Neil Pederson
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yellowbuckeye.bsky.social
Neil Pederson
@yellowbuckeye.bsky.social

I study old-growth forests and climate change from trees to regions and seasons to centuries. A colleague termed it RetroEcology - https://broadleafpapers.wordpress.com/

Love music in 3/4, 6/8, 5/4, 11, & other offbeat signatures (no real pun intended) .. more

Environmental science 60%
Geography 19%

Reposted by Neil Pederson

Thanks to all who came out for our vigil on such short notice. It was a really beautiful gathering. Thanks also @jamieeldridgema.bsky.social for stopping by and sharing some words of encouragement, we appreciate the work you are doing to support our community. #ICEout @maindivisible.bsky.social
After the US admin cancelled the $B Climate + Weather Disaster dataset, @climatecentral.org hired the scientists who ran it and set it back up.

Now the 2025 numbers are in: it's 3rd highest year on record and highest year w/o land-falling hurricanes.

More: www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...
New: we've obtained material explaining how an ICE surveillance system, called Webloc, works. Draw shape on a map, see all phones available there, follow them home. All without warrant

“This is a very dangerous tool in the hands of an out-of-control agency.” www.404media.co/inside-ices-...
Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods
404 Media has obtained material that explains how Tangles and Webloc, two surveillance systems ICE recently purchased, work. Webloc can track phones without a warrant and follow their owners home or t...
www.404media.co
The deadline for graduate student applications for paleoCAMP 2026 (Paleoclimate Training in Climate Archives, Models, and Proxies) summer school is this Friday, January 9th! paleoCAMP is completely free for all students selected to attend paleoclimate.camp/apply
Application — paleoCAMP
paleoclimate.camp
This story details that the teen they detained for six months was just about to graduate high school early at the age of 16.

Definitely the kind of irredeemable criminal monster we don’t want in America.
Meriden teen is back home for Christmas, after six months in detention at an ICE facility
The Meriden community welcomes home a teen who was detained for six months at a federal ICE facility.
www.ctpublic.org

Reposted by Neil Pederson

If y'all need a script, here you go. You can call 202.224.3121 and ask for your representative. The script is included below in this thread as well.

eocampaign1.com/web-version?...
International law won't constrain Trump's thirst for oil. But every solar panel that goes up makes crude reserves that much less valuable
billmckibben.substack.com/p/just-possi...
Just possibly it's the oil?
A solar panel is the new peace sign
billmckibben.substack.com

Also, a while ago, at least here in the eastern U.S., I heard people talk about how 5-needle Pines had weak or inconsistent relations to climate. Not sure if that is the case here, but it follows (5 needle Pines have been used for climate recons, so not 100% the case)
Can I suggest my own? 😂
When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History & America's Black Botanical Legacy. I explore 7 trees & the cotton shrub--the science of them, personal/family history related to them & their intersections with Black history.
It's out Jan 20, 2026
us.macmillan.com/books/978125...
When Trees Testify
This stunning cultural and personal reclamation of Black history and Black botanical mastery offers up lessons from the natural world shared through the stor...
us.macmillan.com
There's an interesting special section in the NYT today on the future of NYC, including the climate risks.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Notable is this graph of local changes in extreme rainfall:

I had to play with the colors, yes, but to try to get the color of the Sunrise to the right of the far hour as blood red as possible. I don’t recall a Sunrise of this color
#AGU25 folks, there is a rapid- response town hall TODAY on the #NCAR dismantling at 1 pm, La Nouvelle Orleans ballroom C (per an AGU media advisory)
I've updated the opportunities part of my website with fresh openings for researchers interested in climate and vegetation science, archaeology, history, and geography at all levels from undergraduate intern to postdoc. Take a look! jedokaplan.github.io/opportunities/
Work with me!
jedokaplan.github.io
The Trump administration announced plans to close NCAR, citing its role in climate change research. But three officials told CNN they believe this is really part of the White House's plan to punish CO governor and free Tina Peters.

WH did not deny the connection.

www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/c...
The Trump admin is closing a critical climate research center. Officials believe it’s really trying to punish a governor | CNN
The Trump administration announced plans Tuesday to shut down the National Center for Atmospheric Research, an organization responsible for improved weather models to tools that aid hurricane safety. ...
www.cnn.com
🚨 What if evolution is the ”law”… and networks are the machines that do the work?

