Dr. Emily Fairfax
@EmilyFairfax
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Assistant Professor @UMNGeography and @saflumn . Ecohydrologist, beaver dam enthusiast, & advocate for inclusive curriculum. Ask me about beavers! she/her
Minnesota, USA
Joined December 2014
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Pinned Tweet
As a scientist I've had an "elevator speech" prepared for a few years now.
This year I made an "elevator video" & let me tell you: people enjoy seeing my research way more than just hearing about it!
So what do
#beavers
have to do with
#wildfire
? Watch (with sound) & find out!
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It's incredible seeing the transition from degraded, single-thread streams into expansive beaver-engineered wetlands. And it only took a handful of
#beavers
to do this. Imagine what the continent and the rivers looked like prior to the Fur Trade, back when beavers were abundant!
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This heat wave, and the threat of wildfires, makes me appreciate
#beaver
engineered fire refugia even more. This complex is on Little Last Chance Creek up in N. California - in some ways these ponds were a "little last chance" for all the critters during the fire here last year.
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Redesigning my geomorphology & hydrology class to be laid out as a choose-your-own adventure story this semester!
As a class, we'll choose & follow paths around the map week by week, encountering new processes & landforms as we go. Each unit is standalone, so order won't matter.
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California (and the entire western US) has nowhere near as many
#beavers
as it did 250 years ago.
Even so, it only takes a few families of beavers tucked away in secluded canyons and valleys to give us a glimpse of what many of our waterways used to look like.
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My
#beaver
research requires incredible precision & attention to detail. It's all very serious.
Except when I'm ground-truthing the locations of beaver dams. Then I get to bring out Gerald the Beaver Boat & float around while I make notes that yes, this is in fact a beaver pond.
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What does it mean when people say
#beavers
are a keystone species?
When beavers build their dams & make ponds, they support an entire ecosystem - not just themselves. Removing beavers can make the whole ecosystem collapse. Protecting beavers helps bears, moose, fish, & more!
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I am so happy and proud to have been a part of this historic effort!
California is now one of the nation’s leaders in bringing scientists, governments, Tribes, non-profits, and community members to explicitly partner with
#beavers
for climate change and wildfire risk reduction.
For the first time in nearly 75 years, CDFW released beavers into the wild in cooperation with local tribes. The new family group of beavers joins a single resident beaver with the ultimate objective of re-establishing a strong population.
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The difference in greenness between where the Salinas River has
#beavers
and where it doesn’t is remarkable.
Beavers make California
#riverscapes
more complex, which helps protect them from droughts and wildfires. Plenty of water for the plants here!
Thanks, beavs.
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So I spent the whole month of June playing computer games & avoiding working on my now-virtual classes. Yikes.
Finally felt excited about teaching again when I decided to mush my interests together and "gamify" my whole intro to environmental science course design. 1/n
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Literally never imagined that me and
#beavers
would be on the front page of the New York Times.
Pretty *dam* cool. 😎🦫
As global warming intensifies droughts, floods and wildfires, beavers are increasingly being seen as furry weapons of climate resilience.
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There is so much to see in
#beaver
ponds! Lodges, dams, canals, grasses, bushes, trees, deadwood, etc. Every time I review my drone footage I find something new in it.
For example: zoom in on the ripples to see a surprise appearance by the landscape architect themself! 🦫👀
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My department is searching for a Postdoc Fellow that will convert to a tenure-track Asst Professor job after 1-2 years!
Do you use eDNA? Or remote sensing? Or modeling? Or field work? Do you study environmental science? Or paleoclimate? Or
#BEAVERS
?
Our search is broad! Apply!
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My mom just jogged past a postal worker who was sorting mail & chatting on the phone. When she ran by she overheard:
“You know, I heard on NPR that beavers are good!”
Yeah citations are nice, but knowing that people just casually chat about your research is much cooler!
📫✉️🦫
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Dam big news! I’ll be joining
@UMNGeography
this fall, with an affiliation at
@saflumn
!
I’m excited to expand my research on
#beavers
+ climate resilience in N. America!
What beav impacts are consistent across the continent? What varies regionally? I’m gonna find out! 🦫🔥❄️🌱
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I’ve seen many odd things in
#beaver
dams, but this dam at Doty Ravine was…something.
The beavs stole a post from a nearby beaver dam analog. They also raided a cow carcass & added a variety of *bones* to the dam.
Can’t tell if they’re just metal or trying to send a message…
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Wondering how
#beavers
handle floods?
Beaver ponds, like many wetlands, can diffuse flood waves by slowing, spreading, & storing the incoming water.
