Raffa is supporting Indigenous data-empowerment efforts by researching how Tribal Nations may engage with soil carbon markets, which offer compensation to land managers who build up Soil Carbon on their land through regenerative rangeland practices or agriculture. He will be working with Aude Chesnais (Native Land Information Systems), Dr. Justin Farrell (Yale), and Dr. Kyle Whyte (Univ of Michigan) to analyze soil carbon on Native land across the West, and how carbon stock may change in the future with altered land management strategies. This research will use Native land boundaries GIS data and soil carbon projection data from SSURGO and the Soils Revealed data platform. The findings of this research will be made publicly available on the Native Land Information Systems website for use by Tribal decisionmakers, and will be accompanied by an academic publication that discusses natural climate solutions, environmental justice, and restoration ecology.
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Raffa Sindoni, Western Resource Fellow | Raffaele (“Raffa”) is a Master of Environmental (MEM) candidate at YSE, focusing on sociology, ecosystem management, and environmental justice. He is interested in the ways regenerative agriculture and ecosystem restoration support environmental and sociological healing in the wake of centuries of exploitation, oppression, and extraction. Raffa is also a Yale Environmental Justice Fellow and a research assistant in Dr. Justin Farrell’s lab on Western Land & Peoples, where he supports Tribal data-empowerment and researches Indigenous involvement in carbon-offsetting markets. Prior to Yale, Raffa worked as an economic consultant and data scientist, where he advised organizations like the DOJ, the ACLU, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. See what Raffa has been up to. | Blog