The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment

The fall 2024 Yale Forest Forum speaker series on mature and old-growth forests starts this Thursday! 🎉🌳 Join us on August 29 to learn from our first speaker, William Keeton, who will be presenting on "Global Perspectives on Temperate Old-Growth Forest Ecology, Conservation, and Restoration." 🗓️ Thursday, August 29, 2024 🕗 12:00-12:55 pm US ET 🔗 Registration is LIVE! ➡️ https://yse.to/fall2024yff The speaker series is co-developed and co-hosted by The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment and the Society of American Foresters. The series is free and open to the public. Each session will be recorded. We will offer CEUs for foresters in attendance. Learn more on our website: yff.yale.edu

Join us for the Yale Forest Forum's Fall 2024 Speaker Series: 🌲 "Conserving Mature and Old-Growth Forests in a Changing Climate." 🌳 This series will offer diverse perspectives on the conservation and management of mature and old-growth forests and explore innovative responses to these forests' challenges. 🗓️ Thursdays, 12:00-12:55 pm US EDT, August 29 - December 5 🔗Register Now: https://yse.to/fall2024yff The speaker series is co-developed and co-hosted by The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment and the Society of American Foresters. The series is free and open to the public. Each session will be recorded. We will offer CEUs for foresters in attendance. Learn more on our website: yff.yale.edu

1% of global funding goes to women’s rights organizations, and most do not receive multi-year or unrestricted funds. Yet, in Africa, women are stewarding forests and have intimate knowledge of them, says Cecile Ndjebet during her keynote speech at #IUFRO2024. We are so grateful for Cécile’s leadership through The Forests Dialogue’s steering committee, based at The Forest School. Thank you for your profound message and impact!

We’re here at #iufro2024 in Stockholm! And we hope to see you! 🌳 We are organizing an alumni reception Tuesday evening in the city center — if you’re an alumni, please send us a message for details.

Join the Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability on Tuesday, June 25 at 12pm ET for the free webinar, "Impactful Tree Planting Strategies to Mitigate Heat Inequalities in Connecticut." Register here: https://lnkd.in/eHtXfnB6 A NASA-funded research team at Yale has produced high resolution maps of tree canopies and land surface temperatures over 30 years for Connecticut’s ten largest cities. Dr. Shijuan Chen will discuss the relationship of tree cover to land temperatures and how it is changing in our state. Colleen Murphy-Dunning, director of the Hixon Center, will share how New Haven is applying Dr. Chen’s data to prioritize tree planting and address environmental inequities to achieve the greatest impact. The New Haven framework identifies both areas for planting to achieve the greatest impact as well as ease of implementation. This helpful framework can be replicated in other Connecticut cities and beyond. Hixon Center for Urban Ecology, Urban Resources Initiative, CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, South Central Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG), Sustainable CT

Between the end of the semester and spring commencement, students in Professor Mark Ashton’s “Seminar in Tropical Forest Restoration” and Yale Environmental Leadership & Training Initiative's (ELTI) director Eva Garen’s “Engaging Landholders and Communities in Conserving and Restoring Tropical Forest Landscapes” — traveled to the southern region of the state of Bahia, Brazil, to learn about tropical forest restoration in action. Merging the goals of both courses, the trip focused on the ecological and social elements and challenges of tropical forest restoration to give students a complete and holistic perspective on the process. Students learned about Brazilian agroforestry, meeting with representatives from The Brazilian Center for Cocoa Research and exploring cocoa agroforestry systems in the field. Students also interacted with a Brazilian NGO focused on native species restoration and tamarin conservation. Each exploration was also deeply grounded in learning about the impacts of conservation and restoration decisions on local cultures and economies, as well as the importance of local stakeholder participation. Photos 1 and 2: Professor Mark Ashton Photos 3 and 4: Bernard Nyanzu '24 MF

🌿 Celebrating our exceptional Class of 2024 MF and MFS graduates! 🎓 Your commitment to #forestry and environmental leadership is just the beginning. As you branch out, continue to nurture growth, inspire change, and pave the path for sustainable #forestry worldwide. 🌍💚

🌳 Urban Resources Initiative (URI), the City of New Haven's official tree-planting partner and an initiative based at The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment, placed its first tree of the 2024 season in the ground on March 25 with partners EMERGE Connecticut™, Believe in Me, IRIS, and Mayor Justin Elicker. This Shumard oak, planted in Kimberly Park in the Hill neighborhood, is also special because it is URI's first Inflation Reduction Act-funded tree. For the next five years, URI and its community partners will double their annual tree planting effort from 500 to 1,000 trees with support from a $2.6 million USDA grant. All of these trees will be planted in New Haven's Environmental Justice neighborhoods to increase tree canopy and reduce summer heat. Congratulations to URI! We look forward to seeing the IRA-funded trees around town. Photos: Sara Santiago