These Bay Area beavs are calmly waiting for the flood to subside while their dams & canals do the work.
📸 Virginia Holsworth
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I had an unexpected visitor at my field sites today! Had to pause the drone survey to get a closer look (with optical zoom, didn't get too close physically).
This was already one of the most beautiful cascades of
#beaver
ponds I've ever been to. The moose was a special addition.
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It’s
#InternationalBeaverDay
!
Got a question about
#beavers
? Not sure who to ask? Ask me!
I did my PhD on beavers & once I talked about beavs so much on a rafting trip that the guide made a special detour to show me a nearby dam!
If I can’t answer I will tag someone who can!
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Happy
#InternationalBeaverDay
! 🦫
Do you have a question about beavers? Not sure who to ask? Ask me!
I did my PhD on
#beavers
& still study them! No question is too silly, small, or strange. If I can’t answer your question, I’ll probably know who can & will point you to them.
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It only takes one family of
#beavers
to create wildfire-resistant wetlands like this one in the Sierra Nevada.
Looking forward to seeing California work strategically with nature’s firefighter: Smokey the Beaver!
A first in 75 years,
#CA
has reintroduced beavers into the wild. These ecosystem engineers reduce the threat of wildfire in the areas they inhabit.
@CaliforniaDFW
teamed up with a local tribe 2 restore a species nearly wiped out by European settlers.
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The differences in burn severity, air temperature, humidity, and soil moisture between the beaver complex and the adjacent landscape were huge!
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Beavers naturally build, abandon, then recolonize ponds over time.
This
#beaver
wetland in Wisconsin is a great example of that - the bits of dam that are covered in plants are older, and the little piece with bare sticks showing is a new fixed up spot.
Work smart, not hard!
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It’s
#InternationalBeaverDay
!
Do you have a question about
#beavers
and aren’t sure who to ask? Ask me!
I did my PhD on beavs and still study them today! If I don’t have an answer to your question, I can probably tag someone who will!
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It’s
#InternationalBeaverDay
!
Have a question about
#beavers
you’re not sure who to ask?
Ask me! I study beavers & love talking about them! And if I can’t answer your question, chances are I know someone who can and I will tag them!
Let’s share some
#dam
knowledge.
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Did you know that
#beavers
engineer entire valley bottoms, transforming simple or degraded streams into thriving wetlands? Beaver-created habitats are hotspots of biodiversity and uniquely resistant to drought, flood & fire.
Vote for beaver wetlands!
THE FINAL OF THE
#WetlandCup
IS HERE! Who wins? BEAVER WETLANDS vs. SPHAGNUM MOSS. You decide! Vote for your winner below and make sure to give it a RT so we can get as many votes as possible!
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Did you know that
#beavers
will cut and make use of burnt trees after wildfires? Even pine trees - which aren’t a preferred food or building material when they’re still living, let alone when they’re burnt!
Very resourceful little beavs… (1/2)
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I never get tired of finding new
#beaver
dams. They’re so messy and complicated and beautiful and elegant all at the same time.
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Actual footage of my posture when I sit at my computer all day.
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Ready to wear this sweater pretty much every day in December.
❄️ 🎄 🦫
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Fun fact: I was inspired to study
#beavers
as a career after watching a
@PBS
documentary about them.
Funner fact: Now I am *in* a PBS documentary about them! So cool seeing my beaver-origin-story come full circle.
Link:
Thanks
@mimischiffman
&
@PBSDS
!
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It's
#WorldWetlandsDay
! Beavers are well-known wetland creators. One of the ways
#beavers
make wetlands is by building their iconic dams.
But did you know that:
1) sometimes they can't build dams
2) even without dams
#beavers
have a profound impact on the environment?
a 🧵!
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This may be one of the most offensively written and non-scientific titles that I’ve ever seen on an article about
#beavers
.
Photos from space show 11,000 beavers are wreaking havoc on the Alaskan tundra as savagely as wildfire
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The effects of two powerful, earth-sculpting forces in one picture: glaciers and
#beavers
.
The glaciers ground this valley into a classic U-shape thousands of years ago. Once the ice retreated, beavers transformed the valley bottom into thriving wetlands & wet mountain meadows.
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How exactly do
#beavers
help us with climate change?
New paper from
@NOAAFish_NWFSC
Chris Jordan & me!
We summarize the research on how beavers help with fire, drought, flood, carbon, & water quality issues that are being exacerbated by climate change.
