From The Michigan State University: “Mapping Africa’s trees”

From The Michigan State University

5.19.23

Africa’s trees are located outside areas classified as forest

MSU Department of Forestry professor David Skole, in partnership with NASA and European collaborators, led a team of researchers on a quest to count and map every tree in Africa using precise satellite imaging captured over the course of a year. New results from this research were recently published in the journal Nature Communications [below].

Researchers ultimately discovered that 29 percent of tree cover in Africa is found outside areas previously classified as woodlands or forests — such as in croplands and grassland.

Such precise mapping of tree cover, down to the level of individual trees, has the potential to redefine land-use impacts, build a basis for natural climate solutions through novel land-use practices, and provide a new scientific basis for elevating tree-based analysis to support climate change mitigation policies and actions, and enhance local livelihoods at the same time.

Previous monitoring systems were unable to account for trees outside of forests and other mapping efforts are too costly to reproduce on a consistent basis. Skole and his team partnered with NASA to use high-resolution images from PlanetScope nanosattelites, allowing precise tree counting to rectify previous errors in tree calculations.

Trees outside of forests in Malawi, Africa.

The first leg of Skole’s research began in Malawi, with the goal of counting trees outside of forests in the southeast African nation. Precision imaging allowed researchers to account for trees in areas as small as 0.1 hectare (1/4 acre), when previous tree-cover mapping was done on a scale of 1 hectare (2.5 acres). Next the team developed the means to use very high-resolution satellite data to detect and map individual tree crowns in Senegal at the resolution half-a-meter (5 square feet, 0.0001 acres), which is “smaller than my kitchen table,” says Skole.

The project in Senegal proved the concept that a full accounting of tree cover down to the individual tree level was possible on a countrywide scale, and Skole’s team and collaborators began to scale up the project.

Next, the team attempted to account for tree cover on a national scale in Rwanda, but in addition attempted to detect tree-level carbon stocks. A carbon stock is a system in which carbon can be stored or released. The Rwanda project allowed researchers to account for a complete picture of the nation’s carbon stock.

“Scaling up to the entire continent of Africa, we can now specifically measure trees to inform us on what needs to be done for moving forward to improve carbon mitigation efforts,” said Skole, whose MSU AgBioResearch funded research focuses on land-use change, the global carbon cycle, and identifying mitigation and adaptation solutions.

Trees outside of forests in Senegal, Africa

Mapping trees on a more precise scale allows land managers to adjust their mitigation and planning efforts for their unique tree cover and land-use needs.

“Tree cover has no meaning,” Skole said. “Yes, you can detect it, you can say ‘this 30-by-30 meter area probably has trees,’ but you need to plant individual trees and monitor the success of tree planting at the individual scale. This way you can monitor progress over time as they grow and sequester.”

The research team now hopes to use the data gathered through satellite imaging to model potential carbon storage and mitigation options in these previously unaccounted for areas of tree cover in Africa.

In addition to having new very high-resolution earth observation satellite data in massive amounts, detection of individual tree “objects” is achieved using new machine learning, which involves computerized programs that train themselves to detect and “draw” complex patterns and spatial objects such as trees and tree crowns. MSU forest carbon experts can then build new models that relate these tree attributes to the weight of the tree, which in turn can be numerically converted to the tree’s stock of carbon, because we know that half of all living tree mass is comprised of carbon.

Using MSU’s high performance computing center, the Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research Center, as well as collaborating computing centers in Copenhagen and NASA, these algorithms can be applied to tens of thousands of high-resolution satellite images, more data and information in bytes than twice the amount in the MSU library. A combination of massive data, new algorithms, new forestry models and new computational infrastructure produce billions of trees and their assigned carbon stocks.

Mapping and monitoring tree systems outside of forests will allow for better carbon sequestration efforts on a local, national and eventually global scale. Mapping and monitoring carbon stocks is one of the most important factors of climate change mitigation, and demand for accurate tree accounting is high.

“The next step is taking science out of the lab, and putting it into practice,” Skole said. “We can put the science of monitoring in the hands of people that can use it.” For that, the team is now funded by the World Resources Institute, the Bezos Earth Fund, and the African Union Development Agency to enable advanced continent-wide measurements of carbon stocks in tree-planting, agroforestry and other natural climate solutions projects across all of Africa.

Nature Communications

Fig. 1: Mapped tree cover across areas of different tree densities.

a) Percentage tree cover, at 1 km spatial resolution; (b–h) examples of predicted tree cover overlaid on Google Maps satellite imagery (Imagery © 2022 CNES / Airbus, Landsat / Copernicus, Maxar Technologies, Map data ©2022), in: b) a village in Senegal; c) agricultural fields in Burkina Faso; d) an urban environment in Khartoum, Sudan; e) Miombo woodlands in Angola; f) deforestation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); g) Eucalyptus plantations in South Africa; h) terrace farming in Zimbabwe. The ocean basemaps in a are from http://www.naturalearth.com.

Fig. 2: Distribution of tree cover by rainfall and percent cover.

a) Total tree cover area by rainfall. Tree cover is classified into forest at different heights [21*], and into two groups of trees outside forest (TOF) with canopy cover <10% and 10–25%, respectively. A current state-of-the-art global map is added for comparison [12]. This figure highlights the regions below 1200 mm rainfall and the full map is shown in Supplementary Fig. 2a. b) Tree cover vs. rainfall at 100 m resolution using a random sample of 10 million grids, with hue as the forest height [21], and isolines overlaid for MODIS tree cover [49] from 100 000 samples at 250 m, with isoline units as relative probability per rainfall and cover grid cell. c) Contribution of trees outside forests (TOF) to total tree cover at country scale. We group trees in 30 × 30 m grids and define a cell as non-forest if the canopy cover is below 25%, and as forest, if it exceeded 25%. Tree cover is subsequently accumulated for each country. The ocean basemaps are from http://www.naturalearth.com.
*References in the science paper

See the full article here .

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The Michigan State University is a public research university located in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. Michigan State University was founded in 1855 and became the nation’s first land-grant institution under the Morrill Act of 1862, serving as a model for future land-grant universities.

