During the holiday season, it’s not unusual to be serenaded by Yale’s many choirs and a cappella ensembles caroling around campus. But this past December, only in Yale’s Center for Engineering Innovation & Design (CEID) could you be treated to an impromptu reggae jam played on one-of-a-kind instruments. (more…)
Officers of the Indian Forest Service (IFS) arrived on the Yale campus July 21 for a two-week training session on state-of-the-art concepts and practices in forestry and environmental management. The session is part of a partnership between the Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry at Yale, TERI University (The Energy and Resources Institute in India), and the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy acting under the auspices of the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests.
The Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests conceived the idea of holding short, intensive training sessions as a way of injecting fresh ideas, tools, and techniques into its forest service. The Yale Global Institute has participated from the beginning of the program, making this the fourth year, and the sixth group of Indian foresters welcomed to campus. (more…)
Researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies have discovered that diseased trees may be a significant cause of global warming. The university’s researchers tested the trees at the Yale Myers Forest near their campus in Connecticut and discovered that rotting trees release a significant amount of methane gas, a highly flammable type of natural gas that can cause climate change in large quantities. The trees at the Yale Myers Forest produce emissions that are equivalent to burning 40 gallons of gas per acre of forest per year.
In their academic report on this matter, “Elevated Methane Concentrations in Trees of an Upland Forest,” the Yale University research team noted that trees that release methane gas look just like ordinary trees on the outside. However, on the inside, they’re being eaten alive by fungus. And the fungus that rots these trees helps fuel methane production because it makes the trees a hospitable breeding ground for methanogens, tiny organisms that create methane. (more…)
