🔥🔬🌲 Postdoc Opportunity at Duke! to study the drivers and impacts of post-fire forest loss in the western U.S. Position is part of the inaugural SCALES fellowship, an exciting program funding interdisciplinary research addressing key climate challenges. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31549

New postdoctoral fellowship opportunity! Please pass along. Excited to announce the launch of the Tom Lovejoy Fellowship Program at the University of Arizona for innovative research to protect species, sustain ecosystems, and promote a thriving planet lovejoycenter.arizona.edu/lovejoy-fell... 🧪🌐🌾

I am advertising a postdoctoral position in my new lab at Duke, to start as early as August 2026. If you are interested in how plant communities respond to climate change, please consider applying! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30614

A new study led by alum @jacoblevine.bsky.social, BS '18 Forestry and EEP, and co-authored by Professor Scott Stephens and research scientist Brandon Collins explores why forests planted for logging purposes fuel devastating wildfires more often than untouched land. www.latimes.com/environment/...

Private land used for logging is more prone to severe fire than public lands. A new study shows why

New research explains why forests planted for logging purposes fuel devastating wildfires more often than untouched land.

latimes.com

Great to see our work in my hometown paper! Its not logging itself thats the issue, its what happens after -- dense plantations are responsible for elevated fire severity in industrial forests. Excellent story by @nohaggerty.bsky.social. www.latimes.com/environment/...

Private land used for logging is more prone to severe fire than public lands. A new study shows why

New research explains why forests planted for logging purposes fuel devastating wildfires more often than untouched land.

latimes.com

Had a great time chatting with Jericka Duncan on @cbsnews.com.web.brid.gy last night about our new study on increased fire severity in industrial forest plantations. You can watch it here! www.cbsnews.com/video/megafi...

Megafires more likely to occur on private land than public forests, study finds

More than 44,000 fires have burned nearly 4 million acres across the U.S. so far in 2025, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, but only a handful have been megafires. A new study found t...

cbsnews.com

🧵1/7 🔥 Want to know why megafires are growing bigger? A new study shows industrial private forests are 1.5× more likely to burn in high-severity wildfires than public forests. Mismanaged fuel beds help fires spread.

Industry managed forests more likely to fuel megafires, study finds

The odds of high-severity wildfire were nearly one-and-a-half times higher on industrial private land than on publicly owned forests, a new study found. Forests managed by timber companies were more l...

phys.org

Industrial logging is not the kind of selective thinning that lowers the risk of intense wildfires www.sfchronicle.com/california-w... The open-access paper, not linked in the news coverage, is here onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Does logging reduce wildfire danger? New California study finds key exception

Private timberlands in Northern California are more likely to see high-severity wildfire than areas in and around public forests, a new study found.

sfchronicle.com

Excited to see our work on 🔥 in industrial forests featured in the @sfchronicle.com this morning. Article by @kurtisalexander.bsky.social: www.sfchronicle.com/california-w...

🔥🔥🔥 Why are wildfires more severe in private industrial forests? Our new paper in @globalchangebio.bsky.social has the answers: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧵 Thread below

Extreme Weather Magnifies the Effects of Forest Structure on Wildfire, Driving Increased Severity in Industrial Forests

Wildfires are consistently more severe in private industrial forests than public ones. In this paper, we identify the drivers of this pattern. Namely, we show that fire severity is elevated in dense,...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Thrilled to announce that next year I will be joining @DukeBiology as an assistant professor! I am excited to recruit postdocs and PhD students to start as early as Fall 2026. If you are interested in plant community dynamics, global change, and/or wildfire, please see details below.

Excited to share our new paper out now in Ecological Monographs! "Trait diversity in plant communities maintained by competition for water and light" @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Trait diversity in plant communities maintained by competition for water and light

Ecological communities frequently exhibit remarkable taxonomic and trait diversity, and this diversity is consistently shown to regulate ecosystem function and resilience. However, ecologists lack a ...

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Had a great time chatting with Ross Chambless on Talking Climate last week! The episode is out now -- we talk about my work on biodiversity, climate change, and wildfire. @wilkescenter.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

29: How Are Plant Ecosystems Adapting to the Shifting Climate?

Podcast Episode · Talking Climate · 02/25/2025 · 44m

podcasts.apple.com

Here's a schematic I published in this 2021 piece to illustrate how even a modest delay in onset of rainy season in Southern California can dramatically amplify wildfire risk by lengthening seasonal overlap between dry vegetation and strong offshore winds during Oct-Jan. #CAfire

Daniel Swain@weatherwest.bsky.social · 2y ago

In fact: In a 2021 piece, I discussed how there is already evidence that this "dry & windy" overlap has already increased from autumn and (episodically) into early winter--especially across Southern California. #CAwx #CAfire agupubs.onlinelibrar...

As part of my migration to bluesky, I'm excited to share a recent article published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution where we explain ecologists' struggles to predict coexistence from species' functional traits: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Why ecologists struggle to predict coexistence from functional traits

The rationale behind trait-based ecology is that shifting focus from species’ taxonomic names to their measurable characteristics (‘functional traits’…

sciencedirect.com