The university was founded as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, one of the country’s first institutions of higher education to teach scientific agriculture. After the introduction of the Morrill Act, the college became coeducational and expanded its curriculum beyond agriculture. Today, Michigan State University is one of the largest universities in the United States (in terms of enrollment) and has approximately 634,300 living alumni worldwide.

U.S. News & World Report ranks its graduate programs the best in the U.S. in elementary teacher’s education, secondary teacher’s education, industrial and organizational psychology, rehabilitation counseling, African history (tied), supply chain logistics and nuclear physics in 2019. Michigan State University pioneered the studies of packaging, hospitality business, supply chain management, and communication sciences. Michigan State University is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. The university’s campus houses the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden, the Abrams Planetarium, the Wharton Center for Performing Arts, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, and the country’s largest residence hall system.

Research

The university has a long history of academic research and innovation. In 1877, botany professor William J. Beal performed the first documented genetic crosses to produce hybrid corn, which led to increased yields. Michigan State University dairy professor G. Malcolm Trout improved the process for the homogenization of milk in the 1930s, making it more commercially viable. In the 1960s, Michigan State University scientists developed cisplatin, a leading cancer fighting drug, and followed that work with the derivative, carboplatin. Albert Fert, an Adjunct professor at Michigan State University, was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Peter Grünberg.

Today Michigan State University continues its research with facilities such as the Department of Energy -sponsored Plant Research Laboratory and a particle accelerator called the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory [below]. The Department of Energy Office of Science named Michigan State University as the site for the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB). The $730 million facility will attract top researchers from around the world to conduct experiments in basic nuclear science, astrophysics, and applications of isotopes to other fields.

Michigan State University FRIB [Facility for Rare Isotope Beams] .

In 2004, scientists at the Cyclotron produced and observed a new isotope of the element germanium, called Ge-60 In that same year, Michigan State University, in consortium with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the government of Brazil, broke ground on the 4.1-meter Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR) in the Andes Mountains of Chile.

NSF NOIRLab NOAO Southern Astrophysical Research [SOAR] telescope, operated by a consortium including the countries of Brazil and Chile, Michigan State University, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) (part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, NOAO), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill situated on Cerro Pachón, just to the southeast of Cerro Tololo, on the NOIRLab NOAO AURA site at an altitude of 2,700 meters (8,775 feet) above sea level.

The consortium telescope will allow the Physics & Astronomy department to study galaxy formation and origins. Since 1999, Michigan State University has been part of a consortium called the Michigan Life Sciences Corridor, which aims to develop biotechnology research in the State of Michigan. Finally, the College of Communication Arts and Sciences’ Quello Center researches issues of information and communication management.

NSCL Nuclear research at Michigan State University National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory S800 Spectrograph schematic.

The Michigan State University Spartans compete in the NCAA Division I Big Ten Conference. Michigan State Spartans football won the Rose Bowl Game in 1954, 1956, 1988 and 2014, and the university claims a total of six national football championships. Spartans men’s basketball won the NCAA National Championship in 1979 and 2000 and has attained the Final Four eight times since the 1998–1999 season. Spartans ice hockey won NCAA national titles in 1966, 1986 and 2007. The women’s cross country team was named Big Ten champions in 2019. In the fall of 2019, MSU student-athletes posted all-time highs for graduation success rates and federal graduation rates, according to NCAA statistics.

From The University of Maine: “Peter Breigenzer – Preserving forests as a woodsman and scientist”

From The University of Maine

4.27.23 [Just today in social media.]
Marcus Wolf
207.581.3721
marcus.wolf@maine.edu

Photo by Jono Binger

Peter Breigenzer of Glasgow, Montana, fell in love with forestry while working in the woods with multiple crews over the past several years. When he decided to attend graduate school, he searched for a program that would marry his passion for outdoor work and research, and teach him how to sustainably manage forests.

Now more than 2,000 miles from home, Breigenzer is enhancing his knowledge and conducting biophysical and social science research to help scientists, foresters and landowners protect woodlands from climate change through a unique interdisciplinary training program at the University of Maine.

Breigenzer, who is pursuing a master’s degree in forest resources, is one of many students who are participating in a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship Program that aims to educate the next generation of environmental conservation leaders. Funded with $2.9 million from NSF, the program offers students interdisciplinary coursework, collaborative research opportunities and conservation internships with state and federal agencies and other organizations. Breigenzer says he chose to study at UMaine to participate in the traineeship.

As part of the NSF-funded program, Breigenzer is investigating how management decisions can affect forest responses to climate change with co-advisors Jessica Leahy, professor of human dimensions of natural resources, and Jay Wason III, assistant professor of forest ecosystem physiology.

“After being here for almost two years, I know I made the right choice,” he says. “I feel incredibly fortunate to have such great co-advisors. Jessica and Jay have provided me with valuable guidance and support at every stage of our project.”

In collaboration with Leahy, Breigenzer has interviewed private, noncommercial woodland owners — also called family forest owners — throughout Maine and toured their properties to learn about their concerns with climate change and how those worries may have shaped their forest management decisions. Breigenzer says he hopes the project will help instruct foresters on how to best communicate the importance of climate change adaptation to individual and family forest owners and assist with their implementation.

“Prior to starting this project, I had done a lot of reading about ‘new’ ways to manage forests for climate change resilience, but I got the impression that much of this conversation was siloed within the academic community,” Breigenzer says. “Therefore, I wanted to talk to family forest owners directly to see what they thought about managing their woodlands with climate change in mind.”

With Wason, Breigenzer has been researching how forest stand conditions affect understory microclimates. Over the past year, they bushwhacked through the Penobscot Experimental Forest and established 60 plots from which they measured microclimate and forest structure traits.

“In general, when we think about future climate conditions, most of our assumptions are based on broad-scale climate projection models that use data from large weather stations established in fields or cities (i.e., Bangor Airport),” Breigenzer says. “These models are useful for landscape level planning; however, they don’t reflect the fine-scale variability in temperature and humidity that naturally occurs beneath forest canopies. Therefore, if we want to understand how climate change will affect our future forests, we need to understand how the climate is changing within forests.”

