Joe Levy
@colddirt.bsky.social
permafrost & planetary geomorphologist, assoc. prof of Earth & Env. Geosciences @colgateuniv, linker of climate change to landscape evolution, ice storyteller
Be cool like a Michigan elementary/middle sticker contest winner! Go vote!
www.michigan.gov/sos/election...
www.michigan.gov/sos/election...
November 4, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Be cool like a Michigan elementary/middle sticker contest winner! Go vote!
www.michigan.gov/sos/election...
www.michigan.gov/sos/election...
Particularly lovely braid bars in the emriver flume this morning for #SedimentSaturday and Family Weekend at @colgate.edu ⚒️🧪
November 1, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Particularly lovely braid bars in the emriver flume this morning for #SedimentSaturday and Family Weekend at @colgate.edu ⚒️🧪
One of my new favorite moments @colgate.edu was getting invited to judge a Fake Rock competition this week in the first year seminar “Fakes: Deception, Illusion, & Misdirection.” The course is all about illusions, art, and what counts as real. ⚒️🧪 🌎🎨
October 1, 2025 at 1:05 PM
One of my new favorite moments @colgate.edu was getting invited to judge a Fake Rock competition this week in the first year seminar “Fakes: Deception, Illusion, & Misdirection.” The course is all about illusions, art, and what counts as real. ⚒️🧪 🌎🎨
Oreos, cookies, and frosting in lab? It must be clay minerals day in Seds. ⚒️🧪
September 4, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Oreos, cookies, and frosting in lab? It must be clay minerals day in Seds. ⚒️🧪
I think I figured out why my dataloggers stopped telemetering. The playa they were on decided to spend some more time as a lake. ⚒️🧪
August 21, 2025 at 2:29 PM
I think I figured out why my dataloggers stopped telemetering. The playa they were on decided to spend some more time as a lake. ⚒️🧪
I couldn’t resist looking at the gage data. The Vance family bump is a small plateau on Aug 2. So it’s smaller than rainstorm related pulses on the river. But still a classic example of ruling class humans who are used to exerting their will over people trying to also rule nature. Earth dissents.
August 9, 2025 at 3:42 PM
I couldn’t resist looking at the gage data. The Vance family bump is a small plateau on Aug 2. So it’s smaller than rainstorm related pulses on the river. But still a classic example of ruling class humans who are used to exerting their will over people trying to also rule nature. Earth dissents.
Fun and games with #drone ortho-images. Here's three weeks or so of #Antarctic water track wetlands expanding during the '24-25 austral summer. The gif runs forwards then backwards to help spot change. You can see which way time's moving by looking at the shrinking snowbanks at right.
July 21, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Fun and games with #drone ortho-images. Here's three weeks or so of #Antarctic water track wetlands expanding during the '24-25 austral summer. The gif runs forwards then backwards to help spot change. You can see which way time's moving by looking at the shrinking snowbanks at right.
Wow, poster putty is a lot stronger in Europe than it is in the US.
July 11, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Wow, poster putty is a lot stronger in Europe than it is in the US.
It’s not “costs” and “savings,” @nytimes.com. It’s “forfeiting the revenue the government needs to its work” and “abandonment of the needy and the future.”
Snuck in there is also expansion of a police state, of course. But it just ain’t “costs” and “savings.”
Snuck in there is also expansion of a police state, of course. But it just ain’t “costs” and “savings.”
June 30, 2025 at 11:56 AM
It’s not “costs” and “savings,” @nytimes.com. It’s “forfeiting the revenue the government needs to its work” and “abandonment of the needy and the future.”
Snuck in there is also expansion of a police state, of course. But it just ain’t “costs” and “savings.”
Snuck in there is also expansion of a police state, of course. But it just ain’t “costs” and “savings.”
Putting together some #drone orthoimages from this past year's #Antarctic fieldwork. I noticed an oblique image in the set (all the mapping shots are nadir). Team dronie! Very RHPC: "And crawling on the planet's face, some insects called the human race. Lost in time and lost in space...and meaning."
June 29, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Putting together some #drone orthoimages from this past year's #Antarctic fieldwork. I noticed an oblique image in the set (all the mapping shots are nadir). Team dronie! Very RHPC: "And crawling on the planet's face, some insects called the human race. Lost in time and lost in space...and meaning."
Um, @nytimes.com, Leo IV, who was born in Rome in the year 790 CE, was probably not the first American pontiff. Numeracy (and Roman numeralcy) matters.
June 12, 2025 at 12:54 PM
Um, @nytimes.com, Leo IV, who was born in Rome in the year 790 CE, was probably not the first American pontiff. Numeracy (and Roman numeralcy) matters.
Optimism is submitting new proposals to the 2025 NSF call for research projects requiring Antarctic fieldwork. Advocacy is reminding my senators’ offices that US scientists can’t be leaders in polar #geoscience without funding. Polar environmental change affects all Americans. #StandUpForScience
June 3, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Optimism is submitting new proposals to the 2025 NSF call for research projects requiring Antarctic fieldwork. Advocacy is reminding my senators’ offices that US scientists can’t be leaders in polar #geoscience without funding. Polar environmental change affects all Americans. #StandUpForScience
Exploring Lava River Cave outside of Flagstaff with first and second year @colgate.edu Earth & Environmental #Geosciences students. It’s a truly amazing lava tube and a great bunch of inquisitive people to geologize with! 🧪⚒️
May 12, 2025 at 3:57 AM
Exploring Lava River Cave outside of Flagstaff with first and second year @colgate.edu Earth & Environmental #Geosciences students. It’s a truly amazing lava tube and a great bunch of inquisitive people to geologize with! 🧪⚒️
Commercial satellite data hosted & distributed by the @polargeospatial.bsky.social has been a mainstay of my #NSFFunded research--letting us see a changing #cryosphere in near real time. The stoppage of NSF renewal funding hurts science, slows discovery, & makes us vulnerable to polar hazards.
