I am Tlingit Alaska Native. I am also a Plant Ecologist. I have been reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and was encouraged by her words in the book to dig in and learn more about the language of my Tlingit ancestors. A thread... (1/n)
That's my great-great-grandmother, Matilda Paul Tamaree, a Tlingit activist on the cover of the Alaska State official election pamphlet. She was arrested for escorting a Tlingit man to the polls and encouraging him to vote. You see, at the time, his vote was illegal.
#VoteEarly
I didn't grow up in Alaska but I grew up in a part of N. Washington with lots of overlapping species with SE Alaska (where the Tlingit tribe is from). I cannot overstate for you (native or not) how emotional it is to read a language created for an ecosystem you love.
Particularly an American ecologist. Please go read some of the words from the vocabulary of one of the tribes that were originally located in your study system. Read through the words CREATED for the ecosystem you love. You will FEEL things doing this.
I am excited (and also sad) to announce that I will be moving my lab to
@umncbs
EEB in August 2024! After almost a year of negotiations I can finally say that I was hired as an Associate Professor with tenure (approved today by the board of regents)!
This is not English, imposed on your study system. This is a language created in tandem with the structure and function of the ecosystem that you know deeply. This thread is to say: if you are an ecologist who follows me...
Kimmerer says: "listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own. I think now that it was a longing to comprehend this language I heard in the woods that led me to science"... as a plant ecologist this was a very emotional thing for me...(2/n)
In particular she describes Potawatomi as a verb based language. There are verbs for things that English only has nouns for. It's not just about remembering the word "bay" it's about knowing how to conjugate the verb for "being a bay." Her exploration of this is very powerful.
There are words for every part of the spruce tree. There are words for sepals (A shakayaaní) and sprout germination (A shaadí). There are words for all of the plants I grew up with and all of their plant parts. There are words for every part of the tree.
In Ojibwe, there is a word for sugar maple (aninaatig) but there is also a word for abundance that is tied up in the word for sugar maple (aninaatigokaa). This literally means there are lots of sugar maples (cool!) but also seems like abundance of any kind...
She then says that when she started trying to learn the language of her own ancestors (Potawatomi) she realized that the language structure gave her a connection to wild places that started to fulfill this desire to understand the natural world. (3/n)
In fact, I would love to help anyone do this who is interested. If interested, send me the geographic area you study and the name of an indigenous tribe from that area. I will try to track down some of these words for you. The end.
I am so excited and proud to announce my NSF CAREER award was just funded
@CalStateLA
@calstatelaNSS
@CalStateLABio
. We will be doing large scale manipulations of atmospheric humidity and exploring the role microclimate humidity plays in BEF effects!!!
The vocal list has sections for "beach", "birds", "clothing", etc. As far as I can tell, the list for "plants" is by far the longest. There are words for hemlock (Yán) vs. Hemlock branches (Haaw). There are words for the heartwood of a tree (an idea we learn about in college).
Scarcity mindset in academia is toxic and perpetuates a culture where we cannot fight for vulnerable folks who need us because we are so busy fighting for our own resources
Here’s an idea: if you don’t have someone who can take time off work and travel with you to the meeting, can you get the dependent care grant as a reimbursement on your registration
@ESA_org
? Cause like I’m getting about 10% of the focus and time that my colleagues are getting.
This made me start digging in more to the Tlingit alphabet, Tlingit greetings, and vocabulary. In particular
@SHInstitute
has some really amazing apps that help you jump right in. Last night I stayed up late reading through all of the plant words in Tlingit.
So, you say, why is John Muir considered anti-indigenous and racist? He was such a foundational natural historian. One of the first white conservationists. A poet. How can John Muir be racist?
Ecology twitter: I am teaching Intro Ecology this semester and just got this amazing question: "given the models in theoretical ecology that explain species coexistence, how do humans coexist with other species on planet earth?"
...it's more important to try and get it wrong, than to not try at all. So here goes. I lived in MN/WI for 10 years. There are grasslands, oak savannah, and lots of temperate deciduous forests. Ojibwe is one of the native languages of this area.
Hey. It’s disgusting to wake up and have to text all of your beloved students and lab members to be sure they and their families are ok after another mass shooting. This country is violent and we are disgusting for letting it go this long.
I'm excited about a VPD impacts paper coming out today in
@PlantCellEnvir
. We summarize what is known about how a hotter and drier atmosphere will affect plants at leaf level, whole plant level, community level, ecosystem level, and in managed ecosystems
So I'm going to try this for a few more ecosystems that I have known and loved. I know I will not get it right. Translation is an art and requires deep knowledge of the languages in question. But, from what I've read about language revitalization...
@raytakenalive
I realize this isn't the larger point. But I would love to be able to liberate some of these resources for them if my university credentials help at all.
Are you curious how and why plants affect the microclimate? Is it just shade or is it more complicated than that? Does evapotranspiration matter? Stomatal conductance? We present the first trait based framework for studying microclimates:
Congratulations to TWO students in the Wright Lab who just won the GRFP for their PhD work:
@agricrystal
and
@StephVarghese
they saw your brilliance! Period.
