BIOMES Seminar Series - Spring 2026

About the Series:

Over the last fifteen years, the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) has hosted this weekly seminar series. The school's flagship forum is designed to bring cutting-edge research and impactful work to the community.

BIOMES stands for 'Bridging Issues & Optimizing Methods in Environmental Studies".

The series is a community-sourced and student-led effort to bring different perspectives to YSE's main stage.

The Interacting Effects of Climate, Air Pollution and Biotic Change on the Structure and Function of the Northern Forest: Long-Term Measurements and Experiments from the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, NH, USA

About the Seminar:

The Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest is a long-term research site administered by the US Forest Service in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The mission of the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study is to improve understanding of the long-term response of northern forest ecosystems to natural and anthropogenic disturbances and use this understanding to inform environmental management. The conceptual model guiding our research envisions disturbance playing out on a biogeophysical template that influences the biogeochemistry, vegetation, hydrology, and food webs of the northern forest. Our research focuses on three drivers of disturbance: (1) climate change, (2) atmospheric chemistry change, and (3) biotic change. These drivers interact with a biogeophysical template (i.e., topography, geology, soils, vegetation, disturbance history), producing spatial and temporal variation within the Hubbard Brook valley and across the broader region. The intellectual evolution of the project is propelled by surprising results that emerge from long-term studies, using varied approaches (long-term measurements, gradient studies, ecosystem experiments, and application of process and statistical models) and require further long-term research to resolve. Many of these surprises emerge from interactions among drivers and the biogeophysical template and require interdisciplinary study to address. As our understanding of disturbance has matured, we are developing a new emphasis on the complexity and interactions among disturbance regimes which drive new conditions of ecosystem structure and function.



About the Series:

Over the last fifteen years, the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) has hosted this weekly seminar series. The school's flagship forum is designed to bring cutting-edge research and impactful work to the community.

BIOMES stands for 'Bridging Issues & Optimizing Methods in Environmental Studies".

The series is a community-sourced and student-led effort to bring different perspectives to YSE's main stage.

About the Seminar:
Sustainable-use protected areas have contributed to tropical biodiversity conservation by deterring deforestation in multiple countries, yet their social and economic benefits to local stakeholders remain poorly understood. Amazonia hosts the most extensive terrestrial system of human-occupied protected areas in the tropics, which is intended to safeguard its rich biological and cultural diversity. Aligning biodiversity protection with social aspirations is therefore imperative in this region. I show that sustainable-use reserves can catalyze a wide set of enablers, including multipartnerships, strong local associations, land tenure, comanagement, economic subsidies, strong leadership, public policies, and polycentric governance, resulting in marked improvements in local welfare beyond biodiversity protection. Such a rare conservation bright spot elucidates potential pathways that can foster social and ecological outcomes that are potentially scalable across lowland Amazonia.
About the Series:

Over the last fifteen years, the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) has hosted this weekly seminar series. The school's flagship forum is designed to bring cutting-edge research and impactful work to the community.

BIOMES stands for 'Bridging Issues & Optimizing Methods in Environmental Studies".

The series is a community-sourced and student-led effort to bring different perspectives to YSE's main stage.

About the Seminar:

Waste is inextricably linked to environmental disasters, social inequity, and economic opportunity. Composed of chemically complex mixtures, waste streams can be fractionated, processed, and upgraded into ingredients and materials used to create the consumer goods and packaging that make up the cosmetic and personal care products we use every day. Leveraging the scientific method, we can systematically deconstruct waste and, using systems thinking, design and engineer the next generation of consumer products that foster circular methodologies. This talk examines how abundant agricultural and municipal wastes, including lignins and spent oils, can be transformed into a variety of soft materials such as surfactants, fragrances, and packaging materials. Focusing on selective oxidation’s polyphenolic and lipidic feedstocks can be upgraded into functional intermediates that store carbon in biobased chemicals and materials. By contrasting powerful and mild oxidants, such as ozone and Oxone, we can selectively target aldehydes like vanillin or soybean oil–derived epoxides that can replace petroleum-derived chemicals. Two case studies focused on fragrances and adhesive packaging materials highlight both the chemical opportunities and the practical challenges of ensuring that current and future products are safe for consumers and do not harm local environments. Complementing these technical considerations, the talk underscores the necessity of collaboration across chemistry, engineering, design, and the arts when addressing complex sustainability challenges. By connecting Green Chemistry principles, such as waste prevention, with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including responsible production and consumption, we can enable strategies that meet present needs while remaining resilient to future, unknown challenges.

About the Series:

Over the last fifteen years, the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) has hosted this weekly seminar series. The school's flagship forum is designed to bring cutting-edge research and impactful work to the community.

BIOMES stands for 'Bridging Issues & Optimizing Methods in Environmental Studies".

The series is a community-sourced and student-led effort to bring different perspectives to YSE's main stage.

