Charlotte H. Chang
@harpactes.bsky.social
2.6K followers 490 following 84 posts
👋 Follow for insights on NLP, conservation, and climate https://chang.eco One Conservancy Visiting Fellow at TNC Professor Bio/EA @PomonaCollege Alum: Smith Fellows, NIMBioS @UTK, Levin Lab @Princeton Birding enthusiast, dog lover, mom
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Reposted by Charlotte H. Chang
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
this, to me, is art
nwslsoccer.com
SOFIA CANTORE BACKHEEL GOAL ‼️
harpactes.bsky.social
I feel like a larger-scale replication study of this important topic ("a good life for all within planetary boundaries") would be really empowering for my students. So I would be keen to hear from anyone who knows about useful resources or has done something similar in their classes! #DSLC
harpactes.bsky.social
e.g., having students work as a class to collect soil samples or bioacoustic monitoring outputs, and then working on a multi-week field + #datascience lab report activity in groups (w/ #Python or #R) where there is a cleaned class dataset but each group has distinct hypotheses.
harpactes.bsky.social
Even these simpler, faster, and smaller-scale exercises (e.g. can fit in one 75-minute class session) were really powerful for students who have these rich, multidisciplinary interests in the environment and living more humanely together. My larger-scale activities tho have often focused on #ecology
harpactes.bsky.social
Specifically, have the students split into teams, and examine the underlying data in the citation trail that drives this powerful conclusion. I've done some similar (smaller scale) projects with sources such as goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/download-data/ or #ourworldindata.
Download Data
Download the country-level data from our research published in the journal Nature Sustainability to use in your own analyses or teaching.
goodlife.leeds.ac.uk
harpactes.bsky.social
#DataScience & #EnvironmentDS education community: curious about your ideas on a project-based learning module focused on addressing the climate/biodiversity/poverty triple challenge. One thought: have students read papers such as this recent publication by @jasonhickel.bsky.social & replicate it.
harpactes.bsky.social
Is this from The Great Derangement?
Reposted by Charlotte H. Chang
karenho.bsky.social
if you are overwhelmed, I highly recommend:
-making a list of things you don't care about being out of the loop
-cutting down on alcohol
-cleaning, organizing and decluttering your home instead of doomscrolling
-making plans with friends
-weekly therapy
-charging your phone away from your bed
harpactes.bsky.social
I like this vision. But how do we reconcile the tension between individual agency and collective good?
harpactes.bsky.social
Attention is All You Have
harpactes.bsky.social
I don’t disagree, but I wonder how we can preserve loose ties (joy of learning, social movement formation) as platforms continue to enshittify.

Anecdotally, parts of science Twitter shifted to gated Slack/Discord groups after Musk took over. But they lost outside attention and idea sharing.
jametc.bsky.social
I think AI is going to eventually tank in the longterm, but...

the only real way to combat this is single-interest communities. Forums, user comms, etc, with a barrier to entry. They become trustable knowledgebases. It's really the only way forward is to return to what worked best the first time
a text post from Michael Tonelli: "It's really unbelievable the niche parts of the internet that Al is ruining. My wife looks up crochet patterns online. It's now overrun by Al made up patterns that make no logical sense. My wife said if you tried to crochet the pattern that Al hallucinated, it wouldn't even be possible.
And it's like, why? Why is someone ruining free crochet patterns? How were they even aware of that corner of the internet? Is there a plan to make the internet so unusable that people abandon it so we don't have access to information anymore?"
harpactes.bsky.social
Lots of great fruit in the pawpaw’s Annonaceae family, including the (IMO) incomparable Taiwan atemoya! The pawpaw is unique as one of the only temperate members of this large, pan tropical family of delicious fruits (custard apples, soursop, and atemoya).
harpactes.bsky.social
Fascinating! We saw a related pattern with an earlier “eXodus” for climate/environmental peeps, but at the time, there wasn’t yet widespread BSky adoption (due to the invite only mechanism you describe). IMO your profile matching approach is really cool; thanks for sharing!
doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...
Redirecting
doi.org
harpactes.bsky.social
Huge thanks to my incredible co-authors Susan Cook-Patton, @jterbaugh.bsky.social, Luci Lu, Yuta Masuda, @lexunit.bsky.social, @berobinson.bsky.social and funding from @pomonacollege.bsky.social, @bezosearthfund.org, & @nature.org. It's an exciting time to synthesize evidence for conservation! 🌎📊🔍
harpactes.bsky.social
CRITICAL QUESTIONS REMAIN: How do we ensure ethical use of AI in conservation? How do we address English language bias? How do we validate AI-assisted findings? If you're interested in these questions, please get in touch with our team--we've got a new working group focused on this topic. 🧵: 4/6
harpactes.bsky.social
Here's how ML + NLP can help:
1️⃣ Speed & scale up literature searches
2️⃣ Automate screening for relevance
3️⃣ Extract key information from studies
4️⃣ Process unstructured text data at scale
5️⃣ Identify patterns across thousands of papers
These tools can cut workload by 35-99%! ⚡️ 🧵: 3/6
harpactes.bsky.social
Why does this matter? Conservation and climate science face HUGE challenges synthesizing evidence across different fields. The volume of research is growing exponentially, while disciplinary differences make it tough to integrate knowledge. Traditional manual review can't keep up! 🧵: 2/6
harpactes.bsky.social
NEW PAPER ALERT! 🌿🤖 Our essay on how #AI and #NLP can transform conservation evidence synthesis just dropped in #ConservationBiology. We explore how machine learning can help scientists tackle the explosion of research across disciplines to better inform conservation policy. 🧵: 1/6
Figure 1 from Chang et al. 2025, Conserv. Biol., describing how different ML-assisted and integrated tools can aid in evidence synthesis or policy analysis.
harpactes.bsky.social
Thanks for sharing! Happy New Years!
harpactes.bsky.social
(Late to the party but ...) #BirdersOfBluesky: who were your First Birds Of the Year (FBOYs)?

Yard/window FBOY: A dapper + tuxedoed Black Phoebe
Binocular FBOY: A very confiding White-breasted Nuthatch
Digiscoped FBOY: An unusually out-and-about Sora

Wishing everyone a very birdy 🦜🦉 2025!
Sora walking at the edge of a lake Townsend's warbler chilling in the grass Sora walking through reeds Sora walking in shallow water