In the first exercise in this module you used allometric equations to determine
ID: 108374 • Letter: I
Question
In the first exercise in this module you used allometric equations to determine the amount of carbon dioxide that can be sequestered in the biomass of a typical forest in our area. Let’s now look at how many trees it would take to sequester your annual carbon dioxide emissions. First, enter your annual carbon emissions from the personal impact calculator (total emissions before making any changes). ________________ lbs. (a.) It is estimated that one acre of forest can remove and store about 19,000 lbs of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year1 . How many acres of forest would be needed to absorb your annual emissions of CO2? ________________ acres (b.) If you were to drive a hybrid vehicle instead of your current vehicle, how many acres of forest would be needed to absorb your CO2 emissions? Use the CO2 emissions value you obtained after making the change to a hybrid vehicle in exercise 3. ________________ acres If Everyone Lived As You Do: While an individual’s environmental impacts might seem reasonable, this often changes once you multiply these effects by a large number of people. Let’s expand our analysis to address the number of people impacting the environment from your campus and county. To do this, we will need to know how many people go to your institution, how large your institution is in acres, how many people live in your county, and how big your county is in acres. The first two sets of data can either be provided by your instructor or found from your institution’s website. The latter two pieces of data can be found from the U.S. Census Bureau website by clicking on the appropriate state and county (Note: there are 640 acres to a square mile). Number of students on campus = _________ Size of campus in acres = _______ Number of people in county = _________ Size of county in acres = _______ (a.) If all the students on your campus had the same annual CO2 emissions as you, how many acres of forest would be needed to sequester these outputs? ________________ acres (b.). How many forests the size of your campus would be needed to store the CO2 emissions from its students? ________________ forests (c.) If all the citizens of your county had emissions like you, how many acres of forest would be needed to sequester these outputs? ________________ acres (d.) How many forests the size of your county would it take to sequester the county’s annual emissions if everyone lived like you do? ________________ forests (e.) How many county-sized forests would be needed if everyone switched to hybrid vehicles? ________________ forests Analysis: Did you find the amount of forest required to store your annual CO2 emissions surprising? Explain your answer. After performing these analyses, do you feel that reforestation efforts alone are an effective method for combating global warming, or will reductions in CO2 emissions also be necessary? Explain your answer, citing the land areas of forests needed to sequester the outputs of the student population at your institution and your county. R
Explanation / Answer
First, enter your annual carbon emissions from the personal impact calculator (total emissions before making any changes). 6028 lbs.
(a.) It is estimated that one acre of forest can remove and store about 19,000 lbs of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year 1. How many acres of forest would be needed to absorb your annual emissions of CO2? – 40 acres.
(b.) If you were to drive a hybrid vehicle instead of your current vehicle, how many acres of forest would be needed to absorb your CO2 emissions? Use the CO2 emissions value you obtained after making the change to a hybrid vehicle in exercise. – 35 acres.
If Everyone Lived As You Do: While an individual’s environmental impacts might seem reasonable, this often changes once you multiply these effects by a large number of people. Let’s expand our analysis to address the number of people impacting the environment from your campus and county. To do this, we will need to know how many people go to your institution, how large your institution is in acres, how many people live in your county, and how big your county is in acres. The first two sets of data can either be provided by your instructor or found from your institution’s website. The latter two pieces of data can be found from the U.S. Census Bureau website by clicking on the appropriate state and county (Note: there are 640 acres to a square mile). Number of students on campus = 1028.
Size of campus in acres = 20480 acres.
Number of people in county = 5,006,000.
Size of county in acres = 324510 acres.
(a.) If all the students on your campus had the same annual CO2 emissions as you, how many acres of forest would be needed to sequester these outputs? 120 Acres.
(b.). How many forests the size of your campus would be needed to store the CO2 emissions from its students? – 23.
(c.) If all the citizens of your county had emissions like you, how many acres of forest would be needed to sequester these outputs? – 1254 acres.
How many forests the size of your county would it take to sequester the county’s annual emissions if everyone lived like you do? – 253.
(e.) How many county-sized forests would be needed if everyone switched to hybrid vehicles? - 122.
Analysis:
Reforestation does offer a great deal of promise for confronting climate change, but more so in the long run. Perhaps the biggest difficulty with reforestation as a strategy is simply that it takes so much time to reap the benefits for global warming. If you plant a seedling today, it will take several decades to get the same carbon sequestration benefits we get from mature trees in tropical forests. So, in the short and medium term, reforestation cannot offer nearly as much benefit as limiting deforestation in the first place. Perhaps the most important thing to bear in mind, however, is that the planet continues to lose some 25 million acres to deforestation each yeara very large amount of forest land, the loss of which results in a major contribution to global warming, not to mention the loss of biodiversity and “ecosystem services” that forests provide, such as helping to supply clean water. In the short or medium run we simply can’t replace that through reforestation. So, over the next decade or more, we have to reduce deforestation and this is where we have been focusing most of our efforts. Under certain conditions plantations can grow relatively fast, thus absorbing CO2 at higher rates than natural forests. In the absence of major disturbances, newly planted or regenerating forests can continue to absorb carbon for 20–50 years or more. In comparison to preventing the loss of natural forests, however, tree planting has the potential to make only a limited contribution to reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Climate change and its impact on our environment, our economies and our security, is the defining issue of our era. But every day of inaction makes its consequences more irreversible, so we need to act now.
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