#SOIL???

[honeybunnilieu]

names courtesy of my best friend. she knows nothing of the life series. i- *crying*

[great-and-small]

Turdus aficionados of Costa Rica please know I love your national bird but this is objectively hilarious

[botanyshitposts]

me explaining to my grandma that the turkey tail and golden oyster mushrooms and birds nest fungi growing on her huge backyard tree stump are simply eating the dead wood to return it to the soil and they're cute and colorful and add to the whimsy of her landscaping and are not causing the weeds in other places of the yard or harming her little white dog

[3liza]

incredible to me that in the age of spending minimum $100 for groceries for one person every three weeks where i live, people are still online like "dairy is bad for you because it has a lot of calories". at this point im calculating calories per dollar at the grocery store and youre still stuck in "fat bad" mindset from 1980. you are an absurd person to me. laughable

[pangur-and-grim]

my sister has two human children, but I'm still debating on whether I'm responsible enough to have a frog

[quinquangularist]

im rly enjoying dungeon meshi

[tojisun]

no matter how hard you try, you just can’t make yourself cum tonight.

the position is wrong, your toy is still dead as hell so you had to resort to using your fingers, but those aren’t hitting somewhere deep and scratching that itch you have of wanting to be filled, and it has you crying in frustration.

god, you just wanted to fuck yourself into a good orgasm once. but your fingers are starting to feel numb, and your arm is cramping up, and you feel annoyingly sore already. you know you should call it quits; that you should just douse the flames of your desire with a cold shower and just retire for the night, but you are so, so stubborn and angry and—

you snarl, ripping your fingers out of your cunt before twisting to snatch your phone from where you’d flung it close to the wall. you use your clean hand, wiping the other one on your bedsheets—you might have to wash them tonight, anyway—and sends a message to johnny.

cant cum <

fuck me pls <

you drop your phone to your stomach, hearing yourself heave as your body catches up to the exhaustion. you stare up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the blazing heat and the soreness and the emptiness, and focusing instead on the little spark of need that you refuse to extinguish because you know johnny. you know he’d reply soon.

(he’s always fucked you good; filled you up with slurring words crooned to your ears, his big hands stretching across your stomach because he swears underneath all this skin and fat, he feels his cock fucking in, in, in.

he loves taunting you when your quiet tears turn into soft sobs—ye gonna cum soon, bon? show me yer cummin’ face, huh? c’mon bon.

he is so, so mean, and you need nothing less right now.)

true to your thoughts, your phone buzzes two minutes later. you pick it back up, grunting in confusion when instead of johnny’s name, you see john’s.

is he alright? did he need something from you? god, you think he’d let you do it tomorrow or at least in a couple of hours?

you tap at the notification, only to feel the curiosity bleed out of you to be replaced with startling horror. it’s like ice water was dumped on you, extinguishing every embers of your libido because there, on your screen, was john. replying to your message.

you had—

> quite forward of you. well, since you asked so nicely, we’re on our way.

you had sent the message to—

three knocks—taptap-tap—suddenly thud on your door. you gasp, looking up from your phone to stare at your locked door, dreadful.

you sent it to the damn group chat.

-

part 02

[housecow]

soft, round, warm, jiggly

[barghest-land]

drawings from paleo expedition to dagestan, done right on the trip. sometimes messy when it was cold and rainy, but i won't correct it. i think it's cool to leave it just the way it was done, and not retouch it after. there will be more drawings later, but those will be done from home

[localraccconn]

barry keoghan u lil freak i love u so much

[curapicas]

Let's not kid ourselves, this is the real reason Percy was written off of the Thordak fight

[ketyoulater]

[reasonsforhope]

"Many people know about the Yellowstone wolf miracle. After wolves were reintroduced to the national park in the mid-1990s, streamside bushes that had been grazed to stubble by out-of-control elk populations started bouncing back. Streambank erosion decreased. Creatures such as songbirds that favor greenery along creeks returned. Nearby aspens flourished.

While there is debate about how much of this stemmed from the wolves shrinking the elk population and how much was a subtle shift in elk behavior, the overall change was dramatic. People were captivated by the idea that a single charismatic predator’s return could ripple through an entire ecosystem. The result was trumpeted in publications such as National Geographic.

But have you heard about the sea otters and the salt marshes? Probably not.

It turns out these sleek coastal mammals, hunted nearly to extinction for their plush pelts, can play a wolf-like role in rapidly disappearing salt marshes, according to new research. The findings highlight the transformative power of a top predator, and the potential ecosystem benefits from their return.

