The Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program (YASSP) is a new initiative housed at The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment. The program connects academic researchers, policymakers, and those managing lands to answer applied questions about how land management decisions affect the services provided by forests, croplands, wetlands, rangelands, and grasslands. YASSP’s mission is centered on generating science to support decision making, and producing quantitative, reputable, scientific syntheses that guide and inform direct actions around land stewardship. The YASSP mission reflects the founding principles of The Forest School, which was first established in 1900, to develop applied scientific knowledge to guide effective stewardship of the nation’s forests.
A key feature of the program is building connections between university researchers and for- and not-for-profit partners that need to make decisions on sustainable land management practices. Their synthesis work focuses on the regional context within which local management decisions are made, to help maximize ecosystem benefits provided by these land resources, such as carbon storage, sustainable food production, and biodiversity. Currently, the program is partnering with multiple organizations to achieve this mission:
- Evaluating differences in monitoring, reporting, and verification protocols for voluntary soil agricultural carbon credits in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund
- Assessing the potential for improved forest management practices to help the US meet 2050 net-neutral goals in collaboration with the US Department of Energy and Lawrence Livermore National Lab
- Assessing the potential for common silvopasture practices to grow carbon stocks in soils and vegetation in Latin American pastoral agroecosystems in collaboration with the Yale Environmental Leadership and Training Initiative (ELTI) and the YCNCC.
- Comparing the impact of commercial reforestation practices in Latin America on carbon sequestration, natural forest regeneration, and biodiversity in collaboration with the YCNCC.
To launch the program, many new researchers have joined the Yale community. The program’s inaugural Director of Research, Dr. Sara Kuebbing, joined The Forest School in January 2022. Prior to moving to YSE, Dr. Kuebbing was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh where she led a research program in conservation biology, land management, and ecology. Two new postdoctoral fellows, Drs. Emily Kyker Snowman and Weier Liu, have joined the program to lead research on voluntary soil carbon protocols (Kyker-Snowman) and forest management recommendations for carbon sequestration (Liu) with many more future hires soon to come!