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Forests for the Future: How Can Trees Offset Carbon Emissions?

Author(s): Laura White Syring1, Christopher Michael Gough2

1. McMinnville High School 2. Virginia Commonwealth University

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Summary:
This activity explores the chemistry and biology underlying forest carbon sequestration, a process that removes carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis and storage in plant tissues and soils. Students calculate their entire carbon footprint or…

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This activity explores the chemistry and biology underlying forest carbon sequestration, a process that removes carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis and storage in plant tissues and soils. Students calculate their entire carbon footprint or just one component that is relevant to their personal lives (transportation, heating/cooling, food, clothing, etc.) and then use the data provided in the “forest flux” sheet to calculate the area of that type of forest that needs to grow in order to offset those carbon emissions for the footprint calculator.

Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 21 Jul 2023 doi:10.25334/65Q1-G267 - cite this

Keywords

  1. carbon foot print
  2. Carbon sequestration of forests vegetation
  3. forest ecology (structure and function)

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Description

Students will use the Forest Flux Data Sheet from the University of Michigan Biological Station Ameriflux tower (https://ameriflux.lbl.gov/) to identify how much carbon dioxide a Northern hardwood forest sequesters on an annual basis. Ameriflux is a network of meteorological towers broadly distributed across the Americas in a number of different ecosystems, including forests. Ameriflux towers are part of a global network called FLUXNET. Want to know more about these towers and how they work? Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR4Anc8Mkas&t=18s.

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