ENV 567a () / 2025-2026

Yale Forest Forum: Frontiers in Forest Carbon Crediting

Credits: 1.5 Fall 2025: Tu, 12:00-2:00, Marsh Rotunda/Classroom

This seminar explores emerging challenges and innovations in forest carbon accounting, drawing on a wide range of expert perspectives from across the United States. The course is structured around weekly guest lectures and discussions, anchored by a public webinar series hosted by the Yale Forest Forum (YFF). Each week’s YFF webinar will be followed by a seminar session with the invited speaker(s), allowing for deeper discussion and critical engagement. This seminar examines foundational issues in forest carbon accounting and crediting, focusing on both major critiques and proposed solutions. Topics include the following: selecting baselines and assessing additionality, incorporating digital measurements and remote sensing, addressing permanence and leakage, and exploring new frontiers in accounting, such as adjusting for albedo effects and non-climate feedback, temporary accounting measures, and jurisdictional accounting. For many sessions, students hear from researchers with emerging ideas on how to improve carbon accounting as well as perspectives from those engaged in financing and producing carbon credits about the opportunities and challenges of incorporating evolving methods into existing crediting schemes.