Aaron Putnam
LightNews LightNews
banner
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Aaron Putnam
@aaronputnam.bsky.social
2.2K followers 1.9K following 930 posts
Dad. Husband. Associate Professor of Earth Science at the University of Maine. I am interested in glaciers and climate in the past, present, and future.
Posts Replies Media Videos
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Harvested the carrots this morning.
A pile of carrots, trimmed, washed, sitting on a dish towel. Carrots are red, orange, yellow, dark purple, and light purple. Many shapes and sizes.
November 16, 2025 at 4:44 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Thank you, Jacquelyn. Here are some bogs for you.
Bog at Arthur’s Pass, New Zealand. Little stream entering a bog in southwestern Norway. Bog near Juneau, Alaska. The yellow flowers are western skunk cabbage. The one-and-only Orono Bog, Orono, Maine. With bright red pitcher plants. Such a special place!
October 23, 2025 at 11:22 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
We are a terrifying bunch…

🐸✊
Man wearing inflatable frog costume with sign that says: “AMPHIBIANS AGAINST IDIOCRACY”
October 19, 2025 at 2:04 AM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Bangor, Maine #nokings

W/ @hbatley.bsky.social (snail).
My friend Hannah (snail) and me (frog) holding signs that say: “The power of the people is stronger than the people in power.” and “AMPHIBIANS AGAINST IDIOCRACY”.
October 18, 2025 at 8:26 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Here we go…
#nokings
Placard with a frog with its mouth open, and the words: “AMPHIBIANS AGAINST IDIOCRACY”
October 18, 2025 at 6:14 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
If you see this post a sunset.

Juneau Icefield, Alaska.
Sun setting behind mountain ridges of the Juneau Icefield. Sky is orange, and reflecting on the snowpack.
October 14, 2025 at 1:47 AM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Here we go… Go Maine!!
#hockey
Maine Men’s Ice Hockey getting started. Bananas the Bear (00) is featured in foreground.
October 10, 2025 at 11:52 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Congratulations to the UMaine Women’s Hockey Team for their decisive 3-0 win over St. Anslem College today!
Team celebrating their win. ‘Black Bears WIN’ on the Jumbotron.
October 10, 2025 at 9:44 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
I attended Graham Platner’s @grahamformaine.bsky.social town hall this evening in Brewer, Maine, at Food and Medicine. I am grateful that he is running. His words were inspiring and actionable.

Time to unshuck the system! 🦪
Graham Platner and the ASL translator on stage. American Flag flying with a Solidarity flag below.
October 10, 2025 at 12:02 AM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Congratulations to Jeremy Frey for winning a MacArthur Fellowship!!

For: "forging a singular aesthetic that blurs the boundaries between craft, design, and contemporary art."

Photos from his recent exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art:
Stunning blue/green Wabanaki basket with sunrise over water on lid (Dawnland). Sign that reads: “This show is thousands of years in the making. It comes from the people who are from this land, who helped make it possible. As such, it is dedicated to the Wabanaki people.”
October 8, 2025 at 9:51 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Listening to a great ‘Fresh Air’ w/ Terry Gross featuring an interview with Samine Nosrat about her new book “Good Things.”
I can’t wait to get this book.

“Recipes and rituals to share with people you love.”

(“Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” was a game-changer for us!)
Cover of ‘Good Things’ by Samine Nosrat. ‘Recipes and rituals to share with people you love’.
September 23, 2025 at 11:24 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Trey looks like he has antennae during this ‘Everything’s Right’.
Trey Anastasio singing. The fans are blowing his hair in such a way that it looks like two antennae on top of his head.
September 21, 2025 at 1:49 AM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
I heard about the Humpty Dumpty incident in New Jersey on ‘Wait wait… don’t tell me!’ this morning, and then just came across the following Gary Larson cartoon…

apnews.com/article/hump...
Cartoon with some medieval-looking soldiers trying to put together several broken pieces of egg back together, the eyes, lips, legs, etc., are in the wrong places. Their commanding officer looks disapprovingly down at them, while three horses standing on their hind legs behind him. The officer says: “OK, OK, you guys have had your chance - the horses want another shot at it.”
September 21, 2025 at 12:14 AM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Glacial erratics of various shapes, sizes, and lithologies. From fieldwork one week ago on the Katahdin massif, north-central Maine.