While conducting his own research, Breigenzer also served as an intern at the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park last year. He worked with its forest ecology division to collect and analyze remote sensing imagery for monitoring and evaluating the conditions of several forests across northern and eastern Maine.

“My biggest takeaway from this internship was how it allowed me to develop my skills related to computer coding and data analysis,” Breigenzer says. “Regardless of which career path I eventually take within forestry, these skills will be important for the planning and assessment of different land management regimes.”

When he’s not conducting research, Breigenzer is out in the field training himself and others to be better foresters. In September 2022, he attended the two-week-long Prescribed Fire Training Exchange, or TREX. During the event, he and other researchers and foresters worked with wildland fire professionals to conduct prescribed burns at Wells Barrens and Kennebunk Plains, and exchanged ideas on how to restore fire-adapted ecosystems.

Breigenzer also serves on the leadership team for the UMaine chapter of the Society of American Foresters, through which he helps facilitate chainsaw safety courses and other professional development opportunities for students studying forestry or other natural science-related subjects.

“The experiences I’ve gained during my time here are invaluable to my future career trajectory,” Breigenzer says. “From the skills I’ve gained in my classes, to developing multiple research projects, to the personal and professional connections I’ve made here, I feel prepared to pursue my forestry goals!”

After receiving his master’s degree, Breigenzer says he plans to pursue a career as a forester or researcher, and sustainably manage woodlands through “multiple forms of science with localized knowledge and human experience.”

See the full article here.

Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct. Use “Reply”.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Maine is a public land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the flagship university of the University of Maine System. The University of Maine is one of only a few land, sea and space grant institutions in the nation. It is classified among “R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity”.

With an enrollment of approximately 11,500 students, The University of Maine is the state’s largest college or university. The University of Maine’s athletic teams, nicknamed the Black Bears, are Maine’s only Division I athletics program. Maine’s men’s ice hockey team has won two national championships.

The University of Maine was founded in 1862 as a function of the Morrill Act, signed by President Abraham Lincoln. Established in 1865 as the Maine State College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, the college opened on September 21, 1868 and changed its name to the University of Maine in 1897.

By 1871, curricula had been organized in Agriculture, Engineering, and electives. The Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station was founded as a division of the university in 1887. Gradually the university developed the Colleges of Life Sciences and Agriculture (later to include the School of Forest Resources and the School of Human Development), Engineering and Science, and Arts and Sciences. In 1912 the Maine Cooperative Extension, which offers field educational programs for both adults and youths, was initiated. The School of Education was established in 1930 and received college status in 1958. The School of Business Administration was formed in 1958 and was granted college status in 1965. Women have been admitted into all curricula since 1872. The first master’s degree was conferred in 1881; the first doctor’s degree in 1960. Since 1923 there has been a separate graduate school.

Near the end of the 19th century, the university expanded its curriculum to place greater emphasis on liberal arts. As a result of this shift, faculty hired during the early 20th century included Caroline Colvin, chair of the history department and the nation’s first woman to head a major university department.

In 1906, The Senior Skull Honor Society was founded to “publicly recognize, formally reward, and continually promote outstanding leadership and scholarship, and exemplary citizenship within the University of Maine community.”

On April 16, 1925, 80 women met in Balentine Hall — faculty, alumnae, and undergraduate representatives — to plan a pledging of members to an inaugural honorary organization. This organization was called “The All Maine Women” because only those women closely connected with the University of Maine were elected as members. On April 22, 1925, the new members were inducted into the honor society.

When the University of Maine System was incorporated, in 1968, the school was renamed by the legislature over the objections of the faculty to the University of Maine at Orono. This was changed back to the University of Maine in 1986.

From The Yale School of the Environment: “Can Gold Mining Be More Sustainable?”

From The Yale School of the Environment

at

Yale University

9.28.22

Josh Anusewicz
Assistant Editor
joshua.anusewicz@yale.edu
+1 203-436-8994

Credit: The Yale School of the Environment.

FIGURE 1

Left—A large gold mining pit in Guyana (image by Michelle Kalamandeen). Right—An aerial photo of a large-scale opencast gold mine in Namibia. In large-scale gold mining operations, vast areas of land are converted to construct access roads, mining pits, overburden heaps, and tailings storage facilities (Image by Hanspeter Baumeler)

FIGURE 2

Left—an isolated ASGM site in the Amazon (image by Sue Palminteri/Mongabay). Right—an aerial photo depicting the considerable extent of ASGM operations in the Peruvian Amazon (image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay)

More instructive images are available in the science paper.

A YSE-led study details the severe degradation and deforestation caused by gold mining in tropical forests, as well as the biophysical challenges associated with effectively restoring these landscapes.

Every other year, Mark Ashton, Morris K. Jesup Professor of Silviculture and Forest Ecology, teaches a popular course at the Yale School of the Environment on tropical forest restoration, which highlights tropical forest degradation and deforestation and strategies for restoring these landscapes.

It was this course that inspired Shrabya Timsina ’20 MF and Nora Hardy ’22 MESc to investigate one of the most severe forms of environmental degradation in the tropics —surface mining — to understand the ways in which surface mining affects ecosystems and potential strategies for restoring mining sites.

In a review paper recently published in the journal Land Degradation and Development [below], Timsina and Hardy focused on the effects of surface gold mining in tropical regions, a growing environmental concern in recent years. According to a 2012 study, mining accounts for 7% of deforestation in developing nations and large-scale and artisanal, small-scale gold mining techniques such as open-pit mining and dredging are becoming more prevalent in the Amazon and West Africa.

The authors, who include Ashton and YSE doctoral student David Woodbury, focused particularly on gold mining — a topic “relevant for this particular moment,” says Timsina. Gold mining is becoming more prevalent, he explains, both because it is important for manufacturing electronics and alternative energy production, and persistently rising gold costs make previously unfeasible mining projects more lucrative.

Environmentally, however, the results are costly. “You can imagine what surface mining can do to surrounding areas,” says Hardy. “It completely reshapes the topography. It also depletes and disturbs the topsoil that contains nutrients and seeds necessary for plant growth, and tropical regions often have nutrient-poor soils already.”