“It begs the question: In how many other ecosystems worldwide could the reintroduction of a former top predator yield similar benefits?” said Brian Silliman, a Duke University ecologist involved in the research.

The work focused on Elk Slough, a tidal estuary at the edge of California’s Monterey Bay. The salt marsh lining the slough’s banks has been shrinking for decades. Between 1956 and 2003, the area lost 50% of its salt marshes.

Such tidal marshes are critical to keeping shorelines from eroding into the sea, and they are in decline around the world. The damage is often blamed on a combination of human’s altering coastal water flows, rising seas and nutrient pollution that weakens the roots of marsh plants.

But in Elk Slough, a return of sea otters hinted that their earlier disappearance might have been a factor as well. As many as 300,000 sea otters once swam in the coastal waters of western North America, from Baja California north to the Aleutian Islands. But a fur trade begun by Europeans in the 1700s nearly wiped out the animals, reducing their numbers to just a few thousand by the early 1900s. Southern sea otters, which lived on the California coast, were thought to be extinct until a handful were found in the early 1900s.

In the late 1900s, conservation organizations and government agencies embarked on an effort to revive the southern sea otters, which remain protected under the Endangered Species Act. In Monterey Bay, the Monterey Bay Aquarium selected Elk Slough as a prime place to release orphaned young sea otters taken in by the aquarium.

As the otter numbers grew, the dynamics within the salt marsh changed. Between 2008 and 2018, erosion of tidal creeks in the estuary fell by around 70% as otter numbers recovered from just 11 animals to nearly 120 following a population crash tied to an intense El Niño climate cycle.

While suggestive, those results are hardly bulletproof evidence of a link between otters and erosion. Nor does it explain how that might work.

To get a more detailed picture, the researchers visited 5 small tidal creeks feeding into the main slough. At each one, they enclosed some of the marsh with fencing to keep out otters, while other spots were left open. Over three years, they monitored the diverging fates of the different patches.

The results showed that otter presence made a dramatic difference in the condition of the marsh. They also helped illuminate why this was happening. It comes down to the otters’ appetite for small burrowing crabs that live in the marsh.

Adult otters need to eat around 25% of their body weight every day to endure the cold Pacific Ocean waters, the equivalent of 20 to 25 pounds. And crabs are one of their favorite meals. After three years, crab densities were 68% higher in fenced areas beyond the reach of otters. The number of crab burrows was also higher. At the same time, marsh grasses inside the fences fared worse, with 48% less mass of leaves and stems and 15% less root mass, a critical feature for capturing sediment that could otherwise wash away, the scientists reported in late January in Nature.

The results point to the crabs as a culprit in the decline of the marshes, as they excavate their holes and feed on the plant roots. It also shows the returning otters’ potential as a marsh savior, even in the face of rising sea levels and continued pollution. In tidal creeks with high numbers of otters, creek erosion was just 5 centimeters per year, 69% lower than in creeks with fewer otters and a far cry from earlier erosion of as much as 30 centimeters per year.  

“The return of the sea otters didn’t reverse the losses, but it did slow them to a point that these systems could restabilize despite all the other pressures they are subject to,” said Brent Hughes, a biology professor at Sonoma State University and former postdoctoral researcher in Silliman’s Duke lab.

The findings raise the question of whether other coastal ecosystems might benefit from a return of top predators. The scientists note that a number of these places were once filled with such toothy creatures as bears, crocodiles, sharks, wolves, lions and dolphins. Sea otters are still largely absent along much of the West Coast.

As people wrestle to hold back the seas and revive their ailing coasts, a predator revival could offer relatively cheap and effective assistance. “It would cost millions of dollars for humans to rebuild these creek banks and restore these marshes,” Silliman said of Elk Slough. “The sea otters are stabilizing them for free in exchange for an all-you-can-eat crab feast.”"

-via Anthropocene Magazine, February 7, 2024

[stealingyourbones]

Not even really a crossover but it could be

Danny gets outed/reveals/something and everybody knows he's Phantom. There are science organizations that are absolutely *frothing* at the mouth to hire him.

He gets hired to modify and then deploy hurricane and tornado reading equipment because he's able to fly into the center unharmed. There is much less margin or error because he's always able to get the equipment deployed if the weather is still happening.

Maybe it's a side job while he's in school for his BA or something

.

[astrateiaa]

Hiii, Black Rose Arc animatic/pmv will be on YouTube in about 10 hours!!! Have some frames that I like in preparation

(Edit: If you haven't seen it yet, it's up in the reblogs)