck. A suspended high-sea buoy that moves in real time. Sensors on a twin buoy out in the Atlantic Ocean send live satellite data to motors inside the museum. This makes the indoor buoy copy the exact, real-time movements of the ocean waves.
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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The rule they are overturning was predicted to give $120 billion in public health benefits by 2047, with projections that by 2035, it would would prevent up to 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital and emergency room visits, 360K asthma attacks, 48K school absence days and 57K lost workdays each year
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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 11/09/2026
SpaceXAI installed a bunch of on-site temporary natural gas power plants to run their data center in Memphis, generating a lot of local air pollution. I talked with @austyngaffney.bsky.social about it: www.scientificamerican.com/article/spac...
scientificamerican.com
The data center backlash comes for SpaceXAI’s Colossus
Dozens of temporary gas turbines are powering SpaceXAI’s expansion—and fights over permits and pollution
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences @pnas.org · 11/09/2026
One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “Recent high-severity wildfires in a dry-conifer landscape are unprecedented over five centuries and foretell future forest loss.” Read now: ow.ly/v1oR50ZM4BE For more trending articles, visit ow.ly/pH5050ZM4Aj.
Dry-conifer forest loss from high-severity fires in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico (1995–2023). (A) Photograph of dry-conifer forest from St. Peter’s Dome Lookout, facing south. (B) Repeat photograph showing the near-complete conifer forest loss (mortality and lack of regeneration) following two high-severity fires (1996 Dome Fire and 2011 Las Conchas Fire).
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
But using systems that are built on data theft, labor exploitation, and environmental degradation and sold in ways that devalue the expertise and labor of actual people is ... bad actually! Refusing to use them and urging others to do the same is the pro-social move here. >>
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Science Magazine @science.org · 08/09/2026
Duke University’s 850,000 plant specimens will move to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Herbarium. scim.ag/4cwMEX8
scim.ag
Massive herbarium merger rescues century-old plant collection
Duke University’s 850,000 specimens will move to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Zoë Schlanger @zoeschlanger.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Conifer needles live a long time, unlike deciduous leaves. A new paper finds they anticipate their shaded future, making shade-adapted needles even though they typically start their life in full sunlight. Great summary: www.botany.one/conifer-leav... And full paper: academic.oup.com/aob/advance-...
botany.one
Conifer leaves anticipate their shaded future
Densely packed needles along the shoots of evergreen conifers exhibit shade-acclimated photosynthetic characteristics even under full sunlight
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
“we believe that end times fascism should be seen as a twisted and sadistic form of climate-change adaptation. Now that the reality of planetary heating has become undeniable, all that is left to deny is the humanity of our fellow humans”
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Lars Brudvig @lars-brudvig.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
New from @ashishnerlekar.bsky.social @llseedsull.bsky.social me and many others: Grassland destruction causes shifts in plant traits that persist during recovery www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... eeb.msu.edu/news/why-anc...
eeb.msu.edu
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Botany One @botany.one · 25/08/2026
The brain does plant science, but the heart moves the body www.botany.one/the-brain-do... A survey of 421 plant biologists found the strongest recruiter for botany isn't argument. It’s contact. #Botany #PlantScience
botany.one
The brain does plant science, but the heart moves the body
A survey of 421 plant biologists found the strongest recruiter for botany isn't argument. It’s contact.
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Cole Donovan @colesci.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
This all greatly clarifies a senior OMB official's remarks from earlier this year when they said that all the R&D money would go to Defense. They weren't joking. DoD is now spending more than double the amount on R&D as the rest of the federal research ecosystem.
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Scientific American @sciam.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
The world’s oceans hit 21.10 degrees Celsius last Saturday, breaking a record set in 2024. And it's only going to get worse.
scientificamerican.com
Earth’s oceans just hit their hottest temperature ever recorded
The world’s oceans hit 21.10 degrees Celsius last Saturday, breaking a record set in 2024
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Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 24/08/2026
Scientists have recorded the highest temperature ever measured in the world’s oceans, as climate change combines with a powerful El Niño in the tropical Pacific
bloom.bg
Highest-Ever Ocean Temperature Measured as Super El Niño Forms
Scientists have recorded the highest temperature ever measured in the world’s oceans, as climate change combines with a powerful El Niño in the tropical Pacific.
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nick @myddling.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
This interview was really enlightening and I always find the insights of @jonathanmeiburg.bsky.social grounding during climate tumult. Many thanks to @aquariumdrunkard.com and @shearwaterband.bsky.social. Was a fun piece to write.
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Guardian US @us.theguardian.com · 21/08/2026
Novice gardeners James Reed McGuire and Crystal Fritz wanted to try something new when they moved out to the suburbs. Little did they know they were joining a nationwide movement
theguardian.com
How one American couple ditched their lawn and created a wildlife haven – and you could too
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Jada Fitch Illustration @jadafitch.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
My WARBLERS OF NORTH AMERICA poster is finally finished & signed copies are available in my Etsy shop! jadafitch.etsy.com The 18 x 24 inch art print showcases males & females of all 59 species of wood-warblers most commonly found across the continent. #warblers #birds #watercolor #natureart
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ClimateBook @climatebook.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Perhaps you'd also be interested in pondering this figure from a paper I was involved in with Peter Clarke, showing where we go out to 10000AD in the context of the past 20,000 years.