Surface mining can also impact local hydrology. Numerous pollutants, including mercury and cyanide, are used in gold refining processes and can contaminate the soil and nearby water sources. Timsina says effective containment strategies against these pollutants must be used in concert with land restoration techniques to help the regrowth of plants and ensure the health of nearby human communities.

The researchers also investigated possible restoration strategies for mined areas, most notably the conservation of topsoil. Because recovering soil health following mining is a lengthy and costly process, they emphasize the importance of topsoil conservation practices – moving topsoil prior to mining and storing it separately to conserve the nutrients and seeds — so it can then be returned to the mining site when the operations are complete.

“Soil health becomes a major challenge to reforestation following mining,” says Hardy. “By saving the topsoil, you at least have some base to start with and are not starting at zero.”

The researchers also found that there are certain plant species that are better suited for surviving soil conditions that result from mining. When possible, integrating natural regeneration strategies with the purposeful reintroduction of these hardy plants, they say, makes it more likely that degraded areas can be restored to forest.

As surface mining continues to rise throughout the tropics, the authors highlight a need for continued on-the-ground restoration research to help ensure the recovery of tropical forests.

Science paper:
Land Degradation and Development

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The Yale School of the Environment

Yale School of the Environment Vision and Mission

We are leading the world toward a sustainable future with cutting-edge research, teaching, and public engagement on society’s evolving and urgent environmental challenges.

Core Values

Our Mission and Vision are grounded in seven fundamental values:

Excellence: We promote and engage in path-breaking science, policy, and business models that build on a fundamental commitment to analytic rigor, data, intellectual integrity, and excellence.
Leadership: We attract outstanding students nationally and internationally and offer a pioneering curriculum that defines the knowledge and skills needed to be a 21st century environmental leader in a range of professions.
Sustainability: We generate knowledge that will advance thinking and understanding across the various dimensions of sustainability.
Community: We offer a community that finds strength in its collegiality, diversity, independence, commitment to excellence, and lifelong learning.
Diversity: We celebrate our differences and identify pathways to a sustainable future that respects diverse values including equity, liberty, and civil discourse.
Collaboration: We foster collaborative learning, professional skill development, and problem-solving — and we strengthen our scholarship, teaching, policy work, and outreach through partnerships across the university and beyond.
Responsibility: We encourage environmental stewardship and responsible behavior on campus and beyond.

Guiding Principles

In pursuit of our Mission and Vision, we:

Build on more than a century of work bringing science-based strategies, ethical considerations, and conservation practices to natural resource management.
Approach problems on a systems basis and from interdisciplinary perspectives.
Integrate theory and practice, providing innovative solutions to society’s most pressing environmental problems.
Address environmental challenges at multiple scales and settings — from local to global, urban to rural, managed to wild.
Draw on the depth of resources at Yale University and our network of alumni who extend across the world.
Create opportunities for research, policy application, and professional development through our unique centers and programs.
Provide a diverse forum to convene conversations on difficult issues that are critical to progress on sustainability.
Bring special focus on the most significant threats to a sustainable future including climate change, the corresponding need for clean energy, and the increasing stresses on our natural resources.

Statement of Environmental Policy

As faculty, staff, and students of the Yale School of the Environment, we affirm our commitment to responsible stewardship of the environment of our School, our University, the city of New Haven, and the other sites of our teaching, research, professional, and social activities.

In the course of these activities, we shall strive to:

reduce our use of natural resources;
support the sustainable production of the resources we must use by purchasing renewable, reusable, recyclable, and recycled materials;
minimize our use of toxic substances and ensure that unavoidable use is in full compliance with federal, state, and local environmental regulations;
reduce the amount of waste we generate and promote strategies to reuse and recycle those wastes that cannot be avoided;
restore the environment where possible.

Each member of the School community is encouraged to set an example for others by serving as an active steward of our environment.

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The Collegiate School was renamed Yale College in 1718 to honor the school’s largest private benefactor for the first century of its existence, Elihu Yale. Yale University is consistently ranked as one of the top universities and is considered one of the most prestigious in the nation.

Chartered by Connecticut Colony, the Collegiate School was established in 1701 by clergy to educate Congregational ministers before moving to New Haven in 1716. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale’s faculty and student populations grew after 1890 with rapid expansion of the physical campus and scientific research.

Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and twelve professional schools. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school’s faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, Connecticut, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of June 2020, the university’s endowment was valued at $31.1 billion, the second largest of any educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Students compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League.

As of October 2020, 65 Nobel laureates, five Fields Medalists, four Abel Prize laureates, and three Turing award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires, and many heads of state. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 78 MacArthur Fellows, 252 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, and nine Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university.

Research

Yale is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. According to the National Science Foundation , Yale spent $990 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 15th in the nation.

Yale’s faculty include 61 members of the National Academy of Sciences , 7 members of the National Academy of Engineering and 49 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League.

Yale’s English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the Department of Comparative Literature from the late seventies to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called “Yale School”. These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale’s history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C. Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale’s Music School and Department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th century. The Journal of Music Theory was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.

In addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of roughly 1200 Postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.

Notable alumni

Over its history, Yale has produced many distinguished alumni in a variety of fields, ranging from the public to private sector. According to 2020 data, around 71% of undergraduates join the workforce, while the next largest majority of 16.6% go on to attend graduate or professional schools. Yale graduates have been recipients of 252 Rhodes Scholarships, 123 Marshall Scholarships, 67 Truman Scholarships, 21 Churchill Scholarships, and 9 Mitchell Scholarships. The university is also the second largest producer of Fulbright Scholars, with a total of 1,199 in its history and has produced 89 MacArthur Fellows. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ranked Yale fifth among research institutions producing the most 2020–2021 Fulbright Scholars. Additionally, 31 living billionaires are Yale alumni.