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First in-person talk since March 2020 went great! Prolly because I was wearing my special professional presentation socks. 😎
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Have you ever nonchalantly handed the host of a tv show a fresh little
#beaver
poop? 🦫💩
And then when they call you on it, you just say “welcome to the field!”
I have! 😂
Take a look (and also learn more about beavers in general) below!
At one time beavers numbered in the hundreds of millions. But their fur proved valuable enough to trappers that the North American beaver population dropped to near-extinction levels. Now, the plucky rodents have made a comeback.
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@LilacSundayBlog
Great question! Beavers are making a comeback in CA. I have data showing them preserving wetlands thru a large fire in Sequoia National Forest & suspect their impacts would be similar throughout the state.
@martinezbeavers
&
@beaversandbrush
are from CA and have a ton more info!
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Last year, my team found that
#beaver
complexes stayed green during wildfires. 🌿
This year, we're pushing the beavs to the limits - can their fire refugia persist even thru
#megafires
? 🔥
Excited to present our preliminary data at the
@geosociety
#GSA2021
conference next week!
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I got to see some pretty huge
#beaver
ponds on the Superior Hiking Trail today! The two guys standing on the dam are 6’2” tall for reference. Quite an impressive feat of ecosystem engineering!
And don’t even get me started on how big the beaver lodges were…
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The 2020 Cameron Peak Fire was Colorado’s biggest fire. And yet, a bunch of the
#beaver
complexes in it didn’t burn.
This past week I went & saw the untouched beaver wetland surrounded by burned trees & hills in person. You can see it (in 360 view) too!
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I went to one of my field sites & saw HUGE cows! With lots of little baby cows!
They were absolutely feasting on the bounty of grasses within the
#beaver
complex & there was plenty of forage to go around.
Responsible ranching & beavers can go hand-in-hand (or hoof-in-paw?)!
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I took a colleague to some active
#beaver
ponds near Boulder recently. The ponds had ~6” of ice cover so we got to walk *on* them! It was amazing! ❄️🦫
The dam looked like an ice waterfall (people for scale in the dam pics) & the pond ice was so clear we could see food caches.
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@ChuckKutscher
@coralsncaves
Thanks! Cutting the felt pieces and sewing the fire clumps was about 30 minutes. Then actually making it was about 30 min per run-through. It took me 4 run-throughs to get the lighting and angles right (I made it on my kitchen table). So all together about 2.5 hours!
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Today was a great day for field work!
Found four new
#beaver
dams at my field site. One of the dams was just over 2 meters tall! And totally new!Dispersing juveniles maybe? Just a very industrious beaver family?
Either way, these beavs are working hard.
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I’m beyond happy that my research on
#beavers
and
#wildfires
was shared all across the country this evening on
@NPR
All Things Considered
@npratc
!
Thanks
@awhager
for excellent reporting &
@fluvialwheaton
for explaining healthy riverscapes so clearly!
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@ddragon
Beaver ponds can help lessen the intensity of flood waves! Let's say it rains a TON. In a stream w/o beavers all the rain water comes rushing downstream. If you have a bunch of beaver ponds, the flood water is instead spread out by the ponds/channels and absorbs into the soil.
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It’s
#WorldWetlandsDay
!
When I was a kid, murky water & pond weeds made me nervous (what’s hiding in there?). Today, I’ll happily wade barefoot into
#beaver
ponds - it doesn’t scare me anymore.
Whether you’re just looking or diving right in, wetlands are magical places to be!
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Uh oh...
#beaver
traffic jam.
Beavers often use "slides" to get up & down their dams. Slides are where the beavs have packed extra mud & plants on the dam, making it smoother & easier to walk on.
Lots of animals actually use beaver slides to get over the dam - not just beavs!
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Did you know that France has around 15,000
#beavers
? That’s 15,000 little ecosystem engineers building dams, making wetlands, attenuating flood waves, and keeping things green during droughts and fires!
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@thecurioushuman
A great question. A lot of people don't feel like messy, mucky, hard-to-navigate landscapes are good. I take kids out on nature walks to beaver ponds & make sure to talk about the mud as soft, the pond weeds as beautiful, etc. to try to reshape that narrative early on for them.
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@JusttheZooofUs
Myth: beavers eat fish!
Fact: beavers are vegans (complete herbivores)! They eat bark, pond plants, and even their own poop....but no fish, eggs, or other critters.
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Roses are red
Wildfires scorch the ground
But there's a nature-based solution
That's flat-tailed and round!
#ScienceValentines
---
📷 Aerial photo of a
#beaver
complex right after wildfire by the Manter Fire (2000) BAER Team
📷 Photo of a round little beaver by
@ben_a_goldfarb
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Happy
#Beaver
Moon!
