Jason Rauch
Degrees
MESc, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies; ScB, Geology, Biology/BA, English, Brown University
About
Hailing from the town of Winslow, Maine, Jason Rauch explored various disciplines while an undergraduate at Brown University, including English literature and poetry, the interrelationships between geology and biology, and the fundamentals of engineering and physics. His senior thesis involved dating a 120 Ma anoxic event utilizing depositional periodicities caused by Milankovitch cycles. After graduating, a year of introspection and exploration, which involved coursework in Applied Physics at Cornell University and backpacking up the southern half of the Appalachian Trail, resulted in Jason enrolling as a masters student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. With advisor Thomas Graedel, Jason derived and compiled the mass flows and stocks of Earth’s copper cycle for his Masters thesis. Jason has continued work with Professor Graedel as a doctoral student, expanding the development of Earth’s anthrobiogeochemical metal cycles to include Fe, Al, Zn, Ag, Pb, Ni, and Cr. He is now developing a more detailed global understanding of the significant metal stocks and flows using mapping in ArcGIS, including the mapping and analysis of in-use metal stocks. Jason has also spent part of his time at Yale working with Yale’s Office of Sustainability, helping to develop sustainability metrics and working with director Julie Newman to write various journal articles on such topics as Yale’s greenhouse gas commitment, how to rigorously establish sustainability metric targets, and the questionable foundations of “zero” as a blanket paradigm for setting sustainability goals.