At Yale, one of the most popular undergraduate majors among Juniors and Seniors is political science, with many students going on to serve careers in government and politics. Former presidents who attended Yale for undergrad include William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush while former presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton attended Yale Law School. Former vice-president and influential antebellum era politician John C. Calhoun also graduated from Yale. Former world leaders include Italian prime minister Mario Monti, Turkish prime minister Tansu Çiller, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president José Paciano Laurel, Latvian president Valdis Zatlers, Taiwanese premier Jiang Yi-huah, and Malawian president Peter Mutharika, among others. Prominent royals who graduated are Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, and Olympia Bonaparte, Princess Napoléon.

Yale alumni have had considerable presence in U.S. government in all three branches. On the U.S. Supreme Court, 19 justices have been Yale alumni, including current Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Numerous Yale alumni have been U.S. Senators, including current Senators Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Ben Sasse, and Sheldon Whitehouse. Current and former cabinet members include Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin, Nicholas F. Brady, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen; U.S. Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach, John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi; and many others. Peace Corps founder and American diplomat Sargent Shriver and public official and urban planner Robert Moses are Yale alumni.

Yale has produced numerous award-winning authors and influential writers, like Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Sinclair Lewis and Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Vincent Benét, Thornton Wilder, Doug Wright, and David McCullough. Academy Award winning actors, actresses, and directors include Jodie Foster, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Lupita Nyong’o, Oliver Stone, and Frances McDormand. Alumni from Yale have also made notable contributions to both music and the arts. Leading American composer from the 20th century Charles Ives, Broadway composer Cole Porter, Grammy award winner David Lang, and award-winning jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer all hail from Yale. Hugo Boss Prize winner Matthew Barney, famed American sculptor Richard Serra, President Barack Obama presidential portrait painter Kehinde Wiley, MacArthur Fellow and contemporary artist Sarah Sze, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and National Medal of Arts photorealist painter Chuck Close all graduated from Yale. Additional alumni include architect and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Maya Lin, Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster, and Gateway Arch designer Eero Saarinen. Journalists and pundits include Dick Cavett, Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Fareed Zakaria.

In business, Yale has had numerous alumni and former students go on to become founders of influential business, like William Boeing (Boeing, United Airlines), Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (Time Magazine), Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone Group), Frederick W. Smith (FedEx), Juan Trippe (Pan Am), Harold Stanley (Morgan Stanley), Bing Gordon (Electronic Arts), and Ben Silbermann (Pinterest). Other business people from Yale include former chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings Edward Lampert, former Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes, former PepsiCo chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi, sports agent Donald Dell, and investor/philanthropist Sir John Templeton.

Yale alumni distinguished in academia include literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates, economists Irving Fischer, Mahbub ul Haq, and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Ernest Lawrence and Murray Gell-Mann; Fields Medalist John G. Thompson; Human Genome Project leader and National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins; brain surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing; pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper; influential mathematician and chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs; National Women’s Hall of Fame inductee and biochemist Florence B. Seibert; Turing Award recipient Ron Rivest; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate John B. Goodenough; lexicographer Noah Webster; and theologians Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold Niebuhr.

In the sporting arena, Yale alumni include baseball players Ron Darling and Craig Breslow and baseball executives Theo Epstein and George Weiss; football players Calvin Hill, Gary Fenick, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and “the Father of American Football” Walter Camp; ice hockey players Chris Higgins and Olympian Helen Resor; Olympic figure skaters Sarah Hughes and Nathan Chen; nine-time U.S. Squash men’s champion Julian Illingworth; Olympic swimmer Don Schollander; Olympic rowers Josh West and Rusty Wailes; Olympic sailor Stuart McNay; Olympic runner Frank Shorter; and others.

From The Yale School of the Environment: “Healthy Forests:: ‘It’s Never About Cutting an Individual Tree’”

From The Yale School of the Environment

at

Yale University

9.30.22

Fran Silverman
Associate Director of Communications
fran.silverman@yale.edu
+1 203-436-4842

At work in a forest. Credit: The Yale School of the Environment.

Singer-songwriter Carole King’s opinion piece in The New York Times, It Costs Nothing to Leave Our Trees as They Are elevated a national and international conversation about the health of forests, logging, deforestation, and climate change. At the heart of King’s essay was her call for legislation to ban commercial logging on public lands.

The Forest School’s Mark Bradford, professor of soils and ecosystem ecology and Joseph Orefice, lecturer and director of forest and agriculture operations at Yale Forests, weigh in on what constitutes a healthy forest in this region; what role healthy forests play in climate change mitigation; and how to protect and maintain Northeastern forests in the face of climate change, pests, pathogens, and forest degradation.

Bradford researches how soil carbon cycling relates to forest ecology. Orefice ’09 MF teaches courses in agroforestry and forest management and oversees forestry operations and applied educational opportunities on the 10,880-acre Yale Forests.

Q: What constitutes a healthy forest and what role do individual trees play?

Bradford: People love trees. They love individual trees…There’s a feeling that they’re somewhat sentient and they have longevity so we form an attachment to them. But forestry is never about cutting an individual tree. Just like thinning young carrots in your garden so that the remaining carrots grow well, when we cut trees as part of sound forest management it is not a cause of deforestation nor degradation, but about the collective health of all the trees in the woods. Yet, there is a growing environmental and political movement that falsely asserts, ‘cutting any forest is bad,’ whereas in New England, for example, having the option to cut trees is necessary if we are to protect many of our public and private forests.

Orefice: Cutting trees when done in appropriate ways can lead to a more resilient forest while yielding renewable forest products. For us to be able to manage the forest, for us to make trees grow better, we actually need to remove some trees. As trees grow, they need more space and their competition for light resources increases. By cutting one tree, we can give another tree more room to grow and increase its health. Often foresters prescribe cutting trees because the result of harvesting forest products will meet multiple objectives, such as improving habitat, reducing fire risk, and/or increasing tree species diversity through regeneration.

Q: How does logging and cutting down trees for timber products impact climate change?

Orefice: Logging and land clearing are different. Land clearing is extraction to make room for a parking lot or housing development and that is not climate friendly. Logging, on the other hand, is an important part of forest management. When a tree dies from logging or on its own, that tree is no longer going to be sequestering carbon, and the carbon from that tree is eventually going to go back into the atmosphere. But carbon coming from trees is not the same as the carbon coming from fossil fuels. The carbon from trees is cycled at the surface level through the regrowth of a forest. So, cutting a tree certainly will release carbon, but it also will be giving that area of the forest space for new trees to sequester more carbon.

