Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Scott Winton

Naomi Oreskes @naomioreskes.bsky.social · Aug 1

Looking for a way to do something? read the EPA reversal of the endangerment finding, and then file a public comment explaining why it is false, wrong, misguided. Your comment can be scientific, legal, or just about what the American people want..
Reversal: www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

Regulations.gov

www.regulations.gov

9 170 230

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Jun 6

Nice brief from @pewresearch.org about the ecological and economic importance of peatlands in the US.

www.pew.org/en/research-...

These are some of the most valuable ecosystems and there's still so much we don't know about them.

Peatlands Play a Vital Ecological and Economic Role in the U.S.

Peatlands are wetland ecosystems that store more carbon than any other natural habitat. By removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trapping carbon from dead organic matter in waterlogged condi...

www.pew.org

1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Jun 2

Happy world peatlands day!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Idw...

Venice Agreement Poem Read by Peatland Guardians Around the Globe

YouTube video by The Venice Agreement

www.youtube.com

1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · May 15

My article is trending at Environmental Research Letters!

Retweet and help it trend more ;)

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

1

Reposted by Scott Winton

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · May 9

This is an absolute disaster. If we don't stop this, they will turn NSF into a pawn of the Trump administration. There will be no research on climate, biodiversity, or anything that isn't eugenics or AI or how to more efficiently destroy the planet for profit.

This cannot be allowed to happen.

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

www.science.org

12 480 900

Reposted by Scott Winton

Jeffrey Mervis @policyhound.bsky.social · May 8

Things are going from bad to worse at NSF; www.science.org/content/arti...

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

www.science.org

8 130 210

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · May 2

Just went to an amazing seminar by @weatherwest.bsky.social at @ucscscicomm.bsky.social . This guy is a national treasure. Be sure to give him a follow if you experience weather and climate in the US west

1

Reposted by Scott Winton

Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · Apr 20

Yall wanna hear something extremely embarrassing? Before Trump’s election, a bunch of academics who lumbered rightward after being criticized by the left (Pinker, Dawkins, Krauss) wrote essays for a book that is coming out in July about the threats to academia from the left.

YALL, THE TITLE!!

400 1.4K 9.4K

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

And UCSC just released a great lay summary of the work!
📰 news.ucsc.edu/2025/04/colo...

Thanks for reading — and if you're into tropical ecology, carbon, or conservation, this one's for you. 💚

Colombia’s peatlands could be a crucial tool to fight climate change. But first we have to find them.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Scott Winton conducted three years of extensive fieldwork to develop the first data-driven map of both newly documented and predicted peatlands across Colo...

news.ucsc.edu

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

There’s more to come: new studies on GHG fluxes, threats & conservation needs, and a deep dive into the white-sand ecosystems.

But this first paper lays the foundation: what these peatlands are and why they matter.
📖 Open access: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Widespread carbon-dense peatlands in the Colombian lowlands - IOPscienceSearch

Widespread carbon-dense peatlands in the Colombian lowlands, Winton, R Scott, Benavides, Juan C, Mendoza, Edmundo, Uhde, Antje, Hastie, Adam, Honorio Coronado, Eurídice N, Hernandez Ortega, Andres Giovanny, Paukku, Stella, Mullins, Bailey, del Aguila Pasquel, Jhon, Aymard-Corredor, Gerardo A, Baker, Tim R, Draper, Freddie C, Flores Llampazo, Gerardo, Herrera, Rafael, Phillips, Oliver L, Reyna Huaymacari, José Manuel, ter Steege, Hans, Stropp, Juliana, Lawson, Ian T, Gallego-Sala, Angela V, Boom, Arnoud, Wehrli, Bernhard, Hoyt, Alison M

iopscience.iop.org

1 1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

Also grateful for the generous support that made this work possible:
🤝 @Stanford's King Center (@KingCenterStan) & Alison Hoyt
🇨🇭 Bernhard Wehrli, @ETH_en, @EawagResearch & the Swiss National Science Foundation
🐌 My new home @UCSC

🙏🌍

1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

Mapping was led by Antje Uhde (MPI Jena), whose JGR Biogeosciences companion paper also dropped this week — it’s the first chapter of her dissertation. Check it out:
🔗 agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Mapping Peatland Distribution and Quantifying Peatland Below‐Ground Carbon Stocks in Colombia's Eastern Lowlands

We mapped between 7,371 and 36,238 km2 of peat in the Eastern Colombian lowlands at a 95% confidence interval The mapped peatland extent translates to 0.6–4.22 Pg of below-ground carbon stocks in...

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

This was only possible thanks to a team of incredible collaborators. Especially the Colombian scientists:
Prof. Juan Carlos Benavides
Edmundo Mendoza
Andrés Hernández

And our local Colombian NGO partner, Fundación Horizonte Verde

1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

Over 4 years, we collected 130 meters of peat cores, surveyed 51 forest plots, processed 1,000+ samples, and built a custom mapping model to estimate peatland area, depth, and carbon stocks across the region.

1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

And perhaps the most unexpected? White-sand peatlands in Guainía — so unusual we had to invent a new term to describe them.

1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

The real breakthrough came near the town of Puerto Lleras in Meta. I was living nearby at the time, and this find opened the floodgates — soon we were locating peatlands in Guaviare, Vaupés, Caquetá, even the Llanos.

1 1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

But models hinted they should exist. And they were sort of right — peatlands are widespread — but the models were also terrible at pinpointing them. The first few months, we mostly found mineral soils and disappointment.

1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

When I started this project, almost nothing had been documented about Colombia’s lowland peatlands. Conflict had made access to remote areas risky. And with so much biodiversity to study, carbon-rich wetlands weren’t top of the list for field researchers.

1

Scott Winton @rswamper.bsky.social · Apr 16

Thrilled to finally share my new paper in Environmental Research Letters on Colombia’s lowland peatlands — ecosystems that store vast amounts of carbon, were almost unknown, and are now newly mapped thanks to years of fieldwork. 🌍🌿

🧵👇

1 1 4