Temperature and CO2 for the next 10000 years
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Incredible chart here. The cows are drinking the river dry. Ag is 79% or was then; livestock is 55% of that.
nytimes.com
The Colorado River Is Shrinking. See What’s Using All the Water. (Published 2023)
Hint: It’s less about long showers and more about what’s for dinner.
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Ben Raderstorf @raders.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
This is one of those arguments that sounds like slopulism but is actually, if anything, understated. 56% of Colorado river water goes to GROWING FEED FOR LIVESTOCK IN THE DESERT.
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Lawrence Culver @lawrencecphd.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
“This gradual adjustment to a degraded environment has a name: environmental amnesia. "The real disaster we are witnessing today is not just the loss of biodiversity. It is also the incredible capacity we have for not remembering what it was like before.”
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Cambridge Skeptics @cambskeptics.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
While we can recall car windshields covered with dead insects after a drive, what do we know about wolves that once roamed the countryside in the Middle Ages, or salmon swimming in the Seine in the 19th century? Asks Valentine Faure. archive.ph/gU1bM www.lemonde.fr/en/environme...
lemonde.fr
Environmental amnesia: How we can't even remember the lost biodiversity of yore
While we can recall car windshields covered with dead insects after a drive, what do we know about wolves that once roamed the countryside in the Middle Ages, or salmon swimming in the Seine in the…
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Met4Cast @met4cast.net · 15/08/2026
Sub-surface ocean temperatures in the Pacific have now reached 9.96°C above average, significantly warmer than the previous record event in 1997. This El Niño continues to set new records. Nobody alive today has witnessed an event of this magnitude.
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Mary Williams @PlantTeaching @plantteaching.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Europe’s Great Rivers Are Dying. The Continent Is In for a Shock. Interesting, albeit depressing, article. Gift link. 👇 www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Europe’s Great Rivers Are Dying. The Continent Is In for a Shock. (Gift Article)
Climate change is beginning to tear up the old map of Europe’s power and wealth.
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Pablo Castro Sánchez-Bermejo @castretis.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Species’ traits, climatic niches or home ranges are naturally described as distributions in continuous spaces. In this new preprint we present a framework for measuring and partitioning diversity in these spaces using equivalent numbers and probability density functions doi.org/10.64898/202...
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Marc Kodack @ridden6570.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
‘Starwashing’: How space companies use the greenwashing playbook while engaging in environmentally damaging practice
theconversation.com
‘Starwashing’: How space companies use the greenwashing playbook while engaging in environmentally damaging practices
Orbital data centers, space habitats, mining the Moon – despite taking place in space, the practices many companies are imagining will still affect the Earth.
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Clean Energy Wire | CLEW @cleanenergywire.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Three-quarters of England in drought as summer’s fifth heatwave looms Four more regions given drought status, putting 27 million people under restrictions on water use
theguardian.com
Three-quarters of England in drought as summer’s fifth heatwave looms
Four more regions given drought status, putting 27 million people under restrictions on water use
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Clean Energy Wire | CLEW @cleanenergywire.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Nearly 70 percent of France under water restrictions amid record heat
france24.com
Nearly 70 percent of France under water restrictions amid record heat
Nearly 70 percent of France is now under water-use restrictions as successive heatwaves and severe drought intensify pressure on the country’s water supplies. Authorities said Monday that 67 of 101 departments…
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New Phytologist @newphyt.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
A single leaf may look like a simple patch of green, but to the microscopic life that inhabits it, it is a vast landscape divided into different worlds. english.cas.cn/newsroom/res... #PlantScience
english.cas.cn
Oak Leaves Harbor Distinct Microbial Worlds on Their Opposite Surfaces
css
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Dr. Thilina Surasinghe @thilinas.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Published in BioScience doi.org/10.1093/bios...
doi.org
BON in a Box: An Open and Collaborative Platform for Biodiversity Monitoring, Indicator Calculation, and Reporting
Abstract. The Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets ambitious goals to protect and restore biodive
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World Meteorological Organization @wmo-global.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
A single, centralized platform where you can see extreme and/or potentially high-impact weather, water, and climate events happening or forecast around the world? Check out the @WMO Severe Weather Information Centre, operated by @ObservatoryHK ➡️ severeweather.wmo.int
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 08/08/2026
‘Fearless and quietly astonishing’: the dragonfly that migrates further than any other insect
theguardian.com
‘Fearless and quietly astonishing’: the dragonfly that migrates further than any other insect
Wandering gliders are descended from some of the earliest known insects – and breed as one global population
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Dan Baldassarre @evornithology.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
AI is ruining everything ebird.org/news/threat-...
ebird.org
From Truth to Fake: The Threat of AI to Media Archives - eBird
As AI becomes commonplace, what you see in a photograph may no longer represent reality. Learn about how this impacts eBird and what you can do to help.