May 6, 2025 at 1:13 AM
Commercial satellite data hosted & distributed by the @polargeospatial.bsky.social has been a mainstay of my #NSFFunded research--letting us see a changing #cryosphere in near real time. The stoppage of NSF renewal funding hurts science, slows discovery, & makes us vulnerable to polar hazards.
How do folks feel about this #datavis from @nytimes.com? Dark is high cloud cover; bright is low. I did a double-take when I saw it an was briefly excited to go look up--except I know it's cloudy in central NY where I am. Surely dark = low magnitude when you're mapping. Also dark = night sky?
May 5, 2025 at 11:38 PM
How do folks feel about this #datavis from @nytimes.com? Dark is high cloud cover; bright is low. I did a double-take when I saw it an was briefly excited to go look up--except I know it's cloudy in central NY where I am. Surely dark = low magnitude when you're mapping. Also dark = night sky?
Come find fault with our students! I mean, come find faults *with* our students. Colgate Earth and Environmental Geosciences is seeking a Visiting Assistant Professor in Structural Geology. Review starts May 16.
apply.interfolio.com/167020 NB: No interesting structures in the photo, just seds. 🧪⚒️
apply.interfolio.com/167020 NB: No interesting structures in the photo, just seds. 🧪⚒️
April 25, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Come find fault with our students! I mean, come find faults *with* our students. Colgate Earth and Environmental Geosciences is seeking a Visiting Assistant Professor in Structural Geology. Review starts May 16.
apply.interfolio.com/167020 NB: No interesting structures in the photo, just seds. 🧪⚒️
apply.interfolio.com/167020 NB: No interesting structures in the photo, just seds. 🧪⚒️
In a break from geoscience related content, we've got 6 new chicks scheduled to join our #backyardchicken flock next week. Crowd-sourcing excellently nerdy candidate chicken names. Thoughts?
April 13, 2025 at 1:16 AM
In a break from geoscience related content, we've got 6 new chicks scheduled to join our #backyardchicken flock next week. Crowd-sourcing excellently nerdy candidate chicken names. Thoughts?
@colgate.edu student scientists rocked planetary research tonight at the #LPSC2025 poster session. Gully channel head formation initiated, mysteries of RSL unlocked, and Antarctic analogs explained! ⚒️🧪🚀
March 12, 2025 at 3:31 AM
@colgate.edu student scientists rocked planetary research tonight at the #LPSC2025 poster session. Gully channel head formation initiated, mysteries of RSL unlocked, and Antarctic analogs explained! ⚒️🧪🚀
The wall art at my Airbnb is remarkably on point for #LPSC2025. Anyone got any titles or captions for these?
My read on the middle is “March comes in like interstellar dust and goes out like an ignited star”
My read on the middle is “March comes in like interstellar dust and goes out like an ignited star”
March 11, 2025 at 12:08 PM
The wall art at my Airbnb is remarkably on point for #LPSC2025. Anyone got any titles or captions for these?
My read on the middle is “March comes in like interstellar dust and goes out like an ignited star”
My read on the middle is “March comes in like interstellar dust and goes out like an ignited star”
We had a great pop-up Stand Up for Science rally & letter-writing party at Colgate U. today! I'm thrilled to have 40+ hand-drawn cards supporting science heading out to congresspeople across the US. Our students are worried about their futures, but they give me hope! @standupforscience.bsky.social
March 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM
We had a great pop-up Stand Up for Science rally & letter-writing party at Colgate U. today! I'm thrilled to have 40+ hand-drawn cards supporting science heading out to congresspeople across the US. Our students are worried about their futures, but they give me hope! @standupforscience.bsky.social
Fascinating ice crystals strained out of the sap buckets during today's sugaring in central NY!
March 1, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Fascinating ice crystals strained out of the sap buckets during today's sugaring in central NY!
Be like the hot spring hydrothermal plume in the Alvord Desert: be unstoppable, inexorable, and salty. #Drone ortho-images over three days last summer as part of the HeliHabitable field campaign.
February 12, 2025 at 12:57 AM
Be like the hot spring hydrothermal plume in the Alvord Desert: be unstoppable, inexorable, and salty. #Drone ortho-images over three days last summer as part of the HeliHabitable field campaign.
Your Uber is on its way. Hoping the next Herc flight makes it into McMurdo this evening so I and the last of my field team can start making our way home!
January 27, 2025 at 1:43 AM
Your Uber is on its way. Hoping the next Herc flight makes it into McMurdo this evening so I and the last of my field team can start making our way home!
We looked at soil temperature data from the amazing McMurdo #LTER meteorological station network and summed up the freezing degree-days each winter (negative temperature x time = hardness of freeze). Across the stations, soil is getting less time at low temperatures.
January 11, 2025 at 4:46 AM
We looked at soil temperature data from the amazing McMurdo #LTER meteorological station network and summed up the freezing degree-days each winter (negative temperature x time = hardness of freeze). Across the stations, soil is getting less time at low temperatures.