About the Seminar:
From Sumatra’s Danau Toba to Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, the state of Southeast Asian freshwaters is rich and productive. The region is a hotspot for freshwater ichthyofauna (an estimated 30% of global species) while Indonesia alone is home to more freshwater fish species than (almost) anywhere else in the world. For millennia, Southeast Asian freshwaters have provided essential services to communities and ecosystems, near and far. Fish have played a central role in this long and dynamic biodiversity story, feeding the rise of Buddhist kingdoms, Muslim sultanates, and plantation worlds. By the 1930s, however, the state of Southeast Asian freshwaters began to turn. Through networks of supply and expertise, prized fish were introduced to new habitats. As these new fish traveled the region, they naturalized—changing cultures and ecologies in the process. Some fish introductions cultivated new livelihoods, novel food webs, and unexpected ecological services. Yet other kinds of fish flows fostered explosive reproduction rates, rupturing not only nature’s ecosystems but also setting in motion a slow violence of predation, colonization, extirpation, and extinction. For the state of Southeast Asian freshwaters, it was the coalescence of science, development, and infrastructure that championed this “blue revolution” in the wake of 1945. Inspired by the possibilities of decolonization, this new fish age made sense politically. It was reasoned within the urgencies of national development, economic progress, and food security. In practice, it meant that high-yielding food fish (of diverse origins) were planted and farmed in lakes, rivers, and other aquatic systems to bolster the growing demand for animal protein. Less than a century on, this “blue revolution” has scaled up globally to a level just behind what the ocean provides. The world’s freshwaters now account for 40 percent of total fish production while covering only 1 percent of the planet’s surface (FAO 2024). But just as today’s Southeast Asian freshwaters continue to produce more and more food fish, they are also in crisis—and it is this freshwater biodiversity crisis that troubles the cultural, economic, and ecological life of the region.

This talk examines the making of this crisis through the stories and circulations of a single fish species.

About the Series:

Over the last fifteen years, the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) has hosted this weekly seminar series. The school's flagship forum is designed to bring cutting-edge research and impactful work to the community.

BIOMES stands for 'Bridging Issues & Optimizing Methods in Environmental Studies".

The series is a community-sourced and student-led effort to bring different perspectives to YSE's main stage.

About the Seminar:
The worldwide energy sector is going through dramatic shifts in energy demand, end-uses, and sources. Population growth and economic growth are driving up total demand. Industrialization, urbanization, electrification and motorization are changing how we use energy. And a policy push for domestic, low-carbon and renewable fuels is changing our sources of energy. At the same time, we are entering an era where markets, technologies and policies are enabling dramatic increases in U.S. production of oil, gas, wind, solar and bioenergy that is affecting global economies, the environment, and our national security posture. In parallel, our energy and information sectors are merging to form smarter energy systems and more energy-intensive information systems. For this talk, Dr. Webber will give an entertaining and big-picture overview of global energy trends mixed in with humorous anecdotes, historical snippets, and unexpected examples that will give a surprising look into the future of energy.

About the Series:
Over the last fifteen years, the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) has hosted this weekly seminar series. The school's flagship forum is designed to bring cutting-edge research and impactful work to the community.

BIOMES stands for 'Bridging Issues & Optimizing Methods in Environmental Studies".

The series is a community-sourced and student-led effort to bring different perspectives to YSE's main stage.

This seminar will be available in-person only.

About the Seminar:

Cataclysms, destructive events marked by upheaval and demolition, are much on our minds as we begin 2026. For the Indigenous Wounaan communities with which I work in eastern Panama, the potential for cataclysm is an integral part of life that has accelerated in these last decades of technological changes and climate emergency. To counter cataclysm is to cultivate regeneration and redistribution. In this talk, I show how Wounaan wisdom has influenced the transdisciplinary research I do with collaborators in Panama. Drawing from research on relationships among people and birds, zoonotic diseases and deforestation, and illegal logging, I highlight how community-based goals have influenced research methods and publication of results. I conclude by encouraging the cultivation of transdisciplinary research collaborations for regenerative futures.



About the Series:

Over the last fifteen years, the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) has hosted this weekly seminar series. The school's flagship forum is designed to bring cutting-edge research and impactful work to the community.

BIOMES stands for 'Bridging Issues & Optimizing Methods in Environmental Studies".

The series is a community-sourced and student-led effort to bring different perspectives to YSE's main stage.

This seminar is co-hosted with the Environmental Leadership and Training Initiative (ELTI)

About the Series:
Over the last fifteen years, the Yale School of the Environment (YSE) has hosted this weekly seminar series. The school's flagship forum is designed to bring cutting-edge research and impactful work to the community.
BIOMES stands for 'Bridging Issues & Optimizing Methods in Environmental Studies".

The series is a community-sourced and student-led effort to bring different perspectives to YSE's main stage.

About the Seminar:
Prior to their designation as protected areas, Rwanda’s montane ecosystems experienced extensive fragmentation, recurrent anthropogenic fires, and agricultural encroachment driven by population pressure. These pressures, compounded by climate variability, resulted in ecosystem degradation, habitat loss, and increased environmental risks. However, the implications of these habitat changes for avian functional diversity and associated ecosystem services remain poorly understood. We assessed the responses of bird communities— measured through taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity, to historical forest disturbance and current restoration and management practices in and around Nyungwe National Park, a tropical montane rainforest and UNESCO World Heritage Site. We found that compared to relatively undisturbed habitats, all alternative land uses exhibited altered species composition and reduced diversity. Functional diversity declined markedly in restored and cultivated areas, particularly for trophic traits in restored habitats, while phylogenetic diversity remained largely stable except in cultivated landscapes, where steep declines were recorded in tea monocultures. Elevation structured avian diversity at the landscape scale, whereas vegetation composition and tree cover were key drivers within cultivated and regenerating areas. Assisted natural regeneration did not outperform passive restoration, underscoring the long timeframes required for avian community recovery. A complementary study in Rugezi Marsh—Rwanda’s only Ramsar site, evaluated management effectiveness using birds as indicators. Bird diversity declined with increasing vegetation harvest, and although populations of flagship species such as the Grey-crowned Crane increased, papyrus-dependent specialists declined sharply, suggesting possible local extirpation. We argue that the persistence of habitat specialists depends on landscape-level habitat availability, warranting regulated papyrus exploitation. Collectively, these findings inform science-based management actions supporting forest and wetland restoration under Rwanda’s commitments to the Bonn Challenge and the Congo–Nile Divide restoration initiative.