In this paper (just published) I try to formalize how living systems are non-equilibrium, information-processing, adaptive matter. With a great biological flavor! 🧪🌐🌍🧬🦠

👉 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

🧵 1/

Reposted by Neil Pederson

Full of clear graphs, such as this one on the energy consumption of new cars. Battery electric consumption mode is one third of that of combustion engines.

PHEVs combine the worst of both worlds: higher electric consumption than BEVs and higher fuel consumption than “regular” fossil fuel vehicles.
As we move into the final days of the year, 2025 has just overtaken 2022 as warmest year-to-date for Central England.

Given the forecast, it looks likely that 2025 will end up being the warmest calendar year for this region since records began in 1659.

The top 3 warmest will be 2022, 2023 & 2025.

Reposted by Neil Pederson

A tiny trial in New York has shown that personalized mRNA vaccines can provoke massive, lasting immune responses against pancreatic cancer, even as sweeping federal cuts now threaten the fragile labs required to produce them.
theintellectualistofficial.substack.com/p/a-breakthr...
In Mediterranean pine reforestation, trees acclimate to warming and drought by shifting carbon below ground aka optimal partitioning theory. New paper @jappliedecology.bsky.social lead by @ajpelu.bsky.social using #RemoteSensing and #dendroecology doi.org/10.1111/1365...
Diderma sp slime mold. Northwest Territories, Canada. #slime #myxo #fungifriends while #hiking
Very cool work by Bryan Black here at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research establishing the exact date of the Electron Mudflow in the Puget Sound metropolitan area: 'Forest-floor burial in 1507 by the largest Mount Rainier lahar of the past millennium'
doi.org/10.1130/G537...
Forest-floor burial in 1507 by the largest Mount Rainier lahar of the past millennium | Geology | GeoScienceWorld
New dating of lahar-killed trees underscores volcano hazards in the Puget Sound metropolitan area. Beginning as a landslide from the west flank of Mount
doi.org
Calling on all forest disturbance experts: Please consider contributing to our study on global forest disturbance change, and help resolve the nuances of changing forest disturbance regimes. More details and survey here: www.lss.ls.tum.de/edfm/disturb...
PROGRAMS CUT: The University of Nebraska Board of Regents vote to eliminate four academic programs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

From Zach Wendling buff.ly/Zw4giMP
‘This hurts’: Regents approve shuttering four academic programs at UNL • Nebraska Examiner
The University of Nebraska Board of Regents voted to eliminate four academic programs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
nebraskaexaminer.com
When global temperatures shot up by ~6°C about 56 million years ago, plants were unable to thrive

The reduced ability of vegetation & soils to capture & store carbon may have kept temperatures elevated for >100,000 years

Today Earth is warming ~10 times faster than it did 56 million years ago
56 million years ago, the Earth suddenly heated up – and many plants stopped working properly
It could be a sign of what’s to come.
theconversation.com
BREAKING: Trump administration plans to end prison rape protections for trans & intersex people, memo says. A DOJ memo says certain standards under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) do not align with Trump’s Jan. 20 anti-trans executive order, @byadamrhodes.bsky.social reports.
Trump administration plans to end prison rape protections for trans and intersex people
A Department of Justice memo says certain standards under the Prison Rape Elimination Act do not align with Trump’s executive order
prismreports.org

Reposted by Neil Pederson

No matter what the relationship is between the football program budget and funding the rest of the university, can't the high-level admins who made these coach buyout deals see how insulting and demoralizing they are for faculty and staff being told their institutions face budget crises?

Reposted by Neil Pederson

Spatiotemporal Variability of Dendroecological Indicators in Pedunculate Oak (Quercus robur L.) Tree‐Rings Across Europe in Relation to Species Distribution Models

🔗
buff.ly
“Overall, these findings suggest that the value of natural history collections as global research infrastructure is eroding due to decreased collecting of specimen data across species, locations, and time.“ doi.org/10.1038/s414... Interesting analysis based on @gbif.org data.
Global sampling decline erodes science potential of natural history collections - Nature Communications
Natural history collections hold over two billion specimens representing Earth’s biodiversity, but their scientific value depends on continued specimen collection and digitisation. This study demonstr...
doi.org
I currently have three funded PhD positions available for applications. Links for more info and to apply are in my profile page: research-portal.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/t...