Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
Wilkes Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy
@UniversityofUtah. Princeton PhD. Berkeley undergrad.
I use theory, experiments and stats to study biodiversity, fire, and forests.
Environmental science
61%
Geography
15%
Pinned
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 18
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.
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.
Reposted by Jacob I. Levine
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.
www.latimes.com
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/...
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 22
It’s in our paper that just came out. See figure 4, positive interaction between tree height and HDW index causes sign to flip. Like I said, I’d want to understand it more, but this is just about the most detailed data we’ve ever had on these dynamics so I’d be surprised if it’s a total artifact
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 22
My hope is that this research can help us better balance the goals of providing a sustainable source of timber and reducing fire risk.
Fire is ultimately a contagious process. That means we need broad cooperation across ownerships to get on top of it. Logging is a part of the solution!
Fire is ultimately a contagious process. That means we need broad cooperation across ownerships to get on top of it. Logging is a part of the solution!
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 22
The real issue for me is that logging=bad ignores all the nuance. Sure, some logging is bad for fire, but other types of logging are critical for reducing severity. The timber industry has a clear fire problem (so does USFS, just a slightly smaller one), it also provides enormous value.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 22
We also find that while big trees reduce the prob. of high-severity fire in mild weather conditions, they become a liability in extreme ones, increasing fire severity. I would want to understand that result more before basing policy on it, but nevertheless it suggests some complications.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 22
Its complicated. We show conclusively that the increased risk of high-severity fire in industrial forests is the result of plantation-type structures, too many trees spaced too regularly. This suggests thinning (i.e. logging) and rx fire are needed across both private and public land.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 21
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.
www.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/...
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/...
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 21
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...
www.cbsnews.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...
You can watch it here!
www.cbsnews.com/video/megafi...
Reposted by Jacob I. Levine
Emily Carter
@emilycurates.bsky.social
· Aug 20
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
🧵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.
🔥 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.
Reposted by Harman Jaggi
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 20
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.
www.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...
Article by @kurtisalexander.bsky.social:
www.sfchronicle.com/california-w...
Reposted by Jacob I. Levine
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.
www.sfchronicle.com
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/...
www.sfchronicle.com/california-w...
The open-access paper, not linked in the news coverage, is here
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 20
Hopefully, this research will help us strike a better balance between the sustainable production of critical wood products and the mitigation of fire severity risk in plantations.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 20
Mitigating the severity of future fires requires a coordinated effort across ownership boundaries. In particular, strategies like mechanical thinning which reduce the density of trees and foster structural variability are critical.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 20
Overall, the paper suggests that the forest structures created through plantation forestry -- dense, homogenous stands with high ladder fuels -- elevate the risk of high-severity fire. However, although public lands fared better in our dataset, they still have a massive fire severity problem.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 20
This is an important result because it indicates that management practices which reduce tree density and ladder fuels, and increase variability, will remain effective even as extreme weather conditions become more prevalent under climate change. Indeed, these efforts will only become more urgent.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 20
Critically, we also found that the effects of forest structure on fire severity were amplified in extreme weather conditions!
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 20
We found that fires were more severe in dense, spatially homogenous forests with high ladder fuels – characteristics more common on private industrial than adjacent public land.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 20
Using this data, we examined: (i) which forest structures are most associated with high-severity fire; (ii) whether these forest structures are more common on private industrial land; and (iii) how extreme fire weather driven by climate change mediates the effect of management.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 20
Using a unique airborne LiDAR dataset, we identified and mapped individual trees across 460,000 hectares in the Sierra Nevada, an area which subsequently burned in five large wildfires including the Dixie Fire, the largest single fire in California’s recorded history.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Aug 20
Brandon Collins, Michelle Coppoletta, Scott Stephens and I have been working for the past three years to understand a consistent, puzzling pattern in wildfire data: that fires are more severe on land owned by industrial timber companies than on land managed by public agencies.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Apr 14
Competition for time: Evidence for an overlooked, diversity‐maintaining competitive mechanism
In ecology, there is an underappreciated but fundamental distinction between systems in which the depletion of limiting resources reduces the growth rates of competitors and systems in which resource...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
This work is in many ways an extension of our work on "competition for time" in annual plant communities, which you can read about here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Apr 14
The model we develop therefore explains the amazing diversity of plant hydraulic traits observed in plant communities across the globe, and replicates patterns across precipitation gradients.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Apr 14
Specifically, variation in species' drought tolerance generates an emergent phenological division of the time between storms. When paired with a trade off such that drought intolerant species grow faster or are more fecund, there is no limit to the number of species that coexist.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Apr 14
By unifying ecophysiology and community ecology theory, we show that simple trade-offs can maintain a high diversity of plant hydraulic traits across a wide array of climates and plant types.
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Apr 14
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
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"
@ecologicalsociety.bsky.social
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Jacob Levine
@jacoblevine.bsky.social
· Feb 25
29: How Are Plant Ecosystems Adapting to the Shifting Climate?
Podcast Episode · Talking Climate · 02/25/2025 · 44m
podcasts.apple.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...
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...
Reposted by Jacob I. Levine
Daniel Swain
@weatherwest.bsky.social
· Jan 10
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