Welcome | Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program

The Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program (YASSP) is an initiative of The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment and the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture.

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.

We work with for- and not-for-profit partners that need to make decisions on sustainable land management practices. Our 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. Our 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.

Core support for our work is funded by the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture and the Yale School of the Environment, including The Forest School where the program is housed. Additional project funding and data support has come through the Environmental Defense Fund, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Climate Works Foundation, and Ocean Spray, Inc.

Research Highlights

It is feasible to quantify the effect of agricultural practices on soil carbon stocks through sampling.

We evaluate the ‘infeasibility assumption’ that we cannot empirically measure change in soil carbon stocks using high-density, within-field, sampling data from 45 cropland fields inventoried for soil carbon.

A synthesis of the effect of regenerative agriculture on soil carbon sequestration in Southeast Asian croplands.

We review 92 empirical studies that investigated the effects of 17 regenerative farming practices across 11 types of crops on soil organic carbon stocks or greenhouse gas emissions in Southeast Asian croplands.

Mitigating near-term climate change

With colleagues from The Nature Conservancy, Texas Tech University, and Fractal Ag, we push for more explicit consideration of short-live climate pollutants in greenhouse gas emissions target settings, carbon accounting frameworks, and carbon measuring, reporting and verification protocols.