Carbon Assessments Report

Question description

The following is a possible outline for how you might approach this:

Introduction

–The problem of too much carbon in the atmosphere (enhanced by human activities)

–General references to the carbon cycle for suggesting GENERAL ways to get carbon out of the atmosphere

–The idea of individual actions contributing to carbon in the atmosphere (and to getting it out of the atmosphere)

–Explain the goal of achieving “net zero carbon”

–Set up the plan to measure personal carbon emissions from vehicles (and to extrapolate to the whole campus community) and to determine how many trees would need to be planted to offset YOUR emissions, or how many acres of trees (or wetland soils) would need to be established to take up and store those carbon emissions.

Methods

–The field methods and calculations for determining carbon stored in campus oak trees

–The calculations for determining carbon emissions from your vehicle

–A note that the other lab determined carbon stored in wetlands soils, which will be included in your results ****(The Thursday lab group finished their measurements of carbon sequestered (stored) in the soils of the retention ponds/drainage basins. That number is 1,119kg/acre/yr. By comparison, we estimated that the oak trees on campus were sequestering 6,381.7 kg/acre/yr.)****

Results

–Your personal vehicle emissions and the campus community vehicle emissions

–The amount of carbon stored in trees; the amount taken up each year

–How many trees you would have to plant to offset your own emissions

–How many trees (or acres of trees) are needed to offset the campus community emissions? Do we have enough trees, or enough acres to add more trees to achieve net-zero carbon on campus?

–Combining trees and wetlands soils, how many acres do we have or would we need to achieve net-zero carbon on campus?

Discussion

–Based on the results, can you achieve net zero carbon in your own life? Can the campus achieve net zero carbon with its own campus forest and wetland soils?

–What strategies can YOU or the campus community as a whole employ to either reduce your carbon emissions or increase the carbon storage capacity of trees, soils, or… what else?

— Consider strategies that might involve carbon storage off campus on behalf of the campus

–Can you scale this up to the county, state, nation, world?!