As bell hooks used to say, good pedagogy starts with your own willingness to be vulnerable. Show up in your classroom and lab as your full self: silly, damaged, awkward, confident, and ready to share your self. That is teaching to transgress and it invites people in.
Something amazing happened. After 500 days of quarantine together, my student
@StephVarghese
took hundreds of screenshots of our time together and turned it into this perfect likeness of every member of my lab in the last year.
I know this is the least of our worries today, but we REALLY need to figure out a way to reform
@ESA_org
for a younger generation. The website is currently down for
#ESA2022
. The website looks like a geocities blog. Nobody younger than 40 knows what "a change is gonna come" means
For years I have been annoyed at the engineering obsession with AI. I hear very smart people say "it's the most interesting intellectual problem set of our time." But, here's the thing, IT'S NOT. Tell me how an ecosystem works. That's the most interesting problem of our time.
The long awaited Drag Race - California Native Grassland species thread. We have eight herbaceous native species in our new Bio3D experiment and
@StephVarghese
had the brilliant idea to find a Drag Queen for every species (for teaching and reference). (1/n)
That's at the core of the issue: early conservationists wanted to see nature as "untouched" by humans. They ignored the massive body of knowledge and culture of Native Americans and re-conceptualized these places as unexplored/untouched/undescribed. And for that reason: beautiful
🚨I am so happy to see our latest Opinion paper published in
@GlobalChangeBio
today!🚨
We explored how diverse plant communities can mitigate climate change effects on ecosystem functioning by modulating microclimate.
We are doing Lotka-Volterra in my Theoretical Ecology class. Students have to solve equations iteratively and also graphically and then plot graphical solution in R. At the beginning of the class they hate me. But then they turn in BALLER STUFF LIKE THIS! (From Anahy Garza)
Very exciting work coming out of my lab this week. We figured out how to manipulate humidity outdoors and found: (1) community biomass production is only limited when soil drought and atmospheric drought (high VPD) occur simultaneously
great paper for microclimate folks exploring forest vs. grass alternative stable states and the role of feedbacks (including microclimate effects) that maintain a grassland even in places where a forest could hypothetically exist:
@kait_a_gallaghr
These lesser known Attenborough docs called "The private life of plants." There is a whole series and it looks like they are all online now. This was DEFINITELY the turning point for me as an undergrad:
New data: higher biodiversity grasslands are more humid than lower diversity grasslands, even when they have lower biomass! Diversity has a direct and functional effect on humidity
I just got an email from a boomer that had an attachment that was: an old email that had been printed, spilled coffee on, re-scanned, then re-attached as an email
You can't request larger NSF grant budgets to support higher grad student salaries until the University negotiates higher min and max salary for grad students. The strike is the first step. The rest comes after. It has to start here or it cannot change.
I support UC grad student in their strike. BUT places like
@Scripps_Ocean
fund almost 100% of their graduate students on grants, which are not magically going to increase. An increase of >$20k/yr(+60% IDC) for each student will be impossible to manage for PIs. How will this work?
Worth noting, her vote at the time was so many steps from being legal, that she didn't even consider her own voice that day.
#YourVoiceMatters
#yourvoiceyourvote
Our newest VPD and soil moisture experiment has a much better system to capture condensation and more perfectly isolate atm moisture from soil moisture
I need a gut check here from the academic community: has anyone ever had a paper rejected after being in review for two months with NO COMMENTS? No comments from reviewers, no comments from editors. Just, we have now reviewed your paper and have decided we cannot publish it.
We did an amazing session
@ESA_org
last summer where we talked hegemonic ideas, bias we bring to science as human beings, and how non-mainstream worldviews can positively affect our science. Was led by awesome ECR's
@anita_simha
,
@gauravsk_
& Aubrie James
In Plant Ecology this semester we are doing a study on grass establishment in highly disturbed urban pavement and LOOK at how high our germination rates are!
New paper: "If biodiversity ameliorates hot/dry conditions and... improves performance of drought sensitive species during periods of low rainfall, this may mean biodiversity can be used as a tool to protect individual species from drought"
@quirkus44
Our students, colleagues, and professional acquaintances cannot attend the largest ecological meeting in the world, despite the fact that it will be held completely online. Join
@quirkus44
and me in signing this letter to
@ESA_org
What proportion of people who are passionate about Ecology, analytically talented, creative, exceptional scholars are currently waiting on reimbursement from the university to get their bills paid? What prop of them are forced into debt or eventually leave academia?
Our special feature on facilitation in BEF is out now! With
@CalStateLA
@calstatelaNSS
Biological Sciences featured right there on the cover. Our one-of-a-kind drought humidity experiment is changing the way we understand biodiversity and drought research!
@baguirre9393
Four of these dump trucks full of soil arrived on campus today (we are setting up our next gen drought experiment). I haven't been able to sleep for a week, worried about what 50 tons of soil looks like. Starting to be able to wrap my mind around it now.
Small piece of advice from my two year old: go outside, pick a fragrant leaf (Rosemary, tomato, sage, etc), inhale very deeply. Feel grounded for one minute. Repeat.