The Beaver Moon is the last full moon in November.
For some that signifies a start or end to a trapping season. For others, it’s a reminder that winter is coming and it’s time to hunker down with plenty of food, family, and warmth - just like beavers do!
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@PeterIMiller
Good Q! The dams actually wind up helping improve habitat quality and resilience downstream as well if they are established long enough. They route water into soil and groundwater which returns to the river downstream as increased base flow during dry periods.
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The campsites there were pretty spectacular as well. I highly recommend spending an evening surrounded by aspen, wetlands, and beavs!
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I was just reviewing some game camera videos we have at a California
#beaver
pond I'm studying. Most of the nighttime shots are of beavs.
But I had to rewind & do a double take on this one...an imposter!
That's no beaver! That's a raccoon doing its best beaver impression!
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Roses are red
#Beavers
love water
Their ponds can stop fire
Even if
#climate
gets hotter
Below: me and a beaver dam in western Colorado. Thanks, beavers, for building climate resiliency! You're not the heroes we deserve, but you are the heroes we need.
#ScienceValentines
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Some of you may come across an article published today that claims beavers are not native to Southern California.
This is an example, in my opinion, of bad science, bad peer review, & bad publishing practices.
I'll briefly explain why I think that. 1/n
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Journalists often ask me what “other beavers” are out there - meaning what other animals haven’t gotten the recognition they deserve for their ecosystem engineering prowess. I usually say bison & prairie dogs.
Adding Arctic foxes to that list now too! Great work,
@SJohnsonBice
!
The first chapter of my dissertation has been published in
@EcosystemsJ
!
We used *free satellite imagery 🛰 to help reveal how Arctic foxes convert tundra desert into lush “tundra gardens” through their denning behavior. Fox dens from space!
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Happy Halloween! Please enjoy these
#beaver
dams that are constructed, in part, from cow bones. This definitely isn’t the first or only observation of them building with scavenged skeletons, but it’s always a lil spooky seeing it in real life!
Stay creepy, beavs.
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Nerd Achievement: unlocked ✅
Super proud to have my research on beavers shared on
@scifri
on
@NPR
! We chat about how
#beavers
change the landscape, examples of states working with beavs for restoration, & whether or not moving beavers yourself is a good idea (spoiler: it's not)
🦫 Beavers are nature’s engineers and it turns out their habitats are wildfire-resistant.
On
#SciFriLive
📻, ecohydrologist
@EmilyFairfax
&
@KUNC
's
@awhager
share why people are turning to these talented rodents to help prepare for wildfires.
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Did you know that relocated
#beavers
raise the water table, store surface water, keep streams cold in summer, & help protect salmon in their new homes? All within the first couple years of moving in!
🤯🦫🌱
Awesome new study from
@Ben_Dittbrenner
et al!
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Climate change has gone off the chart.
To fix it, we must do our part.
These droughts are intense!
These fires immense!
Working with
#beavers
would also be smart.
Learn how beavs can help in this
@latimes
op-ed by me &
@NOAA
@NOAAFish_NWFSC
Chris Jordan!
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March 2022 - May 2022. Less than one inch of rain between these photos. And even with so little precipitation, the whole river ecosystem had no trouble greening-up around the beaver dam & the pond is still completely full. Beavers = Natural Irrigation!
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@deaaifoon
@PGourevitch
They definitely promote wetness. The dams and canals slow water down and let it seep into the soil every rainy period or snowy period. That stored water is what keeps the ecosystem green during drought and fire! Otherwise water tends to flow too fast thru degraded streams.
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This is my favorite Christmas decoration. It’s a sewn fabric picture that my mom made with her mom in the 1970s. The little animals have a bit of stuffing in them so it’s plushy/3D. I never got to meet my grandma but it’s cool that beaver decor has been my family for decades.
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@VlxDanny
Please enjoy this video from one of my field sites of an adult beaver wrangling a adventurous little baby beaver.
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It’s me & beavs on the tv!
Really enjoyed both the
@BBC
and
@PBS
versions of Changing Planet. BBC went into much more detail on the science of
#beavers
& wildfires; while PBS tied it to related ideas in Australia.
Have lingering questions after watching either version? Ask me!
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I'm totally not biased or anything, but I'm pretty sure
#beaver
wetlands are the coolest wetlands.