#fieldphotofriday
🧪🌊⚒️❄️🥼
Pink granite erratic resting on white granite boulders. Pebble-sized welded tuff erratic with oxidized rind resting on white granite-dominated till pavement. Pure quartz pebble resting in white granite till pavement. Small quartzite boulder on pink granite boulder cairn within the North Peaks of Katahdin. Note that this is an erratic boulder that was then moved and placed atop a cairn by humans.
September 6, 2025 at 12:45 AM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
A photo of a Takahē (📸: Daniel Lawrence, from the NZ Bird of the Year website):
Photo of a Takahē, with a plump body covered in blue, purple, and green feathers, and large red beak.
September 4, 2025 at 10:46 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Was in Freeport, Maine, briefly today. My pup Torben and I visited Sherman’s Books where I went to pick up ‘On Tyranny’ and ‘On Freedom’ by @timothysnyder.bsky.social. Torben and I then noticed a demonstration against Tyranny outside the store and decided to join in.
Cover of ‘On Tyranny’ by Timothy Snyder. Outer fringes of demonstration in Freeport, Maine. People flying American flags (some upside down) and holding signs protesting kings and tyranny line the street.
September 2, 2025 at 2:33 AM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Morning update:
Empty chrysalis from which a monarch butterfly just emerged…
August 30, 2025 at 1:42 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
The monarch chrysalis hanging from our camp chair is about to burst…
Monarch butterfly chrysalis hanging from the arm of a folding camp chair in our backyard. The chrysalis is no longer green, but transparent, with curled butterfly wings apparent!
August 30, 2025 at 1:40 AM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Just returned from a few days of sampling #glacial erratics for 10Be dating on the spectacular north ridge of North Basin, Katahdin, with @umaine.bsky.social undergraduate Nate Teerlinck and former UMaine Ph.D. student Peter Strand.
#fieldphotofriday
#fieldworkfriday
🧪🌊
Nate (left) and Pete (right) sampling a glacial boulder resting on the ridgeline. Great Basin of the Katahdin massif in the background. Panorama of Katahdin’s Basin Ponds (lower left), Great Basin (center), Hamlin Ridge (center foreground), Hamlin Peak, and the headway of North Basin (right). Pete (center) and Nate (right) heading back toward camp at Chimney Pond from Blueberry Knoll, after a fun scramble off of the ridgeline and bushwhacking through dense spruce forest.
August 29, 2025 at 10:50 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Saw a VERY BIG #caterpillar today. 🐛
(Hyalophora cecropia - ‘cecropia moth’, I think - North America’s largest #moth species)

(Scale hand belongs to @paleobluedot.bsky.social )
Closeup of very large green caterpillar, with yellow and orange spikes on its back. Caterpillar is climbing up a brown wooden structure. Shot of same caterpillar, but with hand for scale. The caterpillar is roughly the same size as a thumb (maybe a little larger).
August 24, 2025 at 10:20 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
The scales of glacial erosion, as exemplified by a few #geological observations at Acadia Nat’l Park over the last couple of days:

1. Glacial polish (micron-scale).
2. Crescentic Gouges (cm- to m-scale).
3. Roche moutonnée (km-scale, in this case).

🧪🌊🥼❄️
#earthscience
Patch of preserved, incredible smooth (glassy!), glacially polished surface on granitic bedrock of Acadia Mountain, Acadia National Park. Four crescentic gouges (7-yr old pointing at three, and one in the far-right edge of image), which are moon-shaped chips removed from rock by subglacial erosion, preserved near the summit of Acadia Mountain, Acadia National Park, Maine. These gouges, which are types of chatter marks, point in the direction of the former glacial flow direction. Glacially molded island (one of the Porcupine Islands off of Bar Harbor). This ‘Roche Moutonée’ is a ‘ramp-and-pluck’ landform, with ice flow in the direction of the gently ramping side to the steeply ‘plucked’ side.
August 5, 2025 at 12:31 AM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Smoky haze in Maine today. Image of one of the Porcupine Islands, with Mount Desert Island in the background.
Photograph of one of the porcupine islands with Mount Desert Island in the background. Contrast between island in foreground and the background mountains indicates the hazy conditions.
August 4, 2025 at 6:04 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
More Carnivorous Garden photos… 2/
Sarracenia hybrid (‘conversation piece’, I think) with vermillion top and green base. Another Sarracenia hybrid. Deep red (almost brick red) pitchers with strong veining on the lids. Young Sarracenia minor (‘hooded pitcher plant’). Venus Flytrap flowers (white) interspersed with Drosera filiformis (‘thread-leaved sundew’) flowers (pink). Some of the flytrap leaves are visible in the lower center part of the image.
August 2, 2025 at 2:16 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
The Carnivorous Garden is at its peak here in central Maine… 1/

#carnivorousplants
Close-up of the mouth of a Sarracenia flava pitcher. Sarracenia flava pitchers. Top of a Sarracenia flava ‘cuprea’ (‘copper-top’) pitcher. The pitcher is mostly green, but with a bronze lid. Sarracenia oreophila. This plant is critically endangered in the wild. I’m glad it seems to be happy here. (This plant was sourced sustainably from a cultivated population cared for by California Carnivores).
August 2, 2025 at 2:16 PM
aaronputnam.bsky.social
FWIW, section 2.2.1, in my opinion, misrepresents the Rae et al. (2018) data. @mudwaterclimate.bsky.social stated that their δ¹¹B data extended beyond the modern calibration of the modern corals. They were not confident about absolute values...
Excerpt from the DOE report (section 2.2.1): "While this process is often called “ocean acidification”, that is a misnomer because the oceans are not expected to become acidic; “ocean neutralization” would be more accurate. Even if the water were to turn acidic, it is believed that life in the oceans evolved when the oceans were mildly acidic with pH 6.5 to 7.0 (Krissansen-Totton et al., 2018). On the time scale of thousands of years, boron isotope proxy measurements show that ocean pH was around 7.4 or 7.5 during the last glaciation (up to about 20,000 years ago) increasing to present-day values as the world warmed during deglaciation (Rae et al., 2018). Thus, ocean biota appear to be resilient to natural long-term changes in ocean pH since marine organisms were exposed to wide ranges in pH." From Rae et al. (2018): "Note that as our δ11B record extends beyond the pH calibration possible in modern Desmophyllum dianthus (see Methods), we focus our discussion on relative changes in pH as traced by coral δ11B, and provide absolute pH estimates in Extended Data Fig. 1 for reference."
August 2, 2025 at 2:02 AM