Please add your info and share widely. I am trying to create a resource for URM students who are looking for supportive MA or PhD labs. While this is obviously imperfect, it seems like an ok place to start
@jebyrnes
@KKTreseder
@ForestIsbell
@duffy_ma
Incredibly happy to be leading
@calstateLA
students
@CedarCreekESR
to do research and see a major ecological field station in action. Here they are learning about BioCON from Peter Reich ❤️
My parents are selling their home, that they built, that I was born in. This pic is on the listing and this patch of forest is just as familiar to me as any room in the house. What a big crazy day.
We are in a 6th mass extinction. Species diversity is declining at unprecedented rates. What will this mean for life on earth? We surveyed 3331 biodiversity experts from around the world to try to understand what we are facing:
If you say you are interested in DEI work but you still act with collegial decorum (instead of righteous anger) when a student hasn’t gotten a stipend for two months…I don’t believe you.
Big paper out today that helps reconcile results from biodiversity experiments (e.g.
@CedarCreekESR
) with results from observational studies that track natural changes in biodiversity
This is all of us. If you are hurting one of my students on my campus, it is my job to intervene. Period. Every academic in the country should be absolutely terrified.
WATCH:
@EmoryUniversity
Econ Professor
@CarolineFohlin
saw a protester on campus being violently arrested, and asked the police "What are you doing?" — then was violently thrown to the ground and arrested herself.
Sickening.
Re-posting for clarity: In our Bio3D experiment we separately manipulate soil water and atmospheric humidity. I took these pictures this morning. This is Poa secunda growing in the exact same soil drought conditions. The only difference is atmospheric drought.
"Although these conceptions varied, they were consistent in two important ways: they ignored the essential humanity of the native inhabitants, and they failed to account for the changes in the landscape these people had wrought over millennia."
Atmospheric drying negatively affects some species (Bromus carinatus and Stipa cernua), while soil drying has a stronger effect on others (Elymus glaucus, Festuca idahoensis and Hordeum b. californicum). Huge implications for CA per. grassland composition
Ecology twitter I need halp with NMDS in vegan. We have a really cool dataset showing a change in community composition with soil drought and atmospheric drought. We also used NMDS scores for the first two axes as response variables in ANOVA. First question: is this ok?
New research published today from
@english_john_
"wild" plant diversity in Los Angeles grasslands is lower in more urbanized areas, but beta diversity is higher. Native species can't persist in highly urbanized sites.
I honestly don't understand why the top ten richest people on the planet don't invest all of their money in funding a 100% change to non fossil fuel energy. They would be considered heroes for the rest of human history. Isn't that tempting for their enormous egos?
Ecology twitter: we are looking to broaden this database. If you have ground-based sensors measuring temp/RH under a canopy vs. in an open area and you have this paired with plant performance data, please let me know!
Now at
#Asilomar2021
listening to Regina Mae Francia (from my lab) discussing her preliminary results of her global microclimate amelioration meta-analysis: looking across ecosystem-types, and eventually relating microclimate amelioration to plant performance.
"Muir was clearly troubled by the Indians he encountered...He wanted them to be natural, like animals, but they disappointed him by showing some of the qualities he disliked in his fellow whites."
Today we celebrate the strength of Indigenous communities, the traditions and cultures that have survived millennia, and our fervent hope for the future. Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day, everyone!
"Muir and those with similar views responded to the destruction and exploitation of California's natural resources with a preservationist ethic that valued nature above all else but which defined nature as that which was free from human influence."
I get to fund SIX master's students for this work, and 5 different undergraduate projects. Training a diverse group of students from underrepresented backgrounds was a huge piece of the grant and I'm so excited to keep doing that work.
The NSF postdoc listing is out! We are building a larger Bio3D this year with all species planted in monoculture, customized humidifiers, and lots of plant phys planned. CSULA is a Hispanic serving institution and our lab is a diverse and supportive place.
This idea is insane. Grad school is a great time to have kids if it works for you. WHEN ARE FEMALE ACADEMICS SUPPOSED TO HAVE KIDS?! Before we start our academic journey? Grad school? Post-doc publishing hell? In our first TT job when we are over 35 and thus "geriatric"???
Someone recently implied me having kids in grad school must have been unplanned and went on to state “but it worked out ok!”
Let me assure you my children were very planned.
Graduate students are allowed to have children. Don’t make assumptions.
"Last year alone, the CSU banked a monumental surplus of roughly $2 billion" this is not about having enough money to pay lecturers what they deserve. This is about greed at the very top.
Sometimes scarcity is real. Sometimes it is manufactured explicitly to motivate or manipulate people, sometimes it is just imagined. In all cases it makes academia a place where we cannot fight the bigger fights. It keeps us all small. And it is an enemy of diversity.
I changed my profile pic to reflect the shadow job I was doing while helping lead this workshop. Cannot overstate how taxing it is to lead a working group and constantly pump and care for milk.
Today we start the
@snsf_ch
funded workshop on
#facilitation
and
#biodiversity
- ecosystem functioning
#BEF
in plant communities at
@unil
- finally, two years after our original schedule. Great expectations here to unify concepts and synthesize available research.