2020s

2020–2029·inside 21st Century

Research and community activity in the 2020s.

780publications2documents962datasets400stories

Synthesis

A grounded primer describing what was happening in the 2020s — drawing on the distinctive concepts, species, and content below — will appear here when the era-primer pipeline ships. Today’s view is the raw evidence the synthesis will draw from.

Distinctive concepts — Research

Ranked by log-odds-ratio z-score — over-represented in this era vs. all other dated content, not just frequent overall. Drawn from publications and datasets only.

groundwater storage dynamics155 streamflow104 snowpack persistence146 dissolved organic matter64 radiative transfer modeling56 metal concentrations60 air temperature134 atmospheric boundary layer34 snow-free season length50 evapotranspiration61 NDVI47 aerosol-cloud interactions31 riparian nitrogen cycling hotspots34 snow water equivalent48 weathering58 hillslope similarity31 spectral reflectance36 fractional snow cover area52 sensible heat flux31 solute export26

Distinctive concepts — Policy & community

No concept mentions ranked as distinctive for this era.

Distinctive species

Ranked by log-odds-ratio z-score — over-represented in this era vs. all other dated content, not just frequent overall.

Ambystoma mavortium26 Bombus impatiens122 B. vosnesenskii120 B. rufocinctus120 B. appositus121 Bombus vosnesenskii120

Distinctive protocols & methods

Ranked by log-odds-ratio z-score — over-represented in this era vs. all other dated content, not just frequent overall.

drive-point piezometer groundwater sampling64 Random Forest climate downscaling53 Satellite-based snow disappearance tracking36 standard water chemistry analysis suite34 Forest inventory plot sampling29 Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry29

Distinctive places

Ranked by log-odds-ratio z-score — over-represented in this era vs. all other dated content, not just frequent overall.

Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory284 Gothic145 East River Watershed27 North Village21 Sierra Nevada17 Upper Colorado River Basin32

Distinctive stakeholders

No stakeholder mentions ranked as distinctive for this era.

Most-cited publications

TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access
Kattge; Bonisch; Diaz; Lavorel; Prentice; Leadley; Blonder · 2020 · 2,003 citations
Plastic rain in protected areas of the United States
Brahney; Hallerud; Heim; Hahnenberger; Sukumaran · 2020 · 1,112 citations
Scientists’ warning on climate change and insects
Harvey; Tougeron; Gols; Heinen; Abarca; Abram; Basset; Berg; De Snoo; Deacon; Dell; Desneux; Dillon; Duffy; Dyer; Ellers; Harte · 2023 · 521 citations
Universal DNA methylation age across mammalian tissues
Lu; Fei; Haghani; Robeck; Zoller; Li; Lowe; Yan; Zhang; Vu; Ablaeva; Acosta-Rodriguez; Adams; Almunia; Aloysius; Ardehali; Arneson; Baker; Banks; Belov; Bennett; Black; Blumstein; Pinho · 2023 · 355 citations
Climate change and phenology
Inouye · 2022 · 204 citations
Effects of climate change on alpine plants and their pollinators
Inouye · 2020

Recent documents

Top-cited datasets

MODIS/Terra Snow Cover Daily L3 Global 500m SIN Grid, Version 612021 · 26 cites
MODIS/Terra+Aqua BRDF/Albedo Daily L3 Global - 500m V0612021 · 22 cites
Daymet: Daily Surface Weather Data on a 1-km Grid for North America, Version 4 R12022 · 17 cites
Daymet: Daily Surface Weather Data on a 1-km Grid for North America, Version 42020 · 10 cites
Western United States UCLA Daily Snow Reanalysis, Version 12022 · 8 cites
Herbarium-Derived Phenological Data in North America2023 · 6 cites

Recent stories

He’s lived alone in the Colorado mountains for 52 years measuring snow every day. Here’s what he has noticed.2026-04-25 · news_article
Paul R. Ehrlich, an appreciation2026-04-09 · obituary
200- to-1,000-year snow anomaly observed in Colorado mountains2026-04-09 · press_release
Senator Bennet talks snowpack with local stakeholders2026-04-08 · event_coverage
Daniel T. Blumstein2026-04-08 · profile
City animals act in the same brazen ways around the world2026-04-08 · opinion_editorial

Bombus appositus124

Callospermophilus lateralis46

Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalansavdelning (HBV)31

structure from motion25

Elevation-stratified mountain watershed hydrological modeling26

Multiscale Model to Model Cloud Compare method37

metaSPAdes assembly pipeline23

EDR from Doppler radar21

sUAS surface property mapping22

section-line land-survey fire reconstruction (Animalia)25

Multi-model PlanetScope snow cover classification22

Rocky Mountains52

Gothic Quadrangle12

southwestern United States25

Colorado River watershed6

· 174 citations

Winters are changing: snow effects on Arctic and alpine tundra ecosystems

Rixen; Hoye; Macek; Aerts; Alatalo; Anderson; Arnold; Barrio; Bjerke; Björkman; Blok; Blume-Werry; Boike; Bokhorst; Carbognani; Christiansen; Convey; Cooper; Cornelissen; Coulson; Dorrepaal; Elberling; Elmendorf; Elphinstone; Forte; Frei; Geange; Gehrmann; Gibson; Grogan; Halbritter; Harte; Henry; Inouye; Irwin; Jespersen; Jonsdottir; Jung; Klinges; Kudo; Lamsa; Lee; Lembrechts; Lett; Lynn; Mann; Mastepanov; Morse; Myers-Smith; Olofsson; Paavola; Petraglia; Phoenix; Semenchuk; Siewert; Slatyer; Spasojevic; Suding; Sullivan; Thompson; Vaisanen; Vandvik; Venn; Walz; Way; Welker; Wipf; Zong · 2022 · 150 citations

DNA methylation networks underlying mammalian traits

Haghani; Li; Robeck; Zhang; Lu; Ablaeva; Acosta-Rodriguez; Adams; Alagaili; Almunia; Aloysius; Amor; Ardehali; Arneson; Baker; Banks; Belov; Bennett; Black; Blumstein; Pinho · 2023 · 124 citations

Changing Climate Drives Divergent and Nonlinear Shifts in Flowering Phenology across Elevations

Rafferty; Diez; Bertelsen · 2020 · 121 citations

Insect herbivory reshapes a native leaf microbiome

Humphrey; Whiteman · 2020 · 119 citations