YSE Professors Help Federal Government Account for Environment in Regulatory System
YSE Professors Eli Fenichel and Kenneth Gillingham played key roles in updating a White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guide on how federal agencies calculate their regulations’ benefits and costs to account more fully for the environment.
All major regulations must undergo benefit-cost analysis (BCA), and the U.S. executive branch is responsible for doing BCA for programs and regulations. Fenichel, Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics, worked to update Circular No. A-4, which is the federal government’s primary document for guiding BCA and was last revised in 2003. Circulars are the highest-level guidance issued by OMB.
“This document has tremendous influence over what government agencies consider, how they consider it, when they make regulatory decisions, and also over the ability of the government to defend or be challenged in court over those decisions,” Fenichel said.
The new update references "ecosystem services" 18 times and "environmental" 74 times, including five mentions of "environmental justice." The document is supported by new Guidance for Assessment Changes to Environmental and Ecosystem Services in benefit-costs analysis.
While on leave to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which works closely with the OMB, Fenichel was central to this historic effort to modernize regulatory guidance and helped draft these updates. The documents go through extensive public comment and peer review. Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics, was one of the official peer reviewers on the critical document. Yale Law Professor Zach Liscow led an update of a related federal guidance for BCA for programs and operation, OMB Circular A-94 (last revised in 1992), which Fenichel also helped to revise.
In a recent White House roundtable focusing on the first-of-its-kind report "Advancing the Frontiers of Benefit Cost Analysis: Federal Priorities and Directions for Future Research," Fenichel discussed the effort to develop environmental economic accounts to track the quantity and quality of natural resources, including air, water, land, wildlife, pollinators, energy, minerals, soils, forests, wetlands, environmental activities, urban green space, and other environmental assets.
"It was great to see projects from agencies with expertise in physical and natural sciences working with agencies with expertise in social science," Fenichel said at the roundtable. "We really need this systematic viewpoint. The natural capital accounts and the environmental economic statistics will work with other national economic statistics to create baselines that will allow us think about change and ultimately let us separate the unintended consequences of regulations that can be avoided because they are no longer unanticipated."
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Five YSE Faculty Members Named to 2025 ‘Highly Cited Researchers’ List
Five Yale School of the Environment faculty members have been named to the world’s most influential researchers list by Clarivate Analytics, a company that compiles a list of scientists and social scientists whose papers rank in the top 1% of citations.
Included on this year’s list were: Mark Bradford, the E.H. Harriman Professor of Soils and Ecosystem Ecology; Xuhui Lee the Sara Shallenberger Brown Professor of Climate Science; Anthony Leiserowitz, the JoshAni-TomKat Professor of Climate Communication; Peter Raymond, the Oastler Professor of Biogeochemistry; and Karen Seto, the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science. In total, 49 faculty members from Yale University made the list of 6,868 researchers worldwide.
Mark Bradford
E.H. Harriman Professor of Soils and Ecosystem Ecology
Xuhui Lee
Sara Shallenberger Brown Professor of Climate Science
Anthony Leiserowitz
JoshAni-TomKat Professor of Climate Communication; Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC)
Peter A. Raymond
Oastler Professor of Biogeochemistry; Co-Director, Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture
Karen Seto
Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science; Director of the Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability; Co-Director of the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions
YSE Urban Scientist Receives Franklin Institute Award
Karen Seto, the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science, has received a 2026 Franklin Institute Award for her work on urban issues.
The Institute honored Seto for her “pioneering work integrating satellite imagery, modeling methods, and social sciences to analyze the consequences of urbanization, land use, and global environmental change.” The award is one of the oldest in the nation.
“The 2026 laureates embody the same remarkable spirit of curiosity, ingenuity, and discovery that defined our nation’s founding,” said Larry Dubinski, President and CEO of The Franklin Institute.
Seto, a world renown geographer, was coordinating lead author of two U.N. climate change reports and co-led chapters on how urban areas can mitigate climate change. Her research developed the first forecasts of urban land expansion globally.
Seto is one of eight recipients of the award, which will be given during a ceremony April 30, 2026, in Philadelphia.
"I’m deeply honored by the award, especially given past recipients in the category of earth and environmental science. I’m also grateful for all my students and postdocs in the lab. This award is a celebration of our collective work," Seto said.
Karen Seto
Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science; Director of the Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability; Co-Director of the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions
New Haven Promise Interns Gain Experience in Forest and Wetland Data Analysis
Four undergraduate students from New Haven received field training this summer at YSE through the New Haven Promise program. The students assisted on a range of projects focused on biogeochemistry, hydrology, forest health and forest restoration.
The program, which began in June and ended in August, supports paid internships to help students gain work experience in their respective fields of study.
Working with research scientist Marlyse Duguid, KeRen Tan ’28 inventoried invasive plant species for the Yale Golf Course and Preserve, examined the impacts of Beech Leaf Disease (BLD) on New Haven’s urban forests, and took height measurements of planted trees in an Urban “Miyawaki Micro Forest” project.
Kaleb Diaz Alvarez, Mark Taylor, and Erica Arias, worked with Professor Peter Raymond and postdoctoral fellow Craig Brinkerhoff on hydrology projects in Connecticut and Massachusetts, exploring the role of river wetlands connectivity on downstream water quality. They learned to “read a river,” annotate images of rivers across the U.S. and helped train AI models.
Clockwise:
From left: Erica Arias, Mark Taylor, and Kaleb Diaz Alvarez measure the alkalinity of water samples taken from a mangrove river in the Florida Everglades in the Raymond biogeochemistry lab.
KeRen Tan ’29 takes height measurements of planted trees for an urban Miyawaki Micro Forest project.
Alvarez (left) and YSE postdoc Craig Brinkerhoff (right) measure a headwater stream's flowing width in Guilford, CT.