Azharul Alam
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azhar06.bsky.social
Azharul Alam
@azhar06.bsky.social
Ecology of 🌿 and 🔥I Bangladeshi expat living in Aotearoa New Zealand I Cricket and football enthusiast
Pinned
Very excited to share our latest flammability paper published in @journalofecology.bsky.social that examined fuel architecture-flammability relationships and the relative influence of architectural and leaf traits on shoot flammability variation.
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Fuel architecture influences interspecific variation in shoot flammability, but not as much as leaf traits
This study addresses a key knowledge gap by demonstrating the influence of fuel architecture on shoot flammability and improves understanding of why species with certain architecture (e.g. highly bra...
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Reposted by Azharul Alam
🌲🌡️How do forests stay cool despite #heatwaves? Charlotte Grossiord (WSL/EPFL) receives an ERC #grant of just under 2 million Swiss francs to research how European #forests cope with “atmospheric drought” and which tree species are especially resistant to heat and #drought. www.wsl.ch/en/news/how-...
How do forests keep their cool? A 1.89 million Swiss Francs question.
WSL forest ecologist Charlotte Grossiord receives an ERC Consolidator Grant to understand forest resilience to climate change.
www.wsl.ch
December 9, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
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
December 5, 2025 at 4:06 AM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
How social–ecological #networks can improve our understanding and management of #biologicalinvasions – new paper by Fiona Rickowski et al. now published in #BioScience doi.org/10.1093/bios... #InvasiveSpecies #nonnative #pests #conservation #alienspecies
December 4, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
I'm very sad to say William Bond, of the University of Cape Town & Fellow of the Royal Society (@royalsociety.org ), has passed away. It is a great loss. He was an enthusiastic ecologist and a critical thinker. I learned a lot, and I still had a lot to learn from him. RIP. 😢

🧪🌎🔥🌿🌳🪴🌐 #PlantScience
December 4, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
Reposted by Azharul Alam
Plants for space exploration and Earth applications

Fountain et al.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#plantscience
November 26, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/i... Grim but very good story by @kiwifarah.bsky.social on how absolutely awful introduced predators are. More trapping needed.
They're 'killing machines', wiping out native species. So why is it so hard to fight back against feral cats?
Feral: How millions of feral cats are creating a 'bloodbath' across our native heartland.
www.rnz.co.nz
November 16, 2025 at 7:57 PM
Increased nitrogen deposition may facilitate an invasive plant species through interfering plant–pathogen interactions - Lin - 2025 - Journal of Ecology - Wiley Online Library besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Increased nitrogen deposition may facilitate an invasive plant species through interfering plant–pathogen interactions
These findings imply that elevated nitrogen deposition may enhance the invasiveness of A. philoxeroides by influencing the interactions between the plant and its pathogens.
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 9, 2025 at 5:11 AM
The path toward a unified trait space: synthesizing plant functional diversity - Carmona - 2025 - New Phytologist - Wiley Online Library nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
The path toward a unified trait space: synthesizing plant functional diversity
Plant traits capture the remarkable diversity of ecological strategies, yet synthesizing this complexity into coherent frameworks remains challenging. Trait spaces have significantly advanced this ef....
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 9, 2025 at 5:10 AM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
A new study says only 3% of Earth’s land remains “untouched.” We’ve been editing the planet for millennia as a result of pushing animals/plants to extinction….reshaping entire continents.
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/h...
Humans Have Altered 97 Percent of Earth's Land Through Habitat and Species Loss
The study, which did not include Antarctica, also identified opportunities to restore up to 20 percent of land ecosystems
www.smithsonianmag.com
November 2, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
When invasive species become part of our culture – our study on the process of cultural integration of #invasivespecies and its implications, now published in #npjBiodiversity www.nature.com/articles/s44... #biologicalinvasions #alienspecies #nonnative #invasive #pests #conservation
June 26, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
How the #arts and #science can jointly protect #nature – our new article on building synergies between #art and #biodiversity #conservation now published in in Front. Ecol. Environ. @esajournals.bsky.social esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
October 31, 2025 at 7:56 AM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
Final version now available #AmJBot @botsocamerica.bsky.social