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Botanical Society of America @botsocamerica.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
We hope you enjoyed Chris Martine's BSA Incoming President's Special Lecture! We agree that plant people are what makes #Botany2026 (and the broader botanical community) so special! Here are our attendees' favorite things about plant people 💚🌿 #PlantPeopleFTW
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Katie Hinde @mammalssuck.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
"As extreme weather becomes more common and disruptive, the effects can impair relationships, interrupt routines and communication, and damage gathering places and the foundations of community traditions." theconversation.com/climate-chan...
theconversation.com
Climate change may be making us lonelier: How heat waves and extreme weather disrupt social connections everyone relies on
On extremely hot days and in the aftermath of storms, people tend to hole up inside. Losing festivals, traditions and gathering places can worsen that loneliness.
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CNN @cnn.com · 02/07/2026
Researchers say birds in Ukraine are weaving discarded fiber-optic drone cables into their nests, offering a striking glimpse of war's impact on nature.
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GBIF @gbif.org · 04/08/2026
👾 Level up your data skills with DataCamp! Thanks to our on-going partnership with #DataCampDonates, GBIF is proud to offer free licenses to biodiversity data users to explore courses hundreds of online courses such as Python, GitHub, data theory, SQL and Power BI. 🔗 gbif.link/datacamp2026
A rainbow beetle with GBIF and DataCamp logos
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The Associated Press @apnews.com · 04/08/2026
SpaceX shares are down by half from their June peak as investors worry Musk may have oversold them on its future prospects.
bit.ly
Musk likely to face tough questions during SpaceX's first earnings call as a public company
SpaceX shares are down by half from their June peak as investors worry Musk may have oversold them on its future prospects.
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
My editor asked me to write about what happened to summer:
theguardian.com
We launched a war on nature. Now we are in a climate warzone | Rebecca Solnit
Summer is not what it once was. We have been robbed of one of life’s great joys
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paulusthewoodgnome @paulusthewoodgnome.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
England received only 7% of the long-term average rainfall for July. Southern England, just 1%. Factoid: There has been a weather station in Kew Gardens for 155 years. This July was the first month ever to record 0mm of rain. Tomorrow, London will again hit 30C+ www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
July set to be driest on record for England and Wales after relentless heatwaves
Climate scientist urges better planning as southern England had just 1% of long-term average rainfall last month
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Elina Mäntylä @elinamantyla.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Li et al. Shorebird loss increases soil CO2 emissions in coastal wetlands under restoration www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #ornithology
sciencedirect.com
Shorebird loss increases soil CO2 emissions in coastal wetlands under restoration
Countries worldwide are increasingly adopting nature-based solutions (NbS) to tackle the challenges of global climate change. One recently proposed Nb…
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 31/07/2026
I used to do some work on the ethical use of satellite and drone imagery for aid and disaster response, and it is genuinely hard to express in words what a dangerous, stupid thing Google is doing by making it easy to use GenAI to create faked satellite imagery:
digitaldigging.org
How to plant a nuclear plant in Iran
The question is: what on earth is Google doing?
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Z. Jack Tseng @tsengzj.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Exhilarated to share a 2nd @science.org cover article this month from our lab @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social! A collaboration with US & Mexico colleagues on the role of a Mexican biogeographic holding pen in shaping the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI)(1/11) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Cover of Science magazine for July 30, 2026. Caption from Science reads: A three-dimensional rendering shows the land bridge connection between North and South America. Research on the fossil record of mammals in Mexico suggests that the geographic region acted as a biodiversity “holding pen” for 10 million years, buffering the pace of both northward and southward movements of mammal species leading up to the Great American Biotic Interchange.
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Mississippi Free Press @mississippifreepress.org · 27/07/2026
OPINION: "[A] growing concern is in this so-called 'AI race' to build so many data centers. Will there be a nationwide or global financial crash in the aftermath? In such a scenario, only a couple major players may be left standing," Andy Gipson writes.
buff.ly
Opinion | Data Centers and the AI Bubble Are Financial Risks for Mississippi
Andy Gipson writes about his concerns with the data center industry and the expectations he has for artificial intelligence companies going forward.
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Dan Baldassarre @evornithology.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Cool cool cool link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Closure of the Strait of Hormuz may trigger a bioinvasion super-spreader event - Biological Invasions
The ongoing conflicts in the Middle East are causing substantial humanitarian, economic, and geopolitical impacts and disrupting global trade. While the human and economic effects remain the focus of ...
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
In recent weeks, there has been a remarkable surge in large, intense, fast-moving, and unfortunately in many cases destructive/deadly wildfires in multiple Northern Hemisphere regions spanning a wide range of climates & ecologies, but they all share one key commonality. [Thread]
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Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner.org · 25/07/2026
Admirable clarity @science.org
The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies who can help them get elected and to steer yet more money and more power back into their hands.

That’s it. That’s the story
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 25/07/2026
Whew, the editors of @science.org are getting real.
science.org
The Assault On Science Funding Continues
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