Forests also play a critical role in what should be our top priority — transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable products. We have a real need for resources that trees provide in the form of wood. Wood is the most sustainable construction product we have. The common alternatives that we have to wood are steel, concrete, and plastics, all of which are incredibly fossil fuel intensive. In contrast, wood can be grown in a very sustainable, renewable way that supports natural ecosystems. Forest management can be part of our climate change mitigation and adaption strategy because of the increased resiliency and the carbon benefits of forest products.

Bradford: We are moving away from equating the maximum amounts of carbon on the landscape as equivalent to a healthy forest. Effective forest management means optimizing the amount of carbon that you have on the landscape. The goal is to have healthy forests that provide timber and non-timber-based forest products. Sustainable logging, for example, across New England landscapes creates patches within forest land with trees less than 20 years old. The management typically simulates ecological processes to promote natural regeneration of a diverse mix of native tree species. These young trees are much less susceptible to storm damage, and the regeneration provides food and habitat for wildlife and allows for the rapid accumulation of carbon. By removing some carbon from the landscape in the form of mature trees, we keep more carbon in our forests and out of the atmosphere in the longer-term.

Q. What would happen if forests were completely left alone?

Bradford: The argument for removing forest management entirely from our nation’s forests ignores the strong science around how you manage for healthy, resilient forests. For example, our New England forests have been managed by people for thousands of years and more recent actions have left many of our forests in a degraded state. If you ban forest management now, you will reinforce a cycle of decreasing forest health as less desirable tree species become ever-more dominant in even-aged, mature forests that have a low ability to recover from the growing intensity of pest, pathogen, and climate disturbances. Admittedly, these lands might still look like a forest in that you have mature trees with closed canopies. But they lack vigorously growing, younger individuals of desirable species, such as red oak, which are of high value for timber, wildlife, and carbon storage. The false narrative in New England that ‘nature will fix itself’ ignores the current state of many of our forests and the critical role that sound forest management plays in restoring and sustaining forest lands and the livelihoods of those that depend on them.

Orefice: Periodic major disturbances, such as insect outbreaks, new invasive species, hurricanes, and fires will occur whether we manage our forests or not. Forest management helps us create a balance of species, biodiversity, forest regeneration, and age classes across a landscape. This heterogeneity provides forest ecosystems with the ability to recover from disturbances faster and in a way that continues to meet the needs of people. Ultimately, people need forests more than forests need people, and forest management can provide some consistency today while ensuring resource options for future generations.

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The Yale School of the Environment

Yale School of the Environment Vision and Mission

We are leading the world toward a sustainable future with cutting-edge research, teaching, and public engagement on society’s evolving and urgent environmental challenges.

Core Values

Our Mission and Vision are grounded in seven fundamental values:

Excellence: We promote and engage in path-breaking science, policy, and business models that build on a fundamental commitment to analytic rigor, data, intellectual integrity, and excellence.
Leadership: We attract outstanding students nationally and internationally and offer a pioneering curriculum that defines the knowledge and skills needed to be a 21st century environmental leader in a range of professions.
Sustainability: We generate knowledge that will advance thinking and understanding across the various dimensions of sustainability.
Community: We offer a community that finds strength in its collegiality, diversity, independence, commitment to excellence, and lifelong learning.
Diversity: We celebrate our differences and identify pathways to a sustainable future that respects diverse values including equity, liberty, and civil discourse.
Collaboration: We foster collaborative learning, professional skill development, and problem-solving — and we strengthen our scholarship, teaching, policy work, and outreach through partnerships across the university and beyond.
Responsibility: We encourage environmental stewardship and responsible behavior on campus and beyond.

Guiding Principles

In pursuit of our Mission and Vision, we:

Build on more than a century of work bringing science-based strategies, ethical considerations, and conservation practices to natural resource management.
Approach problems on a systems basis and from interdisciplinary perspectives.
Integrate theory and practice, providing innovative solutions to society’s most pressing environmental problems.
Address environmental challenges at multiple scales and settings — from local to global, urban to rural, managed to wild.
Draw on the depth of resources at Yale University and our network of alumni who extend across the world.
Create opportunities for research, policy application, and professional development through our unique centers and programs.
Provide a diverse forum to convene conversations on difficult issues that are critical to progress on sustainability.
Bring special focus on the most significant threats to a sustainable future including climate change, the corresponding need for clean energy, and the increasing stresses on our natural resources.

Statement of Environmental Policy

As faculty, staff, and students of the Yale School of the Environment, we affirm our commitment to responsible stewardship of the environment of our School, our University, the city of New Haven, and the other sites of our teaching, research, professional, and social activities.

In the course of these activities, we shall strive to:

reduce our use of natural resources;
support the sustainable production of the resources we must use by purchasing renewable, reusable, recyclable, and recycled materials;
minimize our use of toxic substances and ensure that unavoidable use is in full compliance with federal, state, and local environmental regulations;
reduce the amount of waste we generate and promote strategies to reuse and recycle those wastes that cannot be avoided;
restore the environment where possible.

Each member of the School community is encouraged to set an example for others by serving as an active steward of our environment.

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The Collegiate School was renamed Yale College in 1718 to honor the school’s largest private benefactor for the first century of its existence, Elihu Yale. Yale University is consistently ranked as one of the top universities and is considered one of the most prestigious in the nation.

Chartered by Connecticut Colony, the Collegiate School was established in 1701 by clergy to educate Congregational ministers before moving to New Haven in 1716. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale’s faculty and student populations grew after 1890 with rapid expansion of the physical campus and scientific research.

Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and twelve professional schools. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school’s faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, Connecticut, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of June 2020, the university’s endowment was valued at $31.1 billion, the second largest of any educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Students compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League.

As of October 2020, 65 Nobel laureates, five Fields Medalists, four Abel Prize laureates, and three Turing award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires, and many heads of state. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 78 MacArthur Fellows, 252 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, and nine Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university.

