Jeff Atkins
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Jeff Atkins
@atkinsjeff.bsky.social
Assistant Professor @ Virginia Commonwealth University; displaced Forest Service scientist; ecosystem ecologist with a remote sensing problem; standard time apologist; lover of loud, noisy, weird music.
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
🚨Paper alert🚨

Check out Beibei Zhang's latest work out today @royalsocietypublishing.org where we track the 3D structural recovery of Australia's Great Western Woodlands following wildfires over a chronosequence spanning half a millenia!🌳🛰️🔥🧪

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
November 26, 2025 at 9:51 AM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
✨ Paper spotlight ✨

(🧵 1/7) Moving from an experiment- to an observation-dominated era in global change impact research on vegetation
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
November 24, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Cool plot
Shared ancestry outweighs environment in structuring global seagrass traits

Bosch et al.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
November 24, 2025 at 10:09 PM
*fewer
Linda McMahon: "The states will have less requirements because more money will go in block grants to the states ... I have called for a hard reset of education because we have failed our students."
November 24, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
We're currently looking for new Associate Editors to join our Editorial Board! 🌎🧪

If you're interested in contributing to the publishing landscape, check out the link below 👇
www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/appl...
November 24, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
Hi all, I'll try to check in more often. Always looking for:

1) paid job/research opportunities to share with undergrads
2) cool ecophys/ecology stuff
3) connections for research & collaboration

I'm also reachable by my professional email, which is on my webpage: maryheskel.com
Plant Ecophysiology @ Macalester College – Studying leaves to landscapes in a changing world
maryheskel.com
November 11, 2024 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
November 22, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
This great thread makes a point I've been trying to convey for years. Calling all data-driven prediction or decision software "AI" is a huge gift to LLM hypemen, who want people to believe, incorrectly, that LLM data centers are crucial for solar forecasting or operating buildings and power grids.
Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪
November 22, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
Oh wait! Figured out how to get rid of the garbage Gemini button in Chrome:

- Right-click
- Unpin

Gone!
November 22, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
The President of the United States just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed. "HANG THEM", he posted.

If you're a person of influence in this country and you haven't picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side.
November 20, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Peter from "If Books Could Kill" voice.... freakanomics!
“Had UChicago simply matched the market, its endowment would be $6.45 billion larger today—more than enough to repay its entire debt.”

Don’t understand why these people aren’t simply fired
The boys at UChicago smirking right now because they proved once again, they're breaking new ground and Harvard follows after the fact.

stanfordreview.org/uchicago-los...
November 22, 2025 at 4:23 AM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
"Postdoctoral Research Scholar - Forest Biotechnology Group at NC State University, Raleigh, NC, USA"

Read more here: https://arabidopsis.org/news/jobs/view?file=20251121_NCSU.pdf

#PlantSciJobs
November 21, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
Crowd sourcing from the Bluesky hive mind: what are these patches with what look like ducts inside that I'm seeing on silver maple? They don't occur in every ring, rather sporadically. @yellowbuckeye.bsky.social @l-tulipifera.bsky.social #dendro
November 21, 2025 at 9:46 PM
This actually gets more intriguing the more I think on it
You ever just sit down and realize that the rise of 21st century fascism is capital's answer to climate change?
November 21, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Bad news. Very bad news.
The White House just blasted this out under the headline "Good News You May Have Missed"
November 20, 2025 at 12:56 AM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
New paper out! 🌲 We explore hyperspectral indicators of vegetation vitality across scales—from individual trees to entire forests using drone & aircraft data. Insights into tree health, water availability & structure.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Hyperspectral indicators of vegetation vitality across scales: From trees to forests
Remotely sensed vegetation indices (VIs) are used as indicators of vegetation vitality and warning signals that indicate stress responses at the leaf …
www.sciencedirect.com
November 17, 2025 at 9:55 AM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
Temperate deciduous forests are found in three global regions. We compared taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity of forest plant communities among these regions in a new Ecography article led by Javier Loidi and Josep Padullés Cubino:
doi.org/10.1002/ecog...
@ecography.bsky.social
November 14, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
We published! I am very excited to share this story. Our study shows that Taxus mortality is not caused by competition. Many deaths began with mechanical damage from fallen trees more than a decade ago, starting a long decline that led to recent mortality.
Ku and Lutz (2025) doi.org/10.1186/s137...
Death and Taxus: the contribution of mechanical damage to the multiple factors associated with Taxus brevifolia mortality - Ecological Processes
Background Recent increases in tree mortality are often attributed to climate, but climate extremes may just be the last of many stressors that have unfolded over many years resulting in tree death. P...
doi.org
November 14, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
The new 2025 Global Carbon Budget finds that fossil fuel emissions will reach a new high in 2025. Total CO2 emissions (including land use) remain flat at 2024 levels.

While the land sink is up from 2024, carbon sinks are weakening: www.carbonbrief.org/...
November 13, 2025 at 3:25 AM
Eloquent rant.
There's an exclusive, closed-to-media MAHA summit tomorrow. Here's the full agenda I was leaked

In attendance will be JD Vance, RFK Jr, Bhattacharya, Makary, actor Russell Brand (who is facing rape and sexual assault charges), and dozens of other MAHA influencers and people in Trump's orbit
November 12, 2025 at 12:38 AM
Reposted by Jeff Atkins
American politics makes a lot more sense when you realize that the GOP is afraid of pissing off the GOP base, and the Dems are afraid of pissing off the GOP base, but neither party is afraid of pissing off the Dem base.
March 14, 2025 at 10:24 PM
Bake Off this season has taught me that over the pond they are going sleeveless all the time and have completely given up on buttoning the buttons on shirts.
November 9, 2025 at 2:06 PM
The idea that feminism in any form ruined the workplace is ridiculously absurd. Feminism, and for that matter equity across all gender and sexual identities, is a huge net positive for guys too. Strict gender roles and dichotomies handcuff everyone.
I guess not being allowed to sexually harass people at work really killed the vibe.
November 8, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Finally getting around to playing Starfield and I now have confirmation Bethesda makes one game. Different settings, different characters, one game. A good game. But one game.
November 8, 2025 at 2:42 PM
These quotes from Watson get wilder and wilder.
Scientific breakthroughs are rarely unique; someone else would’ve made them soon enough. But when prominent scientists cause harm, that harm isn’t inevitable; the world might simply have been better had the harm not been inflicted.
liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/j...
James Watson in his own words
“Some anti-Semitism is justified” “Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you’re not going to hire them” “Japan should be bombed for d…
liorpachter.wordpress.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:15 PM