Sequoia & Sequoiadendron: Two paleoendemic megatrees with different adaptive responses to high-severity fires
bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Plants are not adapted to fire, but to fire regimes
🧪🌍🔥🌳🌿🪴 #ecoevo #wildfire
Sequoia sempervirens (redwood; world's tallest tree) is well adapted to high-intensity crown fires (eg 2020), but Sequoiadendron giganteum (giant sequoia; world's most massive tree) is adapted to surface fires only!
bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🧪🌍🔥🌿🌳🔥🪴 @botsocamerica.bsky.social
November 1, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
Pine plantations burn more severely & recover more slowly than other vegetation types. This is observed using the forest map (L) or the forest inventory (R), Spain
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
jgpausas.blogs.uv.es/2025/10/16/p...
🧪🌎🔥🍁🌳🔥 wildfire @jappliedecology.bsky.social
October 16, 2025 at 9:44 AM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
“Study: Wildfire smoke could drive tens of thousands of deaths each year by 2050” www.axios.com/local/portla... - @axios.com

#AirQuality #Health #Wildfires #WildfireSmoke
Oregon could see 800+ excess deaths yearly from smoke by 2050
A new study suggests wildfire smoke could drive deadly surge in U.S. mortality
www.axios.com
September 24, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
Drought sensitivity in eucalypts is climate‐adapted and consistently influenced by wood density - great work by PhD student Victoria Perez-Martinez at @deannicolle1.bsky.social Currency Creek Arboretum during the Tinderbox drought

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Drought sensitivity is climate‐adapted and consistently influenced by wood density and maximum height in eucalypts
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
September 9, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
Tuned in yesterday for an impassioned plea and delightful talk by @john-m-dwyer.bsky.social on how dry rainforest trees, including our beloved vine thickets, could be used to revegetate Brisbane's streets in the lead up to the 2032 Olympics.

Lots of neat data on temp. niches!
September 4, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
I'm so very proud of Niger Sultana and the first chapter of her PhD thesis!!!

She had so many challenges and came through them all with flying colours.

With @loraxcate.bsky.social @azhar06.bsky.social et al.

in @botsocamerica.bsky.social

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Testing key tenets of pyro‐ecophysiology: Indicators of drought response in relation to shoot flammability
Premise Relationships between flammability and drought tolerance influence vegetation dynamics during fires. A goal of the emerging subdiscipline of pyro-ecophysiology is to identify ecophysiologica.....
bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
August 29, 2025 at 6:32 AM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
1/ Invasional meltdown is a popular but nebulous concept in invasion ecology. It involves multiple direct & indirect mechanisms, yet it is rarely studied beyond simple pairwise facilitations.

In a new paper, we expand the concept & offer testable hypotheses: redpath-staff.mcgill.ca/ricciardi/Ri...
July 31, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
“The amount of spring rain is one of the best indicators of when you’ll hit the more severe part of the fire season,” Max Moritz @ucanr.edu said. “But the warming trend still plays a role because... plants are drying faster than in the past.”
www.independent.com/2025/08/18/f...
Fire Season Is Starting Earlier Thanks to Climate Change, New Study Finds
Study co-authored by a UC Santa Barbara professor sheds light on timing, size, and speed of recent wildfires, including the Gifford Fire.
www.independent.com
August 19, 2025 at 11:21 PM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
‘Pray for rain’: wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to
Canada’s response to the extreme weather threat is being upended as the traditional epicentre of the blazes shifts as the climate warms
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
‘Pray for rain’: wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to
Canada’s response to the extreme weather threat is being upended as the traditional epicentre of the blazes shifts as the climate warms
www.theguardian.com
August 18, 2025 at 2:28 AM
Reposted by Azharul Alam
We need an "In Bed" rule for extreme weather headlines, except add "Thanks to Big Oil's Avoidable Pollution."

‘We’re being cooked alive:’ Europe burns as temperatures soar above 100 degrees Thanks to Big Oil's Avoidable Pollution:
‘We’re being cooked alive:’ Europe burns as temperatures soar above 100 degrees | CNN
Europe is on track for its worst wildfire season on record as swaths of the continent – including France, Spain, Albania, Portugal and Greece — battle raging, deadly fires as temperature soar above 10...
www.cnn.com
August 13, 2025 at 10:19 PM