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Phil Martin

@philmartin.bsky.social

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Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jun 19

Incredibly happy and amazingly surprised to have been awarded a Ramón y Cajal fellowship to work on forest management and restoration at the Basque Centre for Climate Change. Made even better by two close friends getting it as well! Time to celebrate 🥳🥳🥳

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Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · 14d

Really interesting looking new study claims that under a transition to increasing wood use in buildings, increased demand could be met under current harvesting levels. However, this would require shift from use as fuel to industrial products & reuse and recycling of wood doi.org/10.1038/s418...

Global wood harvest is sufficient for climate-friendly transitions to timber cities - Nature Sustainability

Timber cities, using new engineered wood products for constructing homes and commercial buildings, could transform urban construction. This article looks at how demand for wood might impact current harvests and efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

doi.org

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Sep 9

Thanks and no worries Michael. Hope the paper gets the attention it deserves.

Reposted by Phil Martin

Journal of Applied Ecology @jappliedecology.bsky.social · Sep 9

You can now apply to take part in our 2026 Associate Editor Mentoring Scheme! 🔖

If you want to learn more about the peer review process and you're an ECR based in the Global South, then this voluntary position could be for you 💭🌏🧪

More info here 👇
bit.ly/47uwYlD

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Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Sep 8

Holy shit! This looks amazing Tommaso! Looking at it right now and will share with colleagues. What a massive effort.

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Sep 8

I was the editor for it - really nice bit of work! The experiment seems really robust and useful. Good job.

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Aug 21

I'm Phil, based near Bilbao, Spain. I work out how to better manage & restore forests for biodiversity. I've often used evidence synthesis to answer applied questions, but I'm increasingly interested in working at local scales with managers, NGOs, and landowners phil-martin-research.github.io

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Reposted by Phil Martin

Steven J Cooke @sjcfishy.bsky.social · Aug 21

Not quite the same but what irks me is folks that do not "curate" their Google Scholar pages. Lots of people "claim" papers written by folks with the same name but clearly not written by them.

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Reposted by Phil Martin

David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · Aug 21

New academia hell just dropped:

A colleague has found cases of someone posting papers written by other people on ResearchGate with the title page edited so it looks like they, not the other people, wrote it.

Just straight-up theft and plagiarism.

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Reposted by Phil Martin

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · Aug 21

This is really significant. I've been frustrated that we have to guess how much power and water AI consumes, because these tech companies won't say (even though they know). This is the most transparent estimate from one of these companies so far. I hope others will follow suit.

Casey Crownhart @caseycrownhart.bsky.social · Aug 21

We've finally got some hard numbers on AI's energy demand from a major tech company: Google says a median prompt to Gemini uses 0.24 watt-hours of electricity. 🧵 @technologyreview.com www.technologyreview.com/2025/08/21/1...

In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses

It’s the most transparent estimate yet from one of the big AI companies, and a long-awaited peek behind the curtain for researchers.

www.technologyreview.com

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Reposted by Phil Martin

ErrantScience @errantscience.com · Aug 21

Research grants take hundreds of hours to write and cause so many sleepless nights, but it’s okay as there are good reasons to write them #academia

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Reposted by Phil Martin

Jalene LaMontagne @jalene-lamontagne.bsky.social · Jul 27

🚨 Please repost! #CommunityScience This year, we counted LOTS of new cones on some conifer tree species in some places, and not many for others species/places. Want to contribute? Tell us what's going on w/ NEW CONE production on conifers 🌲 near you! www.inaturalist.org/projects/con... #ConeCounters

Sticker that says, "Cone Counters", "Count New Cones!", and "www.lamontagnelab.com"

Screenshot of INaturalist project for Cone Counters Lite, with images of new cones.

Map of iNaturalist Cone Counters Lite sample locations to date.

White pine tree in nice light. A lake is in the background.