We’re excited to share the #YFF Review of our fall 2022 speaker series, “What Makes a High-Quality Forest Carbon Credit?” This comprehensive review covers summaries of talks given by experts from all sides of the carbon market. The summaries were authored by students from The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment. Forests store vast amounts of carbon in their vegetation and soils, and humans may be able to protect, manage, and restore forested ecosystems to protect existing carbon and also stimulate faster and greater uptake of atmospheric #CO2. Carbon markets are responding to this potential: to date, carbon credits from forests are by far the largest contributor to nature-based offsets. As carbon markets grow, market participants are grappling with fundamental and complex questions of the best methods for measuring, reporting, and verifying CO2 removal from forest carbon projects. In the fall of 2022, YFF hosted the speaker series “What Makes a High-Quality Forest Carbon Credit?” The series explored the state (in 2022) of #carbon markets in the United States and asked major market players—including policymakers, registry developers, credit producers, forestland owners, corporate buyers, journalists, and academics—to address how we can build credibility and trust in forest carbon credits. The series was organized collaboratively by The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment, Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture, and the Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program. For those eager to explore the in-depth insights gleaned from the series, the full review is available: https://lnkd.in/gWygCJkg We extend our gratitude to all contributors whose dedication and expertise made this speaker series and the YFF Review possible: 🔸Yale Forest Forum Team: Mark Ashton, Gary Dunning, Liz Felker, Sara Santiago, Lisa O’Brien 🔸Series Editors: Sara Santiago, Wyatt Klipa 🔸Issue Editors: Reid Lewis, Will Gardner, Sara Kuebbing 🔸Seminar Instructors: Sara Kuebbing, Mark Bradford, Luke Sanford 🔸Seminar guest Instructors: Brad Gentry, Frances Seymour 🔸Speakers: Coeli Hoover, Rajan Parajuli, Stephanie Chizmar, Mark Trexler, Marissa Spence, Christine Cadigan, Bryan Van Stippen, Jim Hourdequin, Tracy Johns, Jacqueline Patterson, Tom Hodgman, Frances Seymour 🔸Summary Authors: Grace Bachmann, Isobel Campbell, Jon Gewirtzman, Maude Gibbins, Charlotte Benishek, Philipp Hoehme, Jimena Terrazas Lozano, Annie Miller, Amelia 'Melly' Napper, Madeleine Tran, Colleen Flynn, Robin Happel, Seung Min Kim, Josie Watson, Jake Barker, Michael Culbertson, Nick Nugent, Raffa Saposhnik, Jillian Aicher, Vincent Haller, Katie Michels, Elisse Roche, Alex Healey, Yiqing Cai, Helena L., Calla Rosenfeld, Jikai Wang, Nadia B. Ahmad, Dan Alberga, Ismini Ethridge, Ritika J., Will Gardner, Zexi (Cicy) Geng, Yangshengjing UB Qiu, Urmila Mallick, Isaac Merson, Angela Xue

🌳 Professor Mark Ashton guided Yale Forestry students to the 2024 New England Society of American Foresters (NESAF) Annual Meeting, held in Vermont from March 27-29. Throughout the event, students showcased their master's research through engaging flash talks and poster presentations, skills honed in Prof. Mark Ashton's “Seminar in Research Analysis and Communication in Forest Ecology.” This gathering provided an opportunity for #forestry students to share their research findings and connect with universities, regional organizations, and stakeholders across New England. In addition to Prof. Mark Ashton's seminar participants, student members of the Yale Temperate Forestry SIG also made their mark at NESAF, representing The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment in the NESAF Quiz Bowl. Prof. Mark Ashton officially assumed the role of #NESAF Chair, extending warm welcomes and overseeing proceedings. His leadership shone during the The Forest School's alumni-student reception, where he facilitated discussions and provided updates on the state of the school and nurtured intergenerational connections across our community (Photos 8-10). ✨ For those keen to delve deeper into the Yale Forestry students’ research, abstracts of their presentations can be accessed through the NESAF News Quarterly: https://lnkd.in/ebnva9ZV Amaya Sathurusinghe ‘24 MFS (Photos 1, 2): Growth and establishment of native rainforest species planted in open fields, secondary forests and rubber plantations in Bahia, Brazil. Bernard Nyanzu ‘24 MF (Photos 1, 3): Assessing species compositional shift and carbon stocks of forest fragments within agricultural landscapes of Western Ghana. Grace Dominic ‘24 MF (Photo 4): Tree seedlings in the forest understory of second-growth oak-hardwood forests: A twenty-seven-year study of population dynamic and demography. Jennifer J. ‘24 MF (Photo 5): Examining fire-exposed softwoods and hardwoods and what wood quality means for the two. Les Welker ‘24 MESc (Photo 6): Understanding urban understories: The role of disturbance, shade, and edge effect on understory functional groups in New Haven, Connecticut. Yeim We ‘24 MFS (Photo 7): Impact of eucalyptus reforestation on soil carbon and nutrients in former pastureland within the Atlantic Forest region of Brazil: A 30-year chronosequence analysis. Kumba Jammeh ‘24 MFS: Plantation age and the recruitment of natural regeneration: Assessing the understory dynamics of teak (Tectona grandis) plantations in the transition zone of Ghana. Michael Culbertson ‘24 MFS: Influence of sampling design on estimates of forest soil organic carbon. Shaylyn Austin ‘23 MF: Understanding forest landowner perspectives of climate-smart forestry: A regional assessment in Southern New England. Photos 1, 4-6, 8-9: Yeim We '24 MFS Photo 2: Jennifer J. ‘24 MF Photo 3: Amaya Sathurusinghe ‘24 MFS Photo 7: Bernard Nyanzu ‘24 MF Photo 10: provided by Mark Ashton