Round 29 of the
#WetlandCup
is raised bog vs. beaver wetland! Who will you send through to the FINAL?! Please give it a RT so we can get as many votes as possible
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Seems like everyone has cool beaver logos for their research group. I tried to come up with well-drawn, crisp, beaver art to include in mine. Realized that it was time to embrace the inevitable.
I'm the person who always draws beavers as smiley, round circles & this is my logo.
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Great day at some CA
#beaver
dams! I collected data all morning, then led a beaver-nature-walk all afternoon.
It’s incredible how much this site has changed in the past year. It started as one mediocre (sorry beavs) dam & a bunch of sand, but now it’s a vast wetland ecosystem!
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Do
#beavers
only mitigate
#wildfires
in the arid western US?
Nope! Even when water is plentiful, beaver complexes are uniquely fire-resistant.
This study is based in the cool, wet eastern side of Canada...and >90% of the fire-resistant wetlands here were engineered by beavers!
How does
#wetland
successional state impact
#wildfire
? What role do
#beavers
play? Our new paper employs remote sensing to analyze wetland fire severity in the
@GBayBiosphere
(1/4).
#PeatTwitter
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Flight attendant: Is there a doctor on the plane?
Me: Yes, but I'm not that kind of…
Flight attendant: The pilots are beavers. The passengers are plants, fish, amphibians, birds, and mammals that need reliable water. The plane is a pond. This is a metaphor.
Me: Dam.
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Ya
#beaver
dams are impressive, but have you ever *really* seen how extensive their canals are? They dig all of these with their bare paws!
Controversial beaver opinion: I think a lot of times beaver canals, not just dams, are the real MVP of beaver-driven landscape resilience.
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Beavers make bathtubs for bears and help them regulate their body temperatures! What?? How did I not know this already? So cool!
You can guess where this going, but: what animal creates perfect bear tubs? That's right — beaver restoration is a key management recommendation for helping bears thermoregulate.
The more we learn about ecology, the more crucial
#beavers
turn out to be.
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We did it, Team Beav. We won the
#WetlandCup
.
Many thanks for all your votes in the final battle against Sphagnum Moss - it was a close one! I definitely had fun spending the day posting pics of
#beavers
and their ponds & sharing cool facts.
Thanks
@ScootJD
for running this!
It’s official! Beaver wetlands are the winner of the 2023
#WetlandCup
with 52% of the vote! Sphagnum put in a strong fight but the beaver wetlands have reigned supreme!
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I visited a series of urban
#beaver
ponds in California today. We saw two endangered wild Chinook salmon hanging out in the cool, deep water & hiding under in-channel wood!
Human+beaver coexistence benefits the whole ecosystem.
(no fish pics to protect their exact location)
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Me and my brother visited my very first field site from grad school, just outside of Boulder.
This jumbo 8+ ft tall
#beaver
dam made it thru the 2013 floods, and last fall they made it thru a fire. And based on the abundance of fresh chew, the beavs are still here hard at work!
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96
I got to spend the whole weekend in a
#beaver
pond, digging in the mud, & paddling little boats while my colleague snorkeled & shoved beaver poops into a vial. And it was all for science. Amazing. 🦫🧪
Cheers to our new beav science team
@sarahecrump
&
@d_neve
& Darren!
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It's me! And beavs!
After seeing so many scientists on here with cool avatars of themselves and the thing they study, I finally commissioned one for myself from
@Blackmudpuppy
.
A
#beaver
avatar.
A BEAVatar, if you will.
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2
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I watched
@weatherchannel
all the time as a kid. It was one of my favorite channels on the TV.
Today, things came full circle and I had the opportunity to be *on* The Weather Channel talking about - you guessed it -
#beavers
!
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Exciting news! This fall I’ll start as an Assistant Professor in Environmental Science & Resource Management
@ESRM_Zone
at California State University Channel Islands
@csuci
! I feel very fortunate to be joining a dept, school & community that welcomes & supports all of who I am.
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4
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I've been to this
#beaver
pond many times, but I'd never seen it like this before!
I'm adding drones, waterproof 360 cameras, & snorkels to my research because:
1) it's very fun (come on - how cool is my friend snorkeling in the pond??)
2) it's actually really useful data!
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Use virtual background of a
#beaver
dam for all my zoom meetings? Nah.
Fill my house with beaver stuff then sit in front of the main beaver shrine for all my virtual meetings? Heck yeah.
Note: the beavs normally stay at my office but obviously had to join me working from home.
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As
#beavers
move north in response to climate change, they will build wetlands which can release methane (a greenhouse gas).
BUT - in this study, beaver pond microbial communities didn't favor methane production. Turns out beaver complexes are complex!
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