Research

Yale is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. According to the National Science Foundation , Yale spent $990 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 15th in the nation.

Yale’s faculty include 61 members of the National Academy of Sciences , 7 members of the National Academy of Engineering and 49 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League.

Yale’s English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the Department of Comparative Literature from the late seventies to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called “Yale School”. These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale’s history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C. Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale’s Music School and Department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th century. The Journal of Music Theory was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.

In addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of roughly 1200 Postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.

Notable alumni

Over its history, Yale has produced many distinguished alumni in a variety of fields, ranging from the public to private sector. According to 2020 data, around 71% of undergraduates join the workforce, while the next largest majority of 16.6% go on to attend graduate or professional schools. Yale graduates have been recipients of 252 Rhodes Scholarships, 123 Marshall Scholarships, 67 Truman Scholarships, 21 Churchill Scholarships, and 9 Mitchell Scholarships. The university is also the second largest producer of Fulbright Scholars, with a total of 1,199 in its history and has produced 89 MacArthur Fellows. The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs ranked Yale fifth among research institutions producing the most 2020–2021 Fulbright Scholars. Additionally, 31 living billionaires are Yale alumni.

At Yale, one of the most popular undergraduate majors among Juniors and Seniors is political science, with many students going on to serve careers in government and politics. Former presidents who attended Yale for undergrad include William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush while former presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton attended Yale Law School. Former vice-president and influential antebellum era politician John C. Calhoun also graduated from Yale. Former world leaders include Italian prime minister Mario Monti, Turkish prime minister Tansu Çiller, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, German president Karl Carstens, Philippine president José Paciano Laurel, Latvian president Valdis Zatlers, Taiwanese premier Jiang Yi-huah, and Malawian president Peter Mutharika, among others. Prominent royals who graduated are Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, and Olympia Bonaparte, Princess Napoléon.

Yale alumni have had considerable presence in U.S. government in all three branches. On the U.S. Supreme Court, 19 justices have been Yale alumni, including current Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Numerous Yale alumni have been U.S. Senators, including current Senators Michael Bennet, Richard Blumenthal, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Chris Coons, Amy Klobuchar, Ben Sasse, and Sheldon Whitehouse. Current and former cabinet members include Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin, Nicholas F. Brady, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen; U.S. Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach, John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi; and many others. Peace Corps founder and American diplomat Sargent Shriver and public official and urban planner Robert Moses are Yale alumni.

Yale has produced numerous award-winning authors and influential writers, like Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Sinclair Lewis and Pulitzer Prize winners Stephen Vincent Benét, Thornton Wilder, Doug Wright, and David McCullough. Academy Award winning actors, actresses, and directors include Jodie Foster, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill, Lupita Nyong’o, Oliver Stone, and Frances McDormand. Alumni from Yale have also made notable contributions to both music and the arts. Leading American composer from the 20th century Charles Ives, Broadway composer Cole Porter, Grammy award winner David Lang, and award-winning jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer all hail from Yale. Hugo Boss Prize winner Matthew Barney, famed American sculptor Richard Serra, President Barack Obama presidential portrait painter Kehinde Wiley, MacArthur Fellow and contemporary artist Sarah Sze, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and National Medal of Arts photorealist painter Chuck Close all graduated from Yale. Additional alumni include architect and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Maya Lin, Pritzker Prize winner Norman Foster, and Gateway Arch designer Eero Saarinen. Journalists and pundits include Dick Cavett, Chris Cuomo, Anderson Cooper, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Fareed Zakaria.

In business, Yale has had numerous alumni and former students go on to become founders of influential business, like William Boeing (Boeing, United Airlines), Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (Time Magazine), Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone Group), Frederick W. Smith (FedEx), Juan Trippe (Pan Am), Harold Stanley (Morgan Stanley), Bing Gordon (Electronic Arts), and Ben Silbermann (Pinterest). Other business people from Yale include former chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings Edward Lampert, former Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes, former PepsiCo chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi, sports agent Donald Dell, and investor/philanthropist Sir John Templeton.

Yale alumni distinguished in academia include literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates, economists Irving Fischer, Mahbub ul Haq, and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman; Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Ernest Lawrence and Murray Gell-Mann; Fields Medalist John G. Thompson; Human Genome Project leader and National Institutes of Health director Francis S. Collins; brain surgery pioneer Harvey Cushing; pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper; influential mathematician and chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs; National Women’s Hall of Fame inductee and biochemist Florence B. Seibert; Turing Award recipient Ron Rivest; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate John B. Goodenough; lexicographer Noah Webster; and theologians Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold Niebuhr.

In the sporting arena, Yale alumni include baseball players Ron Darling and Craig Breslow and baseball executives Theo Epstein and George Weiss; football players Calvin Hill, Gary Fenick, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and “the Father of American Football” Walter Camp; ice hockey players Chris Higgins and Olympian Helen Resor; Olympic figure skaters Sarah Hughes and Nathan Chen; nine-time U.S. Squash men’s champion Julian Illingworth; Olympic swimmer Don Schollander; Olympic rowers Josh West and Rusty Wailes; Olympic sailor Stuart McNay; Olympic runner Frank Shorter; and others.

From CSIRO (AU) ECOS : “Can engineering biology feed more people with fewer resources?”

From CSIRO (AU) ECOS

9.26.22
Sibel Korhaliller

A changing climate, declining arable lands and an increasing demand for more environmentally friendly products is making us think outside the box when it comes to food production and traditional agricultural production. How can we produce more food with fewer resources?

One way this can be achieved is through what is known as engineering biology. It combines the fields of biology and engineering to create safer, more sustainable, and in time, potentially cheaper products. These include feed ingredients, agricultural chemicals and even biofuels.

Last year we released a Synthetic Biology Roadmap that estimated products made using engineering biology could generate more than $19.2 billion for Australia’s food and agricultural industry by 2040.

While there has been a lot of research in this space over the past two decades, commercialization opportunities are still in their infancy. But understanding what these are can help the sector prioritize their efforts in the short to medium term.

