School Notes: School of the Environment
January/February 2013

Scientist receives Wilbur Cross Medal

A renowned scholar on the effects of acid rain on forests has received the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, Yale’s highest graduate alumni honor. John Aber ’71, ’73MFS, ’76PhD, is university professor and provost at the University of New Hampshire. A professor of natural resources, he has focused his research on sustainable ecosystem management, studying native forest ecosystems, managed woodlots, and pastures.  He has authored or coauthored more than 200 scientific papers, and in 2003 he was cited as one of the top 10 scientists in the field of ecology and environmental science by the Institute for Scientific Information, which measures how frequently a scientist’s work is cited by other researchers. A principal investigator for the Harvard Forest and Hubbard Brook Long Term Ecological Research sites, he wrote the basic text in his field, Terrestrial Ecosystems. He also is coeditor of Forests in Time: The Environmental Consequences of 100 years of Change in New England (Yale University Press).

Hurricanes affect water systems

The water quality of lakes and coastal systems will be altered if hurricanes intensify in a warming world, according to a Yale study in Geophysical Research Letters. Bryan Yoon, the study’s coauthor and a doctoral student at the environment school, found that during Hurricane Irene in 2011—the worst storm in the New York area in 200 years—record amounts of dissolved organic matter darkened Catskill waters and affected the Ashokan Reservoir that supplies New York City with drinking water. Dissolved organic matter plays a critical role in the aquatic environment and the provision of clean drinking water. In moderate quantities, it provides food and nutrients for microbial communities; but in excessive amounts it binds with metal pollutants and transports them, interferes with ultraviolet processes that reduce pathogens in water, affects aquatic metabolism, and leads to the formation of carcinogenic disinfection byproducts such as trihalomethanes during chlorination.