School Notes: School of the Environment
July/August 2025

A pioneering approach to measuring microscopic changes in plant cells

Every time the temperature drops, a cloud passes overhead, or the sun sets, a plant makes a choice: keep its microscopic pores, called stomata, open to absorb carbon dioxide and continue photosynthesizing, or close them to protect its precious stores of water. That capacity to open and close pores requires the plant to respond to subtle environmental changes by adjusting the pressure within the cells of the stomata—a complex ability that plants evolved over hundreds of millions of years.

An interdisciplinary team of biologists, physicists, and engineers, led by researchers at the Yale School of the Environment, developed a pioneering method to observe those pressure changes. The new approach, detailed in a study published in PNAS, vastly expands the rate at which, and the number of species from which, scientists can take measurements, opening up new possibilities for research on plant evolution and physiology with valuable applications for improving water efficiency, the researchers said.

YSE professors honored with sustainability award

Two Yale School of Environment professors were part of research teams whose work was honored with a Frontiers Planet Prize. The annual prize celebrates breakthroughs in sustainability science. 

For decades, Peter Raymond, the Oastler Professor of Biogeochemistry, fellow scientists, and residents have been sampling water from the six largest rivers in the Arctic as part of the Arctic Great Rivers Observatory (ArcticGRO). A study on their findings published in Nature Geoscience, “Recent trends in the chemistry of major northern rivers signal widespread Arctic change,” was named the “National Champion” for Canada, one of 19 national champions from five continents. 

Eli Fenichel, the Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics, was coauthor of a research study, published in Science, that examined how governments are valuing ecosystems in planning processes. The paper, “Accounting for the increasing benefits from scarce ecosystems,” was named the “National Champion” for the Netherlands.