Engineering biology techniques could benefit Australia’s agriculture, aquaculture (pictured) and forestry industries over the next 10 years.

Revolutionizing agriculture

To feed everyone on the planet, we need to revolutionise agriculture in the next 30 years.

Greg Williams is Associate Director for Health and Biosecurity in the CSIRO Futures team, CSIRO’s strategic consulting arm. He says engineering biology can help us address the increasing pressures that global agriculture producers face.

“Engineering biology solutions are one way we can help keep our food systems resilient to future demand. However, we still have a lot to learn to move the science out of the lab and onto farms for real-world impact,” he says.

Engineering biology opportunities on farm

We recently explored eight key engineering biology opportunities for the agriculture industry as part of research funded by AgriFutures Australia, who invest in research, innovation and learning across Australian rural industries.

“We explored both research and commercial applications of this technology globally to assess what Australia’s agriculture and aquaculture sectors could start to prepare for,” Greg says.

“The applications range from biosensors that detect pathogens in livestock or disease in crops, to biomanufacturing sustainable proteins and additives that can be added to animal feed, to creating agricultural chemicals, such as insecticides or fertilisers.”

One of these opportunities involves engineering biological agricultural treatments to create new crops that can fix their own nitrogen for growth. In doing so, this helps to overcome environmental challenges in conventional agricultural practices, such as the overuse of nitrogen fertilizer.

On the Sunshine Coast, we have also supported a local company, Provectus Algae through the Australian Government’s Innovation Connections program to synthetically produce algae for several applications, including food and beverage (natural and sustainable food flavourings, fragrances and colourings), aquaculture feed, natural pesticides and also therapeutics (such as medicines).

Biofungicides are new microbial-derived tools for protecting crops such as canola.

CSIRO researcher Louise Thatcher says a collaboration with Melbourne-based business Nufarm is helping to develop and run a pre-commercial pilot trial of a novel biofungicide to prevent sclerotina outbreaks.

“Fungal diseases of crops cause billions of dollars of losses globally,” Louise says.

“Part of what I do at CSIRO is to find alternative solutions to the use of synthetic agrichemicals. These chemicals contribute to increased yields but can have negative impacts on the environment.

“We’re screening and researching a collection of beneficial microbes that could kill fungal diseases that affect crops such as canola.

“A product from this research would be engineered to maximise effectiveness against sclerotinia whilst minimising off target effects to the environment and people.

“We were able to successfully isolate a new biocontrol microbe that is found naturally in West Australia soils. We engineered a new biofungicide formulation and tested its application to treat sclerotinia outbreaks, with very positive results to far.”

We are evaluating biofungicides to supress sclerotinia in canola.

See the full article here.

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings

Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

CSIRO -Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU) , is Australia’s national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world.

CSIRO works with leading organisations around the world. From its headquarters in Canberra, CSIRO maintains more than 50 sites across Australia and in France, Chile and the United States, employing about 5,500 people.

Federally funded scientific research began in Australia 104 years ago. The Advisory Council of Science and Industry was established in 1916 but was hampered by insufficient available finance. In 1926 the research effort was reinvigorated by establishment of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which strengthened national science leadership and increased research funding. CSIR grew rapidly and achieved significant early successes. In 1949 further legislated changes included renaming the organisation as CSIRO.

Notable developments by CSIRO have included the invention of atomic absorption spectroscopy; essential components of Wi-Fi technology; development of the first commercially successful polymer banknote; the invention of the insect repellent in Aerogard and the introduction of a series of biological controls into Australia, such as the introduction of myxomatosis and rabbit calicivirus for the control of rabbit populations.

Research and focus areas

Research Business Units

As at 2019, CSIRO’s research areas are identified as “Impact science” and organised into the following Business Units:

Agriculture and Food
Health and Biosecurity
Data 61
Energy
Land and Water
Manufacturing
Mineral Resources
Oceans and Atmosphere

National Facilities

CSIRO manages national research facilities and scientific infrastructure on behalf of the nation to assist with the delivery of research. The national facilities and specialized laboratories are available to both international and Australian users from industry and research. As at 2019, the following National Facilities are listed:
Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL)
Australia Telescope National Facility – radio telescopes included in the Facility include the Australia Telescope Compact Array, the Parkes Observatory, Mopra Radio Telescope Observatory and the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder.

CSIRO Australia Compact Array (AU), six radio telescopes at the Paul Wild Observatory, is an array of six 22-m antennas located about twenty five kilometres (16 mi) west of the town of Narrabri in Australia.

CSIRO-Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (AU) Parkes Observatory [Murriyang, the traditional Indigenous name], located 20 kilometres north of the town of Parkes, New South Wales, Australia, 414.80m above sea level.

CSIRO-Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU) Mopra Radio Telescope

NASA Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, AU, Deep Space Network. Credit: NASA.

CSIRO Canberra campus.

ESA DSA 1, hosts a 35-metre deep-space antenna with transmission and reception in both S- and X-band and is located 140 kilometres north of Perth, Western Australia, near the town of New Norcia.

CSIRO-Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU)CSIRO R/V Investigator.

UK Space NovaSAR-1 satellite (UK) synthetic aperture radar satellite.

CSIRO Pawsey Supercomputing Centre AU)

Magnus Cray XC40 supercomputer at Pawsey Supercomputer Centre Perth Australia.

Galaxy Cray XC30 Series Supercomputer at at Pawsey Supercomputer Centre Perth Australia.

Pausey Supercomputer CSIRO Zeus SGI Linux cluster.

Pawsey Cray EX Supercomputer – Setonix

Others not shown

SKA

SKA- Square Kilometer Array.

SKA Murchison Widefield Array (AU), Boolardy station in outback Western Australia, at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), on the traditional lands of the Wajarri peoples.

SKA ASKAP Pathfinder Radio Telescope at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), on the traditional lands of the Wajarri peoples

SKA Square Kilometre Array low frequency at Murchison Widefield Array, Boolardy station in outback Western Australia on the traditional lands of the Wajarri peoples.

EDGES telescope in a radio quiet zone at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia, on the traditional lands of the Wajarri peoples.