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Reposted by Phil Martin

Markus Eichhorn @markuseichhorn.bsky.social · Jul 25

Was just sent this, author unknown. There's plenty to debate but they're right about evolutionary ecology. 🌏

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Reposted by Phil Martin

Global Change Biology @globalchangebio.bsky.social · Jul 24

Impacts of Canopy Disturbances by Tree Logging on Soil Biota Increase With Organism Size

🔗 buff.ly/7UDHX7M
@holisoils.bsky.social

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Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 24

Our massive systematic map, is now available @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social!

We synthesise >300 studies on natural disturbance impacts - fire, precipitation change, wind etc - on soil and litter fauna in forests.

Didn't get the love I thought it deserved yesterday, so I'm reposting the 🧵

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

There are lots of studies on natural forest disturbance impacts aboveground biodiversity, but fewer on impacts on soil and litter invertebrate fauna. In our systematic map we aimed to collate these, characterise them, & provide recommendations for future research ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

A systematic map of forest disturbance impacts on soil and litter fauna: knowledge gaps and a roadmap for future research

ecoevorxiv.org

Reposted by Phil Martin

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · Jul 23

“Just outside Gaza, tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items & fuel sit untouched with humanitarian organisations blocked from accessing or delivering them," write 109 aid agencies today.

Israel is committing Palestinian genocide and it is monstrous.

Credit: Anatolu/Getty Images

A mother in a tent in Gaza clasping her starving child, who appears close to death.

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Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

And if you've read this far you're probably interested in natural forest disturbances & soils. If that's the case and you want to collaborate on an exciting meta-analysis on fire impacts by extracting data, drop me an email. We're low on people power but it'll be a great paper once it's done.

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

Finally, this work was an absolutely enormous effort for which we screened ~20,000 papers to find the relevant studies. Here's just part of the amazing team that helped with this work as part of the Horizon project @holisoils.bsky.social . Big thanks!

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

This is probably the most methodologically robust piece of work I've ever led - so please don't skip our methods section! We preregisted a detailed protocol that we followed, performed dual-screening to check consistency of inclusion of papers, and extracted data in a transparent manner.

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

(3) More studies of food webs, where appropriate; (4) greater use of robust experimental designs for most disturbances. Finally, we now think there is enough literature to allow robust meta-analyses of the impacts of fire, precipitation change, and windthrow. (e.g. doi.org/10.1111/gcb....)

Meta‐analysis reveals that the effects of precipitation change on soil and litter fauna in forests depend on body size

Our meta-analysis found that decreases in rainfall reduce the abundance and diversity of soil and litter invertebrates in forests and that increases had the opposite effect. Importantly, the effect o....

doi.org

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

So, what does this all mean? Well, because the evidence base for each disturbances is different, the solutions to the problems they face is also different (see the table). Broadly we need more studies: (1) in boreal and tropical forest; (2) on earthworms, nematodes, termites & multi-taxa studies

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

Studies were normally relatively short, small (apart from studies of fire), conducted at shallow depths, & rarely reported the intensity of disturbances,(aside from precipitation changes). This impedes synthesis of long-term effects & the impacts of different disturbance intensities.

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

Most studies used observational rather than experimental methods to assess impacts, apart from studies of precipitation change where experiments were common. This means our estimates of precipitation change are more robust, but potentially less realistic than those for other disturbances

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

Studies mostly focussed on relatively simple biodiversity metrics such as abundance and alpha diversity, but where more studies were undertaken, measurement of more complex metrics was more common. More work on food webs would aid our ability to assess the stability of multiple ecosystem functions

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

Studies focussed on a small number of taxonomic groups & on only one body size class. This limits more holistic assessments of impacts and our ability to project how soils may respond to climate change, since body size is linked to the resilience of organisms to disturbance

Phil Martin @philmartin.bsky.social · Jul 23

For taxonomic biases, there were large numbers of studies for groups like beetles, spiders, springtails, and mites, but few studies of important groups like earthworms & nematodes. Accounting for global estimates of biomass again highlighted that earthworms & nematodes appear understudied